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?

  • Delicate Tire Tracks in the Snow

    Seeing this early one wintry morning made me wonder if somebody had ridden away on our bikes in the dead of night:

    Bike Tracks on Snowy Driveway - overview
    Bike Tracks on Snowy Driveway – overview

    A closer look, as seen from the garage door:

    Bike Tracks on Snowy Driveway - detail
    Bike Tracks on Snowy Driveway – detail

    We’d gone for a ride two days earlier and, apparently, our tires deposited enough salt dust (?) on the driveway as we rolled them out of the garage to melt the light snowfall. I’m not sure I can believe that, as those same tires left no trace of our return from that same trip, when I’d expect them to carry more dust.

    If it’s a thermal effect, it was produced by one brief contact with tires kept in an unheated garage and rolled over an asphalt driveway, after exposure to ambient conditions for two days.

    Truly a puzzlement…

  • The Windows Update That Replaces the Update That Prevented Further Updates

    Category killer in the “You can’t make this stuff up” category:

    Update to prevent update prevention error
    Update to prevent update prevention error

    I vaguely recall similar errors in Ubuntu’s updater and I suppose everybody gets it wrong occasionally.

  • Sony 64 GB MicroSDXC Card: Speed Reduction Thereof

    So one of my Genuine Sony 64 GB MicroSDXC cards stopped working in my Genuine Sony HDR-AS30V action camera, failing to record video after starting normally.

    For example:

    The RCVER status display doesn’t appear anywhere in the manual, but also occurs when the camera must rebuild its metadata indexes. Or something like that. Anyhow, it’s obviously unhappy about what just happened in the course of recording.

    After several weeks of having Sony ignore my emailed requests (no “email agent” never contacted me after the initial “we’re on it” autoreplies) and after several days of being blown off by their phone menu (800-222-7669 and 800-282-2848 lead to the same tree, after which 5 – 1 – 6 disconnects after one ringy dingy), I got another number by picking a reasonable (to me) option and bulldozing the pleasant voice off-script: 877-440-3453. It turns out that if you’re at the Digital Camera node in the Sony tech support tree, the helpful agent cannot find the model number of the SR-64UY MicroSDXC card in their database, even though I’m looking at the Sony Support web page describing it.

    Anyhow, 877-440-3453 (or the “direct” 956-795-4660) produces a pleasant voice that directs me to their Media Services center in Texas and, after clicking on the Ordering Information menu item (isn’t that obvious?), produces a PDF that one fills in and sends with the failed media for their perusal.

    Being that type of guy, I sent in a somewhat more extensive description than would fit in the tiny space on the form:

    The problem with this SR-64UY MicroSDXC card (serial N73WAXOP) is that it cannot record video at the highest resolution produced by my SONY HDR-AS30V action camera: 1920x1080p @ 60 fps.

    The formatted data capacity seems unchanged at 59 GB, so the problem is not a loss of capacity.

    The camera starts recording and will continue for a few seconds or a few minutes, at which point it stops recording, flashes WAIT, then RCVER (“recover”), then returns to its idle mode. The recorded video is correct up to the failure.

    I have reformatted the card in the camera, which does not correct the problem.

    An identical SR-64UY MicroSDXC card (serial N73WA9JM), bought shortly afterward and not used, continues to operate correctly, so the problem isn’t the fault of the camera.

    The failing card (XOP) has recorded less than 100 sessions since August, while the working card (9JM) has been sitting, unused, on my desk. Recording sessions generally run 45 to 90 minutes and the AS30V produces a 4 GB every 22 minutes, so each session involves 2 to 6 large video files, plus the same number of thumbnails. I transfer the files to a PC and delete them from the card after each session. The card has therefore recorded only 1000 GB of video before failing.

    The XOP card can record video at 1920×1080 @ 30 fps and all lower resolutions. The camera requires a Class 4 speed, which means that the SR-64UY card no longer meets its Class 10 / U 1 speed rating.

    Please replace this card with one that meets its speed rating.

    Thank you…

    The replacement card just arrived, so a speed reduction is a warranty failure.

    I’ll test this one by plugging it into the high-amperage Micro-USB charger for the Kindle, aiming it at a clock, and letting it run until it’s either filled the card with excruciatingly boring high-data-rate video or crashed & burned in the attempt.

  • Always Remove Your Data Before Disposing of Your Hardware

    Surely you’ve seen the reports on the plumber who sold his Ford F-250 pickup, only to have it reappear on the Syrian front lines, recycled into an anti-aircraft gun platform:

    Mark-1 Truck Cannon in Syria
    Mark-1 Truck Cannon in Syria

    That’s the most spectacular example I’ve seen of what happens when you leave personal data on hardware that’s no longer under your control, but imagine what would happen if your junked hard drive wound up holding, oh, say, a few gigabytes of kiddy porn, along with your old letters and spreadsheets.

    A visit from the DHS agents would look downright appealing.

    You could always scrub the platters clean:

    Scrubbed hard drive platters
    Scrubbed hard drive platters

    The gun has shrapnel shields and might actually be an anti-aircraft gun, but it’s obviously pounding ground-level targets…

  • Merry Christmas!

    May you receive as many Things as you need and have a place to put them:

    A Rack of Things
    A Rack of Things

    Merry Christmas to one and all: take the day off!

    Spotted this at the Mini Maker Faire. My Things generally live in boxes, but there’s a time for every style…

  • That’s Gotta Leave A Mark

    An unused parking behind Yet Another Abandoned Commercial Building, out on Tucker Drive in Arlington, features this tableau:

    Crunched tank truck - overview
    Crunched tank truck – overview

    A closer look:

    Crunched tank truck - detail
    Crunched tank truck – detail

    Something snagged the tank while the truck backed up and ripped that seam open, while completely missing the side marker light in the lower right that sticks out beyond the edge of the tank.

    The outer shell conceals maybe four inches of fibrous insulation around the inner tank, so it’s not like they were leaking toxic juice all over the scenery. In fact, the lettering on the rear of the tank says it once belonged to a water trucking company with an area code of 717, used for phones around the spot where I grew up in Pennsylvania. The trailer has no license plate, so it’s not going anywhere…

  • Dutchess Rail Trail: Timing Is Everything

    The Thanksgiving Snowfall didn’t amount to much, but it did bring down a bunch of branches across the area. A few days later, as we rode along the DCRT on an errand, we admired the freshly sawed fallen trees and piles of brush by the side of the trail: evidently, a DC DPW crew had just cleared the trail.

    Then we encountered this at Mile Marker 7.0:

    DCRT - fallen tree
    DCRT – fallen tree

    As nearly as we can tell, that tree fell minutes before we arrived; the trunk snapped about five feet off the ground. There were bike tire tracks on the (wet!) trail directly below the trunk, but none stopped on one side and resumed on the other, so we were the first bikes on the scene.

    We portaged the bikes, continued the mission, and called it in when we got to an information sign with the DPW contact number.

    Timing is everything!