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.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

  • Ubuntu 10.04LTS vs Foxconn D510 NIC: FAIL

    For some unknown reason, one of the very rare updates to the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS infrastructure (for LinuxCNC 2.5.3 on my Foxconn D510 box, driving the Sherline mill) stopped supporting the system board’s built-in NIC: networking stopped working. The only symptom was that the NIC didn’t respond and all the usual tricks were unproductive.

    After some fruitless searching, I took the easy way out:

    NIC added to Foxconn D510 PC
    NIC added to Foxconn D510 PC

    That’s the backside of an ancient NIC using the classic Tulip driver. It used to have a full-size bracket, which I chopped off, bent, and filed to suit, much as with that one in the D525.

    Fired it up, the kernel automagically picked the proper driver, and networking Just Worked again.

    There. Fixed that…

  • MHV LUG Lightning Talk: Intro to NSA Hardware Implants

    Meme - Nixon - I see what you did there - 5x38k
    Meme – Nixon – I see what you did there – 5x38k

    I did five minutes of standup comedy at yesterday’s MHV Lug meeting, pointing out some of the more interesting ways to compromise a PC when you have an infinite budget for development and consumables.

    You don’t get my patter with the PDF (unless you had access to the room’s bugging hardware), but the links may come in handy in the unlikely event you haven’t been following the story closely.

    If you have a security clearance or are in line for one, you probably shouldn’t click on the link, because it contains copies of pages from the leaked NSA catalog:

    I See What You Did There – NSA Hardware Guide

  • Emergency Eye Wash Station: Watch Out!

    Spotted this in a greenhouse:

    Cluttered emergency eye wash station
    Cluttered emergency eye wash station

    Just like fire extinguishers and bike helmets, you never know when you’ll need to use this thing in a hurry… then it’s too late to clean out all the crap that accumulates on any flat (or concave) spot.

    Not that I’m completely innocent, of course.

    The DSC-H5 had been outdoors for a few hours, hiking with us at 25 °F, so the lens fogged instantly when we walked through the greenhouse door.

  • Why Proper Packaging Is A Good Thing

    When I ordered this carton of paper, I specified “pick up at store” because I knew this would happen:

    Ruptured paper carton
    Ruptured paper carton

    A carton weighs so much that everybody, myself included, grabs it by the straps and slings it around. Unlike them, I put it down gently, because it’s my paper… but now it’s too late.

    Inside the carton, the impact shattered the paper wrapper on every one of the ten reams:

    Split paper reams
    Split paper reams

    In the last carton I bought (admittedly, quite some time ago), Staples used plastic wrappers that gave each ream a bit more protection against abuse and the elements, but that’s been cheapnified out of existence.

    I also ordered a ream of fancy heavyweight paper that pushed the order over the “Free Shipping!” threshold; I missed the fact that they auto-checked “Free Delivery!” for the whole order. Of course, that ream shipped separately and it’s now delayed by a week or two…

    I could take it back, but the paper from that bottom-corner ream seems to be no more than somewhat bent, so I’ll live with it.

  • Quilt Show

    Ed - DHQS XVI - Volunteer Badge
    Ed – DHQS XVI – Volunteer Badge

    Mary volunteered me as a “white glove” helper: we walked the show floor for a few hours wearing cute aprons and white knit gloves.

    Rule Zero: nobody touches the quilts. When people wanted to see the back side, we did all the handling. This worked out quite well; pretty nearly everybody understood what was going on, although we all agreed that fine quilts exhibit a magnetic attraction to fingertips.

    Pro tip I: when the sign at the entrance says NO DRINKS, that means your coffee isn’t allowed in the exhibit area. You may be a special person, but you’re not that special. We’re not picking on you.

    Pro tip II: when you bring your brat to a quilt show and let the kid dive under frames holding quilts representing thousands of hours of painstaking work, don’t act surprised when I haul him out by the feet, reprimand him, give him back to you, and expect you to get your act together.

    I obviously had the wrong chromosome loadout for the mission.

    Mary’s Butterfly Flower quilt nailed First Place in the Appliqué Wall Quilt division!

  • LED Bulb Lifespan vs. Warranty

    I picked up a $35 LED bulb that’s allegedly equivalent to a 75 W incandescent, replacing a 100 W equivalent compact fluorescent bulb that an X10 relay switch couldn’t turn off cleanly, for a torchiere floor lamp. ‘Nuff said about early CFL failures.

    It has both upward and downward facing LED chips that light up the diffuser and ceiling in equal measure. Both strings are visible from the side due to the heavy molded plastic lens around the chips:

    LED Bulb
    LED Bulb

    Some interesting bits from the package:

    Home Depot LED Bulb Warranty
    Home Depot LED Bulb Warranty

    A 22.8 year lifespan at three hours per day works out to 24.983×103 hours. I wish I could have heard the arguments about whether they could claim a 23 year lifespan…

    At the same duty cycle, the 5 year warranty covers 5.479×103 hours. Huh.

    The URL at the bottom leads to some general info, but nothing you didn’t know already.

    It works well enough, but at $35 it’s really a capital investment that I suspect will never actually pay for itself…

  • Plastic Wrap Plastic Cutter Blade: FAIL

    OK, somebody decided that the classic metal blade used on all plastic wrap boxes since the dawn of time cost too much, so they decreed that it be replaced with a plastic blade that costs essentially nothing:

    Walmart plastic wrap - plastic cutter
    Walmart plastic wrap – plastic cutter

    Unfortunately, a thin plastic blade also bends easily and, after a few uses, cracks along the midline. After that, it simply doesn’t work; there’s no way to actually tear the plastic off the roll.

    It turns out that a common hacksaw blade is exactly the right length and, oriented with the teeth pointing to the left, will rip through plastic wrap like, uh, a hacksaw through plastic:

    Walmart plastic wrap - real cutter
    Walmart plastic wrap – real cutter

    That this hack should not be necessary goes without saying…

    There’s a layer of double-stick foam tape between the box and blade. It’s probably removable, but I was in a hurry.