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?
Last summer I followed the procedure that should turn off (one of) the ersatz “Yellow Pages” directories littering our driveway.
This just arrived:
Seeing as how they have the wrong town in my address, there’s still another excuse available.
My guess: they’re paid by tonnage of books delivered and have a powerful incentive to continue delivering all of them, no matter what gets in the way.
You absolutely cannot make this stuff up.
The ample padding around this bag of fragile pecans leaves nothing to be desired:
They’re firmly held in place on all sides, well protected from injury, and survived their shipping ordeal unscathed: not a bruise or break to be found. Well done!
That’s not always the case. A padded envelope recently arrived with an obvious wound:
Which came from its completely unprotected contents:
Fortunately, the fragile glass front plate of that OLED managed to put itself flat against a small box inside the otherwise empty bag. it wasn’t broken, but due only to good fortune.
“Static sensitive parts enclosed”, indeed …
A batch of 1.3 inch white I²C OLED displays arrived from halfway around the planet, so I figured I could run a quick acceptance test by popping them into the socket on the crystal tester proto board:
The first one flat-out didn’t work, as in not at all. The original display continued to work fine, so I compared the old & new displays:
Yup, swapped VCC and GND pins. I should be used to that by now.
I rewired the socket, tried the new displays, undid the change, popped the original display in place, and all is right with the world. Somewhat to my surprise, all five new displays worked, including the one I’d insulted with reversed power.
Riding around the block after a nasty storm showed far more than the usual number of leaves on the Dutchess Rail Trail:
I spotted several trees down on both sides of the trail approaching Maloney Road, with another large branch across that access ramp:
You might be able to see the large tree down across the trail on the far side of the road, up the slope.
Maloney Rd had many downed trees:
With chainsaw chips and flare ash piles everywhere:
From the National Weather Service:
The National Weather Service in coordination with Dutchess County Emergency Management officials, have confirmed a brief touchdown of a tornado on May 31. The tornado path began near the intersection of Maloney Road and Route 376. The tornado traveled due east along and just north of Maloney Road for approximately 1.25 miles before dissipating. Damage included numerous snapped hardwood and softwood trees and the roof lifted off a shed.
Both of Mary’s gardens suffered beatdowns, with the Vassar Farm plot pretty thoroughly pulverized by marble-size hail; she’s not in a good mood right now.
The DPW crews had plenty on their to-do list, but that branch was gone a day later.
Update: The top of the barely visible tree in the second picture just kissed the trail fence, but a much larger tree smashed both fences on its way across the trail:
If you need some firewood, maybe you can make a deal …
An iridescent ball appeared on the kitchen wall:
Despite the silvery shine under LED lighting, it was a Golden Tortoise Beetle:
The iridescence shows up better with a bit of underexposure:
Transparent armor: who’d’a thunk it?
Mary spotted one in the garden some years ago; I’ve never seen such a thing.
Rolling into Vassar Farms, we encountered a Canadian Canada Goose (*) family:
The gander pulled straight up and hissed as we rolled by at what we thought was a respectful distance:
Their little fuzzballs retreated in good order under the fence toward the pond; they don’t need much survival training.
Word has it a goose family (perhaps this one) built their nest near a path around the ponds and defend their turf with sufficient resolve to deter even singletrack bikers.
I occasionally see snakes along the way, but none that hiss:
We approach rail-trail curves with a bit more caution than some folks; I’m at about the spot where that rider began losing control and didn’t quite wipe us out.
Update: They’re “Canada Geese“, with (AFAICT) a legal distinction between Canadian tourists and resident Yanks during the hunting season. Thanks to David for the reminder!
Mary spotted this critter atop the roof and, much to my surprise, it waited courteously until I deployed the camera:
It looks, walks, and acts just like a pigeon:
… but we’ve never seen one with those feather patterns & colors. It’s not in any of our books, so it may be an escaped domestic pigeon.
Those feathers require plenty of body maintenance:
As nearly as we can tell, it’s wearing a green leg band with three digits that might be 904:
If this was your bird, it flew through Red Oaks Mill NY just after noon on 1 May 2017 …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 