Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
For reasons not relevant here, I was called upon to open a bulletin-board lock with a complete lack of keys:
Bulletin Board Lock – locked
It’s obviously not the highest security lock you’ve ever seen. Armed with a small screwdriver and an old darning needle, this took the better part of 30 seconds:
Bulletin Board Lock – opened
Actually, I devoted a few minutes to verify none of my collection of random keys would suffice.
Replacing the lock not being within my remit, I improvised a simple retainer from available materials:
Bulletin Board Lock – improvised strap retainer – front
Yes, the nylon cable tie will surely pull out of the latch:
Bulletin Board Lock – improvised strap retainer
And I admit the installation’s security has taken a definite downward step:
Bulletin Board Lock – push pin security
Some day, I’ll tote a wrench to the site, remove the lock, and improve the improvisation.
Replacing the lock seems mired in an intractable budgetary wrangle. Similar locks being five bucks on Amazon, I’m tempted to just make it happen, but doing so would apparently roil the decision-making stratum. I’m perfectly happy to remain an on-call techie devoid of political ambition.
Even an inch-thick handle wouldn’t have enough mojo for the task.
Wikipedia has the equations you need to go from the easily measured “height” (vertex to opposite side) dimension to the pentagon’s “outside radius”, which equals the radius of the circumscribed circle needed by OpenSCAD.
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We kept fresh milkweed branches in a vase and the caterpillar ate almost continuously:
Monarch caterpillar – 2017-08-13
By August 15, the caterpillar was ready for the next stage in its life. At 10 in the morning it had attached itself to the screen covering the aquarium and assumed the position:
The discarded skin remained loosely attached until I carefully removed it.
What look like small yellow spots are actually a striking metallic gold color.
Eleven days later, on August 26 at 9 AM, the chrysalis suddenly became transparent:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – left
And:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – right
The shape of the butterfly becomes visible in reflected light:
Monarch chrysalis – ready – ventral detail
The gold dots and line remained visible.
The magic happened at 3 PM:
Monarch chrysalis – emerging – unfolding
The compacted wings emerge intense orange on the top and lighter orange on the bottom:
Monarch unfolding – left
The butterfly took most of the day to unfurl and stiffen its wings into flat plates:
Monarch unfolding – dorsal
And:
Monarch unfolding – right
By 8 PM it began exploring the aquarium:
Monarch unfolded – right
As adults, they sip nectar from flowers, but don’t feed for the first day, so we left it in the aquarium overnight.
At 10 AM on August 27, we transported it to the goldenrod in the garden, where it immediately began tanking operations:
Monarch on Milkweed – left
A few minutes later, it began sun-warming operations:
Monarch on Milkweed – dorsal
Mary watched it while she was tending the garden and, an hour or so later, saw it take off and fly over the house in a generally southwest direction. It will cross half the continent under a geas prohibiting any other action, eventually overwinter in Mexico with far too few of its compadres, then die after producing the eggs for a generation beginning the northward journey next year.
Godspeed, little butterfly, godspeed …
In the spirit of “video or it didn’t happen”, there’s a 15 fps movie of the emergence taken at 5 s/image.
Mary confronted this critter in the garden, whereupon it fled into the compost bin:
Groundhog in the compost bin – front
She barricaded it with spare tomato cages across the bin’s entrance, I wedged an aluminum sheet behind the cages, and we got the stinkeye for our efforts:
Groundhog in the compost bin – left
I deployed the hose, watered it for a few minutes, and we left it to consider its options. Groundhogs are pretty much waterproof, but we hoped the wetdown would be sufficiently unpleasant to mark the garden as “Here be dragons” in its mental map.
After an hour, it had vanished. We know from past experience that groundhogs can climb up-and-over the chain link fence surrounding the compost bin (it was a dog pen for the previous owners), although it knocked down the aluminum sheet and may have exited through the garden.
I eventually noticed the yellow LED indicating +24 V input from the power supply (previously, a noisy wall wart) was dark. Poking around revealed I’d inadvertently installed a 1 kΩ ballast resistor:
LF Preamp – burned power-on LED resistor
A 1/4 W resistor can’t dissipate half a watt for very long, as shown by the discolored circuit board around the leads and the faint smell of electrical death in the area.
I swapped in a 3.3 kΩ resistor, the yellow LED lit up for a few seconds, then went dark again. This time, the LED was dead; apparently, it’d been overstressed for long enough to fail. I can’t be too annoyed.
Unfortunately, replacing the LED required removing the entire housing with all three LEDs, chopping off the defunct block, reinstalling the attenuated block with the two green LEDs, installing a similar red LED, and finally installing a nice 3.3 kΩ half-watt resistor:
As usual, we’re at the Rt 55 end of Burnett Blvd, returning home from a grocery trip; I’m hauling two full bags of chow in the trailer. The white car pulling up immediately to our left will make a left turn from the left lane:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 01
The more distant white car, turning left out of Overocker, is eases past us in the right lane to make a right turn:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 02
We’re on the left side of the right lane, rather than the right, to avoid right hook collisions with drivers who flat-out do not stop before turning. Been there, had that happen, we know better.
The car approaching in the right lane will attempt to pass us on the right:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 03
That’s happened before, too, so I’m watching this happen in my mirror. My line will pass to the right of the inconveniently placed manhole cover in the intersection:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 04
Mary’s nearing the right side of the lane, I’m in the middle, and the driver jams to a stop rather than run up over the sidewalk:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 05
The passenger window is rolling down, which is always a Bad Sign:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 06
It’s all the way down and I know what’s about to happen:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 07
So I preempt the discussion by pointing out she was passing in an intersection and the license plate on the silver Chevy say FEX-4194:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 08
She passes Mary and stops directly ahead of us in the middle of the right-hand lane. We jam to a stop behind her. The black car approaching us swerves into the middle lane:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 09
She pulls around the corner onto Manchester and stops in the intersection. I stop well behind her to remain visible from Rt 55, which turns out to be a Good Idea:
Burnett at Rt 55 – Right Pass – 2017-09-19 – 10
Mary eases beside the drivers window, which rolls down. The driver says she’s going to call the police, “because we pulled directly in front of her”. Mary points out we have video of the entire encounter. The window rolls up and the driver pulls away.
Overocker, Burnett, and a short sprint on Rt 55 to Manchester is the only route from the grocery store to Rt 376 and home, so it’s not like we’re looking for trouble.
No helmet camera video, alas, because I tried those piece-of-crap Wasabi batteries in the Sony HDR-AS30V and the second one was flat-out dead. The first one, in the camera when I left home, showed empty after the half-hour ride to the grocery store, so they really are junk; “Premium Japanese cells” my foot.
This notification appeared every day after I got my shiny-new / soon-to-be-obsolete Google Pixel XL:
Screenshot_20170906-085931 – Update Your Phone Number – detail
Fast-forward through nearly a month of doing the obvious things to no avail:
Tap the notification to update my phone number
Update my phone number from Firefox on the Pixel
Update my phone number from Firefox on my desktop
Ditto, from Chromium
Just dismiss the notification, repeatedly
Change my phone number in various Google places
Ditto, in various ways
Searching on the obvious keywords provided very few hits and none with a resolution. I followed one suggestion to flush the Google Play and Google Play Services caches, to no visible effect.
So I started a chat with Google Support by coredumping the entire list of Things Already Tried. After ten minutes of pleasantries, mostly spent idling while Holmes (great name for a tech support guy) read my coredump (and, most likely, timeshared a dozen other support chats), this transpired:
The “troubleshooting steps” look like a generic list of progressively more desperate measures applicable to any mysterious Android problem:
Clear app data for the Play Store
Go to Settings > Apps.
Tap Google Play Store > Storage > Clear data > Ok.
At the top left, tap the Back arrow to go to the “App info” screen.
At the top right, tap More (3 dots) > Uninstall updates > Ok > Ok to restore the app to its factory version.
Note: The Play Store will update automatically within 48 hours. If “Uninstall updates” is dimmed, you can skip this step.
Note: If you’ve changed the Google Play Store app settings (content filters, password protection, etc.), you’ll need to set them up again.
Clear the app data of Google Play services
Warning: Clearing the app data of Google Play services can reset settings, affect app performance, and cause unpredictable behavior across the device.
Go to Settings > Apps or Application Manager.
At the top right, tap More (3 dots) > Show system apps (on Android versions lower than 6.0, go to All instead).
Tap Google Play services.
Note: If you don’t see “Google Play services,” check Show all system apps and make sure that both Google Play Framework and Google Play Services are enabled. If they aren’t enabled, download the Google Play Service from Play Store.
Tap Storage > Clear cache.
Then tap Manage Space > Clear All Data > Ok.
After completing this step, you should check the settings on your apps to see if they’re still configured correctly.
Remove and re-add your Google Account
Note: This may reset settings and remove in-app content. However, your purchases and synced data (Gmail, Google contacts, etc.) are tied to your account and will be available after re-adding your account.
Go to Settings > Accounts > Google.
Tap the name of the account you wish to remove.
Important: Make sure you remember your account password. You’ll need it to sign back in to your account.
At the top right, tap More (3 dots) > Remove account > Remove account.
At the top left, tap the Back arrow > Add account > Google.
Sign in to your Google Account.
Uninstall and reinstall Play Store updates
Temporarily uninstalling updates to the Google Play Store app can help fix some issues.
To revert the Play Store app to the previous version:
Go to Settings.
Tap Apps or Application manager (depending on the device).
Tap Google Play Store (depending on the device, you may need to go to All).
Tap on the menu button, and then Uninstall updates.
If the Uninstall updates button isn’t available, skip the rest of this step and continue troubleshooting.
When prompted to change the Play Store app back to the factory version, tap OK.
Go back to the device’s home screen and relaunch the Play Store. Your Play Store app should update to the latest version within a few minutes.
If the Play Store app doesn’t update, tap on the menu button from within the app and go to Settings. Scroll down until you see Play Store Version. Tap on that to check for an update. If none is available, continue to the next step.
Uninstall updates for Google Play Services
Go to Settings.
Tap Apps or Application manager (depending on the device).
Tap Google Play Services (depending on the device, you may need to go to All).
Tap on the menu button, and then Uninstall updates.
If the Uninstall updates button isn’t available, skip the rest of this step and continue troubleshooting.
When prompted to change the Play Store app back to the factory version, tap OK.
Reset your device to factory settings
If you’d like help with resetting your device, contact us from another device and we’ll walk you through it.
To reset your device:
If you have an SD card, remove it to save the data on the card.
Reset your Android device to factory settings.
Sign in to your device with a Google Account that was signed in before the reset.
If you removed an SD card, reinsert it.
To reload your apps and data:
Open the Play Store app.
Tap the Menu (3 lines) > My apps & games > Library.
Next to the apps that you’d like to install, tap Install or Enable.
If the issue still persist after performing all the troubleshooting steps I request you to reply to this email with the screenshot.
As it turned out, blowing away “the app data of the Google Play services” did the trick; the notification Went Away and hasn’t returned.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 