“A” Watches

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A few things have been watched to start 2019 and they all happened to begin with the letter A.

Anon

Although I’ve noticed this movie several times while browsing through Netflix, I always skipped over it. After finally watching the trailer, it caught my attention. Anon really gets you thinking about future upgrades to the human body and how security and privacy could change some day.

Aquaman

Another solid one from the DC universe. Almost on Wonder Woman‘s level for me, but not quite. A lot better than the rest of the films.

Altered Carbon

Anyone and everyone seemed to rave about this series when it was released but I held off. Actually I’ve been trying not to start any new series until I catch up on all of the others I want to start. Absolutely loved it and watched all 10 episodes over the weekend, which rarely happens. Action was a big part of the show, which probably is my favorite new show of the last few years. Advances in tech really gets you thinking about the future of the human race with this one as well.

After making it this far, did you notice the first letter of every sentence?

Microwave Upgrade

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I was given a “newer” microwave and installed it yesterday. Here’s the before and after…

When I took the old black one out the original receipt (complete with the buyer’s full credit card number!) was still attached to the power cord. It was purchased in 1995 and still worked well, but the control panel was ready to fall off because several tabs were broken. The stainless steel of this other one matches my fridge, which is nice. The receipt was also with it and it was purchased in 1999. Not much newer, but in really good condition. It’s a nice boost from 850 to 1,000W and the inside is roomier. Each of these microwaves cost around $350 in their day and you can get a brand new one for half that now.

They obviously made these safety instructions before CrossFit was around, because I was able to install it by myself.

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I don’t have to think as much about efficient button pressing because I can start 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes, or three minutes all with a single press. It also has a button for adding an extra 30 seconds at a time, which is much more useful than the one minute adding on my old machine.

Of course I wasn’t just going to toss the old microwave in the trash. I took it apart and salvaged a bunch of goodies.

I got fans, motors, lights, capacitors, temperature sensors, a huge transformer, and the control panel which has a lot of useful relay circuitry.

CD Spectroscope

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The final thing sitting on my hobby desk from this summer was Quarterly (now out of business) Maker Box #10. There were several items related to the sky and space (same thing?) and a project with the materials to make a CD Spectroscope, which can be used to analyze light.

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This is way cooler than I expected. Here are some examples…

If you’d like to make your own, Exploratorium has the instructions.

2019 Calorie Counting: Week 1

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If you haven’t been following along, start with my explanation of this calorie counting experiment.

I made it through my first week!

Macros

I noticed the calorie counts in MyFitnessPal didn’t match up with 4/4/9 (cals per gram of carb/protein/fat) calculations, so I started a spreadsheet of daily macro totals and will be using my own calculated calories from now on. Turns out that there are several different methods that can be used by nutrition labels to determine calories.

The averages from my baseline were 259 grams of carbs, 99 grams of fat, and 140 grams of protein for 2,485 calories. During my first week I averaged 212g C, 83g F, and 196g P for 2,379 cals. My goals were 220g C, 70g F, and 200g P for 2,310 cals. I’m really pleased with the shift I was able to make. It could have been even better, but I faced some challenges right off the bat.

Many of the meals I had left from last week’s Factor 75 delivery were very high in fat and eating two of them was already putting me at or over my goal for the highest calorie macro. To make up for it, I decided to cut back on carbs and still try to get as close as I could with protein. It was too late to change my food delivery for this week, so I’m having a similar issue, though not quite as bad because I’m able to plan it out right away.

My housekeeper brought me a bunch of food, so I have no idea what the actual macro content was for 4 of my meals. I simply estimated based on items I found in the MFP database. My actual intake for the week could be very different (either high or low) from what I estimated.

On the first day I was realizing how much the volume of food is when you replace fat calories with proteins and carbs.

My usual lunch would be the Factor 75 meal without the sweet potatoes and cottage cheese. I powered through even though I’d already eaten a lot more in the morning than normal. After dinner I was so full I didn’t even think about snacks.

On day two I ate a late lunch right before going to a movie so I wouldn’t get popcorn and Mountain Dew. It was tempting. On day four my body seemed to already be adjusting; after eating a bit for breakfast, my stomach was rumbling at noon. A couple hours after eating some banana pudding I was given, I could feel cravings, which I hadn’t had in the previous three days. I’d been so full I hadn’t thought about treats. That’s what excessive carbs do! On day five shortly after finishing off the pasta and banana pudding I could feel the meal. Too many carbs!

I still don’t like the macro tracking, but having the Factor 75 meals makes it bearable. If I was cooking on my own and had to input recipes and serving sizes I may have quit already. I’ve been planning out everything I’ll eat the night before, which has been huge for me. I just look at the log and eat what I’m supposed to. There isn’t any stress about needing to get 50 more grams of protein at 10pm.

Water

During my baseline I averaged 101 ounces of water, but like I mentioned in the last post i was already increasing my intake. This week I averaged 110 ounces per day, for a nice bump. On days I go to the gym, the average is even higher at 115 due to getting an easy 34 ounces between my intra- and post-workout drinks.

Going in, I thought water would give me the biggest struggle, but it’s been easy. I am waking up 1-2 times a night to pee with the water increase, compared to not getting up or getting up once a night before. Hopefully my body adjusts.

Scale

My averages coming in were 199.3 pounds and 15% fat mass on the scale. Over the last three mornings I averaged 199 and 15.2%. Not much change, which could be due to those macro estimations being off, so I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. Fat percentage is hard to measure, so I don’t like to look at it too closely. I find it better to look at fat trends over longer periods of time.

Thoughts

No plans to quit yet. Due to the high fat F75 meals I still have, I expect week 2 numbers to be similar to week 1. My food delivery on Tuesday will have meals with much lower fat content, which will make everything easier to manage.

It’s too early to make any observations about how I feel, so I’ll wait another week or two.

Beyond the Whiteboard, my favorite app for tracking CrossFit workouts, added a Macros feature and it looked really good. I was going to try their free trial over the next two weeks, but I immediately noticed the database of foods can’t compare with MFP so I cancelled after entering one meal.

Continue on with the update for week 2.

All of these posts will be tagged 2019 calorie counting to make it easy to browse the posts.

Link Dump – 2019/01/10

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8x8x8 LED Cube

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My last HackerBox, #0030: Lightforms, came with an 8x8x8 LED cube kit. I started building it in May, when I assembled the PCB and made a jig for assembling the grids.

I got busy over the summer and the thought of soldering 512 LEDs didn’t excite me. After catching up on all of my other kits, it was finally time to dive back in.

I thought I took some video of assembling the board, but I must have deleted it. So I didn’t bother with any video while assembling the grids either. The repetition would have been quite boring. I thought I’d do a gallery with captions for a change.

Assembled circuit board.
Simple circuit used to test the LEDs and compare brightness.
3D printed jigs. I ended up not using the grid one because my plywood jig fit much better.
My friend Kevin printed this awesome jig, which made bending the legs much easier.
Over 500 LEDs before and after being bent. It took over 90 minutes to test and bend them all.
One 8×8 grid all soldered in the jig.
All 8 grids completed without burning a single LED. I can’t believe I didn’t swap the leads when I bent them all.
Complete! Only had to rewire the cathode connections to the board because the instructions were actually wrong.
While assembling the 8×8 grids I settled on a pretty good system, so I recorded myself doing a couple of rows to show my method.

This is definitely my longest electronics kit in terms of hours spent and it had so much repetition. Pretty cool result. Here is someone’s demo showing what can be done with the cube.

I’ll need to upgrade the firmware so I can program the board with my own animations.

Workshop Dust Collection 2.0: Modding a Harbor Freight 2 HP Dust Collector

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I’m going to warn you, this post sucks!

In 2017 I made my own cyclone dust separator with a Ridgid 16 gallon vac. It worked pretty well, but left me wanting something better. Some of the things I wanted in a new system are:

  • More power
  • Larger container
  • Stationary unit
  • Better filtration

What I needed/wanted was something around two horsepower and the clear winner in that category is the one from Harbor Freight. Nothing else even comes close to their price, especially after using a 20% or 25% coupon. In order to make it work really well it needs a lot of mods though.

I looked at some of the complete solutions available and they cost at least a grand. I spent about $540 and could have saved around $100 by going with a cheaper hose and getting creative with connectors. Here’s what I bought:

Sucked my wallet dry!

This is a common project in the woodworking community, so Google can show you to a lot of variations. This 2010 post on lumberjocks.com is almost exactly what I was going for, including the trash can Thien cyclone separator baffle.

Before I get into it, here is the what the Harbor Freight dust collector looks like when it’s assembled and not modified.

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I took a few photos during my build. First task was some knolling.

I installed the cyclone kit on the trash can cover and made a Thien baffle.

A very ugly cart was made using scrap wood. The only 2x4s I had were extremely twisted.

I wasn’t sure how the stand was going to support the weight of the motor. Does fine though. I can make it lean if I push on it, but it’s not going to fall over. Most of the time it’ll be sitting in a corner also supported by the trash can under it.

These risers combine with a makeshift wedge, propping up the trash can to mate with the motor.

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Here’s the “wedge” platform. I made a design change after the stand had already been built, otherwise it could have been much shorter.

With the trash can and motor jacked up, these layered blocks raise up the bag holder and filter.

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Two coats of black spray paint.

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Turned out great, but it takes up a lot of space!

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The above picture was featured in Stumpy Nubs video The WORST things you can do in a dusty woodshop.

How is the performance though? I hooked the hose up to my table saw and it started pulling old sawdust out of the saw body. I could actually see things swirling around in there. Huge improvement!

As usual, this project ended up being more work than I expected. I’m really happy with the end result and how well it works. Another upgrade I could make in the future would be to install a larger Rikon impeller for even more airflow.

I’ll have to create some adapters for tools with dust ports smaller than 4″, though the hose kit did come with some for use with 2.5″ ports. Now that I have a system with enough power I can build something around the miter saw.