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?

  • Attack of the Sedum Morganianum

    So I pulled my trusty Kindle Fire out of my pocket, only to find slugs racing across the edge:

    Lambs Tail leaves atop Kindle Fire
    Lambs Tail leaves atop Kindle Fire

    Turns out those are leaves of the Sedum Morganianum, a.k.a. Lamb’s Tail, plant next to the window behind my desk:

    Sedum Morganianum - Lambs Tail
    Sedum Morganianum – Lambs Tail

    I’d been leaning in there past the plant stand to swap cables for the new portrait monitor, brushed against the plant, and knocked some leaves into my pocket. The bare sections on the right side are entirely my fault, although not entirely during this incident; the leaves seem perfectly willing to fall off during a harsh glance.

    You can find more than you probably want to know about the care & feeding of Sedum Morganianum, some of which suggests that those tendrils have reached pretty nearly their maximum length. If past experience is any guide, the heavy glazed ceramic pot will eventually overbalance and auto-trim the stems to a length suitable for replanting in a new & intact pot.

  • Business Expenses: 1985 Hardware

    My biz records from 1985 emerged from hiding on their way to the recycling bin:

    Hardware Expenses - 1985
    Hardware Expenses – 1985

    Yup, you read it right:

    • $944 for what might have been a 20 MB drive
    • $406 for a 10 MB (!) hard drive
    • $1400 for an EGA graphics board & matching display

    A few years after that, I gingerly plugged a $750 80387 math coprocessor into an 80386 system that we depreciated forever.

    Another page of that report says I dropped nearly $3500 on various chunks of software.

    The times, they definitely have changed. Nowadays, I buy throwaway off-lease Dell boxes costing less than that 10 MB hard drive and use Free Software for essentially everything I do.

    I wish I still had that HP plotter, though…

  • Scratching Their Itch

    Although the Big Search Sites no longer provide the keywords that select my posts (because they sell that data to their advertisers), a few snippets leak in from smaller operations.

    People evidently have this problem a lot:

    • if you take brewers yeast will bed bugs bite you
    • bed bug teflon tape
    • hot box bed bug
    • co2 bed bug trap
    • bed bugs in chairs
    • does denatured alcohol kill bed bugs
    • does frog tape wcatch bedbugs
    • carpet tape bed bugs
    • how to use yeast on bedbugs
    • can you trap bed bugs with hand warmer and dry ice

    But it’s not all bed bugs:

    • information on chili powder beetles
    • what bugs like chilli powder
    • get rid of chili powder beetles
    • why does arizona smell like chili powder at night

    Make you itchy just thinking about it, eh?

  • If You See Something, Say Something

    Nah, that can’t possibly be a …

    Mannequin head - 1
    Mannequin head – 1

    Tell me it’s not a really bad wig …

    Mannequin head - 2
    Mannequin head – 2

    Gently now …

    Mannequin head - 3
    Mannequin head – 3

    Whew!

    Found on Old Mill Road, just downstream of the Red Oaks Mill dam; the Mighty Wappingers Creek flows on the left.

    That’s all I have to say…

  • 3D Printed Handcuffs

    A friend who read about my chain mail armor asked about handcuffs, so I ran off one of gianteye’s Printable Handcuffs V1.0:

    3D Printed Handcuff
    3D Printed Handcuff

    Alas, that shows the difficulty of using an STL file designed for a different printer, as the interlocking parts didn’t even come close to fitting and required major abrasive adjustment with a Dremel. One of the few successful prints reported on Thingiverse seems involve a commercial printer, so it’s not just the M2’s problem.

    I’m not sufficiently motivated to conjure an OpenSCAD model right now…

  • The Bigger the Blob, the Better the Job

    Found outside the local Kohl’s department store:

    Welded hand rail joint
    Welded hand rail joint

    In all fairness, I don’t know how you’d weld a decent joint in a situation like that, without far more prep work than seems appropriate. There’s not much metal in those tubes for proper grinding and fishmouthing.

    The handrail may not be long for this world: the bottom few inches of many posts have corroded to the vanishing point due all the salt applied to the pavement…

  • Bad Batteries Are Bad: Cold Weather Edition

    So we took an out-and-back walk across the Walkway Over the Hudson, after which I spotted this amusing sight:

    Parking Meter - empty battery box
    Parking Meter – empty battery box

    The horrible color balance comes from using a preset tuned for the M2’s new LED lights, rather than letting the camera figure things out on its own, then fighting it down after cropping.

    Anyhow, we did a bit over two miles of walking with outdoor temperature just over freezing. The camera lives in the left cargo pocket of my pants and the spare NB-5L battery in the camera case faces outward. Neither battery would power the camera at ambient temperature; evidently, being that cold reduced their output voltage below the level that the camera would accept.

    With a cold battery, the camera grunted, displayed a message about replacing the battery, and promptly shut itself off. Warming one of the batteries boosted its terminal voltage enough to take the picture, which accounts for not getting the proper color balance: I was fully occupied just getting the camera working.

    Back home and warmed up, the camera said both batteries were fully charged. They came from the BNF27 lot that produced low terminal voltages, so I’ll reserve them for warmer weather and use the BNI13 lot during the next few months.