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.

Category: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

  • Car vs. Pole: That Ain’t Gonna Buff Right Out

    Spotted at the corner gas station, where they collect wrecks before harvesting their organs:

    Car vs Pole
    Car vs Pole

    As far as we can tell, the car clipped the pole off at the base, whereupon it smashed down across the roof, leaving the trunk unscathed. The lack of blood on the airbag suggests the driver lived to tell the tale, although we’ll never know the rest of the story.

    A collection of random stuff tossed on the back seat included a license plate bent into a surprisingly gentle curve.

    Obligatory: And Sudden Death reference.

  • Bird Feeder Icing

    After a day of snow + sleet + ice, followed by overnight cooling, the bird feeder looked like this:

    2019-12-19 - Ice on bird feeder - Day 0
    2019-12-19 – Ice on bird feeder – Day 0

    The ice generally doesn’t bond across the top, so the sheets slide off separately to the front and back. This time, they stayed together and began sliding off to the side.

    The next two days were unusually cold and the glacier stopped sliding:

    2019-12-21 - Ice on bird feeder - Day 2
    2019-12-21 – Ice on bird feeder – Day 2

    The temperature warmed enough during the day to let the glacier resume sliding, whereupon it fell and shattered on the patio.

    No birds or squirrels were injured during this incident.

  • Beware the Unit of Measure

    While looking for something else, I stumbled across this Amazon offer (clicky for more dots):

    Hammermill Truckload Paper
    Hammermill Truckload Paper

    Yeah, a trailer load a’ paper. Word.

    Long ago, in a universe far away, my buddy Mark One mis-read a unit of measure and ended up with a trailer load a’ Tektronix Thermal Paper. It carried a silver-based emulsion requiring constant refrigeration, so he stashed about a pallet of paper canisters under every raised floor on the IBM Poughkeepsie campus. Even though the raised floor acreage has dropped dramatically, some of it may be there to this very day.

  • Merry Christmas

    Moonrise, as seen through the pines in our yard:

    Pixel 3a Night Vision - moonrise
    Pixel 3a Night Vision – moonrise

    The Pixel 3a produces exceedingly useful low-light images, mostly by having Google’s software compensate for its tiny lens and minimal light-capture area, with the downside of turning a peaceful night scene into harsh daylight.

    Take the rest of the day off, OK?

  • Praying Mantis Ootheca

    Several of this year’s praying mantises set up shop in the decorative grasses bracketing the front door:

    Praying Mantis - brown wing covers - in grass
    Praying Mantis – brown wing covers – in grass

    We found their egg masses, formally called ootheca, attached to the stems in mid-October:

    Praying Mantis egg mass A
    Praying Mantis egg mass A

    They feel like rigid urethane foam and seem eminently protective:

    Praying Mantis egg mass B
    Praying Mantis egg mass B

    We’ll cut around the masses when it’s time to clear out the dead grass next spring. I was tempted to bring one inside, but dealing with a gazillion tiny mantises in a few months would be daunting.

  • Obsolete DRAM Collection

    As you might expect by now, I harvest various bits & pieces from the PCs falling off the trailing edge of my assortment. The bag of obsolete DRAM recently floated to the top of the heap:

    DRAM Assortment - overview
    DRAM Assortment – overview

    Half a gig of ECC RAM from what might have been a fire-breathing Pentium Pro box:

    DRAM Assortment - 256 MB ECC
    DRAM Assortment – 256 MB ECC

    The PCBs along the top apparently filled vacant memory slots.

    Some 32 and 64 MB DRAM from a few IBM laptops I turned into picture frames:

    DDR2 DRAM in assorted sizes & speeds:

    DRAM Assortment - PC2 DDR
    DRAM Assortment – PC2 DDR

    PC133 DDR DRAM, with four sticks of 1 GB PC3 along the bottom:

    DRAM Assortment - PC133
    DRAM Assortment – PC133

    If you look closely, you may see something you can use. No reasonable offer refused …

  • Monthly Image: CD Diffraction

    Just to see how it worked, I engraved the Tek Circuit Computer scales on scrap CDs:

    CNC 3018-Pro - front overview
    CNC 3018-Pro – front overview

    At first, I hadn’t correctly scaled the text paths, but the diffraction patterns caught my eye:

    Tek CC on CD - bottom - unscaled text
    Tek CC on CD – bottom – unscaled text

    The illumination comes from two “daylight” T8 LED tubes in a shoplight fixture, running left-to-right, so it seems I held the camera rotated 1/4 turn in landscape mode. The pix look OK either way.

    Bottom deck:

    Tek CC on CD - bottom
    Tek CC on CD – bottom

    Middle deck:

    Tek CC on CD - middle
    Tek CC on CD – middle

    Top deck, with the camera held portrait-style:

    Tek CC on CD - top
    Tek CC on CD – top

    I’m a sucker for diffraction patterns …

    The tiny engravings don’t photograph well, because they’re floating atop the transparent disc and the rainbow patterns from the data layer, but they still come out OK even when scaled to fit on a hard drive platter:

    Tek CC - bottom deck - scaled to HD platter
    Tek CC – bottom deck – scaled to HD platter

    Looking good!