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?
Some time ago, Vassar deployed Big Belly solar-powered, network-connected, compacting trash cans. We recently walked across the campus to a play …
Once is happenstance:
Twice is coincidence:
Those neatly printed signs suggested a common-mode failure, so we took the long way back to visit my all-time favorite trash can installation. Yup, three times is enemy action:
You can still put trash in the containers through the obvious opening. Perhaps the networking failed?
This year’s mouse survived the winter under the tool rack, perhaps due to living inside a well-insulated ball made from leaf fragments, dryer fuzz, and random stuff:
The white fabric around the entrance is a nice touch and the blue threads certainly add a decorative flair. I eased the top surface back to show the interior, although the flash flattens the texture:
With hawks hunting during the day and owls a-wing at night, the local rodent population has been taking a real beating; even the squirrels look worried.
One of the motel’s TV channels offered this diversion:
Alas, no combination of keys on the overly complex remote fed themselves to tty1. That didn’t surprise me, but ya gotta try, y’know.
Contrary to what you might think, that’s a well-focused image. Apparently, someone, somewhere, aimed a crappy camera at a monitor and devoted one video input to the result.
I wonder what critical infrastructure runs a Linux distro that end-of-lifed in December 2009.
We’ll never know the rest of the story…
Returning from Rochester & Points North, I spotted something in the rearview mirror that could have been either a Yellow Submarine or a storage tank. As whatever it was got closer, the view got weirder:
Huh. Who’d’a thunk it?
A stiff crosswind pushed them all over the lane:
I hope they arrived at their destination with the shiny side up and the rubber side down.
Mary clicked the camera for these.
There’s nothing like a little unexpected video overlay action to spice up a high-production-value image:
Spotted overhead at the RIT Commencement, about which more later…
Mary found the north end of a southbound chipmunk just outside the garden gate, at the foot of the utility pole that often serves as a hawk perch:
Shortly thereafter, she found piles of gibbage atop the retaining wall by the basement door:
It looks too loose for an owl pellet, but hawks also blurp up the indigestible bits. We have definitely have a pair of Cooper’s Hawks nesting in the area again; most likely, this is what’s left of the south end of that chipmunk.
The next morning, we had a feeding frenzy out there:
I’m not sure if the snail over on the right is a participant or a bystander. It’s certainly outclassed by the slugs, which are basically soft-shell snails.
As dBm points out, nothing goes to waste in Nature:
After the crowd left and the remains dried out a bit, one chunk had a tuft of brown-tipped fur with gray roots that definitely looks like it came from a chipmunk.
Good work, hawks: go, go, go!
Looks like I’m getting the stinkeye:
The extensive garden armor remains effective, although we know groundhogs can run straight up a chain-link fence when given sufficient motivation. They generally give up after encountering the galvanized chickenwire around the buried concrete blocks; the garden is just to the left of the picture.
The front-yard groundhog suffered a fatal automobile accident shortly after it finished excavating its burrow against the front foundation. This critter may have moved into the abandoned summer home near the garage at the back of the house.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 