Author: doug

Working from home today. Drinking my tea from a teacup like a civilised person.

Eating a mango while awaiting a snowstorm. Ah, this modern world we live in.

Sailors take warning. Though in this case I think it was a little premature… it’s not supposed to snow until tomorrow night.

I have always had trouble with resistor color codes due to colorblindness, and now that my closest-focus point is moving outwards I have more trouble than ever. Today I used my macro lens to help.

No, an automated shade for our aquarium. If enough light hits sensors mounted on the front, a stepper motor lowers a window roll shade in front of the aquarium to keep the sun out, and thus keep algae growth down. I built this using an Arduino, the best thing to come along for electronics hobbyists in years.

Quiz for you: 5 of the teeth you see (yes, they’re mine) have some sort of dental composite applied, either to fill a gap left over after orthodondia or to fix a chip. One is brand new today. Can you guess which teeth?

I broke my favorite wooden cooking spoon a couple weeks ago. Rather than try to find a direct replacement, I figured I’d get an assortment and see what works for me.

Here are the worn parts from the now fixed KitchenAid, with the needed snap-ring pliers in the background. It is nice that at least some small appliances are still repairable in this day & age.

When I made sausages for New Years brunch, the mixer was making some alarming sounds. This here is the innards of a KitchenAid, though I can’t get the broken part out because I need a tool (snap ring pliers) to do so.

I vacuumed the Gandalf fur out of our kickspace heater today. You can clearly see how much the cherry wood of the toekick has darkened in the light, as compared to the section behind the heater’s metal grate.