It seems the rodents around here have lost their fear of enclosed spaces:
I cannot be bothered to conjure a mesh lid for the bowl, though.
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Mis-Punched Scope Probe Hook
Back in the day, HP scope probes had a rugged music-wire hook on the tip:
HP scope probe tip These days, scope probe tips use ordinary sheet steel punched into a hook shape:
Siglent scope probe – good tip By sheer bad luck, the first probe out of the bag had a mis-punched end with no griptivity:
Siglent scope probe – mis-cut tip Dunno what happened, but it was definitely sheared off in the factory.
After I finally recognized the problem, I shaped a crude hook with a safe-edge needle file and continued the mission:
Siglent scope probe – filed tip A quick note to Siglent put a replacement probe tip in the mail, so it’s all good.
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Magnetic Field Visualization
Thinking about springs to apply downforce on plotting pen holders suggested magnets, so I extricated some neodymium bars from my collection of power toothbrush heads:
Magnets – single A snippet of magnetic field visualization film shows a dipole pattern:
Magnets – single – field visualization Snapping two of them together in line:
Magnets – in line … produces a quadrupole:
Magnets – in line – field visualization Now, if only I had some magnetic monopoles, this whole thing would be easier!
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Fresh … Foul?
This one took us by surprise:
Fresh Foul Meat “As Advertised”, indeed, although the flyer got it right.
We mentioned it at the Meat Department and discovered they don’t print the signs, so Mary reported it to The Front Office.
It’s not as if I’ve never run afoul of a heterograph or perpetrated the occasional typo …
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Brother BAS-311 Control Head Salvage
A control head from an ancient Brother BAS-311 sewing machine emerged from a recent Squidwrench clearing-out session:
Brother BAS-311 Control Head The sturdy metal enclosure ought to be good for something, I thought, so I rescued it from the trash.
One of the ten button-head screws galled in place and resisted a few days of penetrating oil, so I drilled it out:
Drilled-out button screw head The PCB has no ICs! It simply routes all the LED and button pins through the pillar into the sewing machine controller:
Brother BAS-311 Control Head – interior The ribbon cable alternates the usual flat strip with sections of split conductors:
Segmented ribbon cable The split segments let it roll up into the pillar, with enough flexibility to allow rotating the head. I’ve seen segmented twisted-pair ribbon cable, but never just flat conductors.
Maybe the control head can become Art in its next life?
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Hazards of Outdoor Wiring
Spotted behind a small strip mall during one of our walks:
Rotted power cable Perhaps the cable wasn’t rated for outdoor use?
The earth ground conductor isn’t insulated and the nonconductive filler strands look scary, but neither should kill you outright.
As far as I can tell, the insulation around the individual conductors remains intact, but it’s surely brittle and ready to fall off at the slightest touch.
The breaker box and cable are out of reach and, I suppose, out of mind.
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Vape Cartridge
Being the kind of guy who lives under a rock, I thought this thing lying at the end of the driveway might be a USB widget:
Vape cartridge – side But the contacts are all wrong:
Vape cartridge – contacts It has an opening on the other end:
Vape cartridge – exhaust port An easy teardown produces a yard sale of parts:
Vape cartridge – components The fiber snippet inside the coil carries the same sickly sweet scent as exhaled by passing vapers.
Some casual searching suggests it’s a Juul Vape Pod. The Juul site insists on lower browser armor than I’m willing to grant it; you’re on your own.
The heating coil press-fits into slots cut in the contacts:
Vape cartridge – heater and contacts It’s about 1 Ω cold, so I foolishly assume there’s a current limiter somewhere in the circuitry.
The little steel tube goes into the Tray o’ Cutoffs, where it might come in handy some day, the debris hits the trash, and I washed my hands up to the elbows.
Ya learn something new every day around here and, obviously, I must get out more …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 