The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Who’d’a thunk it?
We’ve seen several new rabbits munching greenery in the back yard, but this little one may be studying auto repair under our neighbor’s car:
Unlike mice, even a small rabbit won’t take up residence in the air cleaner.
The weird granulated look comes from a Pixel 6a camera zoomed all the way tight through two layers of 1960-era window glass at an acute angle. The bad camera you have is always better than the good camera you don’t.
So. Many. Tiny. Words.:
For the record, the typeface in that block of Fine Print is 1 mm tall = 3 point, which I find barely readable without magnification and impossible to follow without a pointer.
I’ve come to realize being a “valued customer” does not mean what businesses want me to think it means.
I was certain this was badly spoiled cream:
The seal was firmly affixed inside the cap, just like all the seals on all the other cartons we’ve ever bought, so this wasn’t a “broken seal”.
The bottom of the seal looked about the same:
The cream inside the carton looked & smelled fine, so it went into the morning omelette with no ill effect. Yes, I’m aware some bacterial contamination has no particular smell or taste.
Scraping off the pure-white cream showed the crud had been molded inside the plastic:
A closer look at the exterior surface of the seal:
And the interior surface:
Both of those are focused on the top surface; the blurred areas are inside the plastic.
The date & production codes sprayed onto the carton were somewhat illegible:
Getting a better angle helped:
I sent in a report, but I’m sure I’ll never know the rest of the story …
This carton went through the date coder with its lid open:
They made a fine breakfast …
Mary found the wrench I made five years ago in the bottom of her tool bucket:
Having moved away from the garden with all the valves that wrench turned, it can now go into the 3D Printed Sample Box for use in the unlikely event I ever give another talk on the subject.
I’d design it differently these days, what with BOSL2 in my sails, but it got the job done.
Some things last long enough!
Thanks to Google Translate:
It’s not clear why a Sergeant in the US Army would translate her request for help into Simplified Chinese so I can better understand it, but that’s the world we live in.
This deposit would move my Quality-of-Life needle, but certainly not in a good direction:
Today I Learned: there are humanitarian doctors connected with the Red Army in Morocco.
The cost of sending this junk must be low enough to fuel the spam machine from a minuscule response rate.
A pox on their collective backside!
Last year, a pair of finches made several nesting attempts in the wreath at our front door, only the first of which succeeded.
This year, a pair of robins took over:
They’re considerably larger and we hoped would be more able to repel attackers. They also seemed to get off to a late start, as we saw young robins hopping around the yard with other adults while these birds were building their nest, so this may have been their second nest of the season.
The first egg appeared on 5 May:
Two weeks later, the first chick pipped:
Only a mother could love something like that, but they almost always do:
Floppy chicks are (still) floppy one day later:
Rapid growth is Job One:
Taking shape:
And then there were none:
The M50 trail camera was defunct, so we don’t know what happened to them. Mary didn’t hear a fuss through the adjacent bedroom window, which suggests something grabbed them while Ms Robin was off getting breakfast.
We took the wreath down and replaced it with a slate plaque, because we’d rather not know …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 