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?

  • 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!

  • Monthly Image: Ice Crystals

    Two mornings after a heavy, wet snowfall, the meltwater atop the concrete patio puckered up into ice crystals:

    Ice crystals on patio
    Ice crystals on patio

    It seems the liquid water collects into the crystals as they freeze, leaving the concrete between the ice patches nearly dry. They seem surprisingly linear, with only a few hexagonal flourishes here and there.

    That’s almost as picturesque as the window crystals…

  • Too Many Deer: Maple Leaf Samplers

    An early snowfall brought down a big branch from a back yard maple:

    Deer nibbling downed maple branch
    Deer nibbling downed maple branch

    The split showed signs of rot from the top down, so it wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.

    Shortly after we pulled it off the driveway, three deer stopped by to see if this new thing might be edible. Deer do not normally eat maple leaves, but there’s not much left for them to eat around here.

    Searching for deer will pull up far too many posts on the subject…

  • Incremental Architecture

    The nice countertop and sinks look like obvious replacements since they built this rest area on the NYS Northway up near Saratoga. Unlike the old sinks, however the countertop needed support struts to prevent the backsplash from peeling off the wall when somebody leans on the edge and those struts required planks to make the spacing work out:

    NYS Northway Rest Room - Sink Supports
    NYS Northway Rest Room – Sink Supports

    Too bad about that strut right where the drain cleanout plug emerges from the wall. Also too bad that the elaborate welded square doesn’t rest on the wall, so it’s not really supporting anything. Triply too bad about the trim plate that used to conceal the plug; the one that didn’t fit behind the square.

    Also: why do the sink drains have such a long horizontal run between the drain tailpiece and the trap? Maybe that’s so they can retrieve rings and other valuables that go down the drain? Perhaps the other trap orientation would put the joint too far forward, where it can be dislodged by an errant knee?

    I’ve certainly created incremental monstrosities like that; look no further than the successive APRS interfaces on our bikes…