YI 4K Action Camera – Screen Replaced
The replacement came in for my shattered YI 4K Action Camera touchscreen. I was surprised it only took 10 days to get here from Shenzhen, China.
I followed this YouTube video, even though mine isn’t the newer 4K+ version of the camera. The only difference I noticed was the type of connector for the shutter.
I made one mistake, as you can see below, cracking the front cover above the lens. It won’t affect the performance, so not a big deal.
I wasn’t nearly as fast as the guy in the video, but I did it in less than an hour. Easy peasy compared to replacing the screen on an iPhone, which I will never attempt again.
Country Confession
I’ve been listening to country music again after over 20 years.
Manhunt: Unabomber
Discovery has aired 3 episodes of their original series Manhunt: Unabomber so far. I highly recommend it.
Hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Unabomber was caught. I was in high school at the time and I guess I didn’t remember any of the details because I was originally thinking of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was Timothy McVeigh in 1995. I certainly didn’t remember that it took over 16 years to catch Ted Kaczynski.
Link Dump – 2017/08/09
- Rolling home
There is no way I could move my entire home by bicycle. I wouldn’t want to try either. - See How Only Ten Companies Own All the World’s Food Brands In This Telling Infographic
So much yum. Scary to see how much control these companies have though. - 111 N.F.L. Brains. All But One Had C.T.E.
In 5-10 years will football exist as we know it? If I had kids there is no way I would let them play football. - The History and Future of Locks and Keys
Today’s common door lock was invented in 1861. - Shining Light on National Security Letters
Proud to be an Automattician! - A New Era For Arduino Begins Today
Big news after so many questions about their commitment to Open Source. - Tesla’s Model 3 Is Here, and It’s Much More Than an Electric Car
Should be less than a year until I get mine. - Outfitting the 640 Fittest on Earth
I’m always jealous of all the sweet gear the athletes get. - Apple has proven me wrong about HomeKit
I need to revisit my home automation stuff and actually get a lot more automations configured. - Lightning striking this moving car
I would shit my pants. I’ve never seen anything like this. - The fastest 100m times ever. Those caught doping struck out in red.
Has Bolt just not been caught yet or is he the exception? - Masters 60+ Athlete Saves Drowning Competitor
Once again, CrossFit athletes shine. - WordPress.com Business Now Supports Plugins and Third-Party Themes
This is really exciting for us as well as our users. Awesome work by the teams involved in this project. - Say hello to the new Swarm 5.0
For many people, creating a lifelog isn’t a social-first experience…
With over 11,000 check-ins this in definitely me.
- Disney will pull its movies from Netflix and start its own streaming services
That didn’t last long. Will Netflix lower their price back down after Disney is gone?
Canadian Skill Testing Requirement
For the first time, there was an official fantasy competition for the CrossFit Games, from Reebok. If anyone correctly picked the top 10 men, top 10 women, and top 5 teams, they could have won $1,000,000! Pretty safe bet on Reebok’s part.
While looking through the rules, this seemed odd…
Any potential winner who is a resident of Canada will be required to correctly answer, without assistance of any kind, whether mechanical or otherwise, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question administered online or offline in order to be awarded a prize.
Curiosity got me. They have a law in Canada, requiring skill testing questions for this type of thing.
RBT 1911 Pull Back
I’ve always wanted a rubberband gun, so when I saw awesome kits by Rubberband Tech at Maker Faire Detroit I had to get one. I could have a sweet gun and build it myself. The 1911 immediately got my attention because of the slide action and the functional clip. The hardwood version (I picked zebrawood) of the kit was an extra $10 to make it $30 and a big bag of extra rubberbands was $5.
The build, spread over several days, took about 7 or 8 hours, which was much longer and harder than expected. A lot of difficulties were from the instructions being short on details. They tell you to sand several pieces but don’t get into how much sanding is required (A lot and then a lot more!), especially to get the trigger mechanism working properly.
I tried to video the entire process, ending up with over 140 GB of footage! On a first pass through iMovie at 20x fast forward the video was way too long, so I exported and ran it back through at 8x more. At the end of the video is a demo at normal speed showing the gun in action.
The stain I used on the zebrawood pieces was called Espresso and the one I used on the rest of the gun was an English Chestnut. I finished it off with 2 coats of a finishing wax. As mentioned in the video, I’m not happy with the end result of the staining. I wish I had done a second coat of the espresso stain on the hardwood pieces, or gotten a little lighter stain for the rest of the gun, or even both.
Now I need to make some targets. I have some ideas involving electronics for timing and scoring.
6-in-1 Utility Pen
Hitachi had a big booth at Maker Faire Detroit and was giving out these awesome pens. I may have walked by a couple of extra times throughout the day. 😉
I’d never seen anything like these. Some Googling found several variations. Some had a full length ruler instead of the knurled grip seen here. You can get one for $8-10 on Amazon. A bulk supplier, selling a version almost identical to this, has the pens listed for than $2 if you’re ordering a bunch. The features of all of the versions were common:
- Pen
- Ruler (inches and centimeters)
- Stylus (use with a touch screen)
- Level
- Phillips screwdriver
- Flathead screwdriver
Since I got 3 of the pens, I put one in my car, one at my hobby desk, and one at my garage workbench.
Not Your Mom’s Strawberry Rhubarb
Kacilia Tru-Align Body System
When I worked a booth at the National Wellness Conference a couple of months ago, I came across Kacilia at one of the other booths. The idea of this system/technique is to lay face down on a bunch of pads, which set the spine into a neutral position, and let gravity work. I tried it out for about 15 minutes while I was there and it felt really good. The inventor did an eval on my body positions before and after, which showed significant improvement. She claims to have had people reverse their spinal issues after several months of using this for 20 minutes a day. My issues come from a compressed L5 and she was confident her method could help me.
There was no way I was going to pay $400 for a fancy mat and some pads though. I figured I could create my own version. I already had 2 foam rollers, a yoga block, and a yoga mat. I purchased a few more items:
- Face Cushion – $14.99
- Support Pillow – $16.50
- Yoga Block – $5
I bought this other stuff several weeks ago, but hadn’t used it yet. Yesterday I tweaked my back pretty bad again, so it’s time to try something new.
It may not work at all and I don’t know that I’ll use it daily, but it’s worth a shot. Having an excuse to take a 20 minute nap sounds pretty good too. Here’s a demo video of the actual system.
