Spotted along Robinson Lane:
A closer look at the same number of pixels:
The little one way over on the left is definitely having an adventure!
I’d read of goats climbing trees, but never turtles.
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
-
Mystery Knife / Chisel
I recovered a tool from an intersection during the homeward leg of a bike ride:
Mystery chisel knife – overview The scabbard is a bit the worse for having been run over by traffic, but the knife is still in good shape.
The back of the blade has been well and truly mushroomed:
Mystery chisel knife – battered back The blade edge doesn’t have nearly as much damage as you’d (well, I’d) expect from all the hammering on the back and sides:
Mystery chisel knife – blade edge The molded handle suggests it’s a commercial product, but it has no branding, no maker’s mark, no identification of any kind.
Google Image Search returns useless views of tail lights and rifles. Here, try it for yourself:
Mystery chisel knife I have no idea what it’s used for.
Do you?
[Update: It’s a Bell System Cable-Sheath Splitting Knife, made by Klein Tools. More details in the comments … ]
-
Warm-White LED Strip: FAIL
The roll of warm-white LEDs I used for the first sewing machine lights has evidently aged out:
Failed warm-white LED strip They’ve been wrapped on their original roll, tucked in an antistatic bag, for the last five years, so it’s not as if they’ve been constantly abused.
All the cool-white LEDs on an adjacent roll in the same bag still work perfectly, so you’re looking at inherent vice.
I harvested the three longest functional sections and dumped the remainder in the electronics recycling box.
COB LEDs provide much more light, if only because they run at higher power densities, and seem to be much better cost-performers:
Juki TL-2010Q COB LED – installed – rear view Admittedly, I haven’t looked at the RGB LED strips in a while, either.
-
Monthly Science: Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Emergence
An industrious pair of Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Wasps assembled their nest last August:
Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Wasp Nest – side view Their offspring began emerging in early July, with our first picture on 3 July. I’ll leave the image file dates in place so you can reach your own conclusions:
IMG_20190703_184657 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right We think a titmouse (a known predator) pecked some holes, including the upper hole on the middle tube, as they seemed to expose solid (and presumably inedible) chitin from the outside:
IMG_20190703_184647 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left More holes appeared in a few days:
IMG_20190709_172632 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right The irregular spacing along each tube suggests they don’t emerge in the reverse order of installation:
IMG_20190709_172623 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left Three days later:
IMG_20190712_181634 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right 
IMG_20190712_181625 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left Two weeks after the first holes appeared:
IMG_20190717_172908 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – right 
IMG_20190717_172922 – Organ Pipe Mud Dauber Nest – left No more holes have appeared since then, so it seems one young wasp emerges every few days.
This nest produced about a dozen wasps, with perhaps as many launch failures. We’ll (try to) remove it and examine the contents in a few months.
We expect they’ll start building nests all over the house in another month …
Update: Fortunately for us, no nests appeared before the first freeze, so the wasps are holed up elsewhere for the winter.
-
Walmart Wiper Selector: FAIL
After five years, I figured it’d be a Good Idea™ to replace the Forester’s wiper blades. Being in the Walmart at the time, I tried to use their helpful Wiper Selector gadget:
Walmart Wiper Selector You’d think whoever is responsible for updating / replacing such things would have done so several times during the last eight years.
-
HP 7475A Plotter: Ceramic-Tip Pen EOL
Ceramic-tip plotter pens draw wonderfully crisp lines:
Spirograph pattern – black ceramic pen – detail Eventually, though, the fiber tip wears flush with the ceramic shell, becomes slightly indented, and ceases to make its mark in the world:
HP 7475A Plotter – Ceramic pen – worn tip As the lady says, “Starting from zero, got nothing to lose”, so I applied a fine diamond file around the tip:
HP 7475A Plotter – Ceramic pen – filed tip Well, all I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Alas, even the newly exposed fiber didn’t make much of a mark on the paper and, as you’d expect, the ragged ceramic tip dragged painfully across the paper. I assume the fiber had filled with fossilized dry ink.
A New Old Stock bag of fiber-tip pens emerged from the Big Box o’ Pens while I was flailing around:
HP 7475A Plotter – NOS Green pen package I think the “812” in the lower right corner is a date code, most likely early in 1988, so the pens started their lifetime countdown at least three decades ago. They still work, though:
HP 7475A Plotter – NOS Green pens The plotter appeared at HV Open’s Mad Science Fair, because everybody loves a plotter!
-
Mower FOD
For reasons not relevant here, the lawn mower suffered some Foreign Object Damage:
Lawn Mower – bent blade mount I’m sure the hard stop loosened the tolerances along the shaft, but the mower fired right up (with that new blade!) and has no more vibration than usual, despite the seriously bent blade mount.
I no longer have a deep emotional attachment to lawn mowers, which is apparently common, as the label advises me there’s no need to change the oil:
Mower Engine – never change the oil Drive it ’til it drops …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 