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.

Category: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

  • No Affordance for Pulling

    Well, I didn’t expect this:

    Unsleeved USB memory
    Unsleeved USB memory

    Turns out the only thing holding that case in place was a blob of hot-melt glue on the bottom of the PCB. Hot-melt glue doesn’t bond well to anodized aluminum, the RPi had been sitting outside on a winter day taking time-lapse bird feeder pictures, and the USB connector seemed a bit more snug than usual.

    So I slobbered more hot-melt glue on the end of the PCB, jammed the case back in place, and that was that.

    The PCB has two snap lines to accommodate shorter cases, with corresponding activity LED locations; it seems I got the long-case version.

  • Bird Box Cleanout

    The effort those little birds put into their nests never ceases to amaze me:

    Bird box cleanout - old nests
    Bird box cleanout – old nests

    Last year it was the same story. Of course, if we didn’t clean out the boxes, the birds would do it on their own, so perhaps we help them get started earlier.

  • Kosher Coke Season

    Quite by accident, I spotted a considerable number of yellow-cap standard Coca-Cola bottles during a recent grocery ride:

    Yellow Cola Cola cap - Kosher for Passover
    Yellow Cola Cola cap – Kosher for Passover

    As before, the main ingredient after fizzy water is good old sucrose, which is why it merits a yellow cap:

    Yellow Coca Cola cap - Kosher ingredients
    Yellow Coca Cola cap – Kosher ingredients

    Four bottles spread out over the next few months will be about all I can stand…

  • It’s Always Time for a Virus Scan!

    Caught this one moments before the presentation started:

    Slimcleaner - pop-up presentation overlay
    Slimcleaner – pop-up presentation overlay

    The “1-Click Scan” (doesn’t Amazon have a patent / trademark on 1-Click?) will occupy a large pop-up screen overlay featuring a host of dashboard-style data that nobody really cares about, triggered by a smaller modal dialog box that’s impossible to work around.

    Yes, that appeared on the screen projector, too. I don’t know if “Presentation Mode” should inhibit these things, but, somehow, I doubt it.

    Pardon the blurred focus… the laptop sat halfway across the room.

  • Engineering Book Costs

    Clearing off the shelves produced a book I haven’t opened in a loooong time:

    Vector Mechanics for Engineers - cover
    Vector Mechanics for Engineers – cover

    The price sticker shows that textbooks have always been expensive:

    Vector Mechanics for Engineers - price tag
    Vector Mechanics for Engineers – price tag

    The first line looks like a date and, indeed, I took “Principles of Mechanics” in Spring 1974, so that book would cost $88.08 in 2015 dollars, based on the official CPI calculator.

    It’s harder to figure college costs, but the old rule of thumb says it’s a factor of two higher than the CPI. A bit of successive approximation with a compound interest calculator suggests an annual inflation of 3.9% and 7.8% says the book would cost $403 today.

    Which, it turns out, isn’t all that much higher than what our Larval Engineer has been paying for the fatter textbooks in her engineering courses.

    Even using today’s worthless dollars, that’s still a chunk o’ change…

    Memo to Self: As the bumper sticker puts it, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

  • Bike Rack in the Easter Season

    OK, I’ll admit we weren’t on our bikes:

    Easter-theme bike rack
    Easter-theme bike rack

    The next week, however, we were, and we leaned our bikes against the wall, because:

    • Long-wheelbase recumbents don’t fit into that kind of rack anyway
    • Even if they did, they’d block the entire sidewalk

  • Monthly Image: Too Much Snow Again

    Thirteen months ago, that round table had self-enclosed:

    Snow on patio - 2014-02-14
    Snow on patio – 2014-02-14

    We don’t have a good picture of the square table, but it had that same crater open to the central hole.

    Other pictures show the topmost 14+ inches from that storm consisted of lovely, fluffy snow that cleared well, although I’d have settled for a bit less.

    It’s winter in the Northeast US. Snow happens on a regular basis. I enjoy the shapes, not the shoveling…