These are my go-to when making something for a party. Such a delicious combination of salty and sweet.
$10 Bathroom Floor Upgrade
Since I liked the tiles for the bathroom basement so much, I decided to do the same in my bedroom. Only $10 for a box of 20 tiles at Family Dollar. This bathroom is much smaller, but due to the confined space and more complex fitting of tiles I think it took me about as long to do.
The gray works well too because I already had a gray rug and towels. I did buy a new shower curtain to replace a white one.
Burnt Cap
My boiler was having a hard time heating the house for a week or so. After not hearing back from heating companies for several days, on Saturday I woke up to the main floor heating zones being 55° and 58°. Not cool.
It was time for troubleshooting mode. I did a lot of reading and watched a lot of YouTube videos about boiler systems. Eventually I found the problem! The circulator pump has a capacitor for running its motor. This one obviously had blown.
I was able to replace it by stealing the cap out of my spare pump. 🔥 Here is the replacement wired and working, before I put the electrical cover back on.
Simple fix. I bet it would have cost several hundred dollars if one of the heating companies had actually called me back and came to fix this. Plumbing supply web sites don’t even sell the capacitor. They want $55 for a whole new wiring terminal strip! I ordered a new cap for the spare pump on Amazon for less than $4.
After having a cold house for a week I’m even more convinced people are crazy who keep their heat down to save $50 a month instead of giving up something like a daily $3 cup of coffee. I refuse to be uncomfortable in my own house and am very happy to be enjoying 70° again.
Quarterly Maker Box #MKR08 by Adam Savage Part 1
Several weeks ago, when I posted about Brain Candy Live!, I mentioned being a fan of Adam Savage’s work. Well, I saw him post a YouTube video announcing that he’d be curating a Maker Box for Quarterly and jumped on it. Apparently I’m not getting enough from my AdaBox and HackerBoxes subscriptions, which I already have a hard time keeping up with. I do love getting surprise packages and I understand some of it is paying for an experience.
It was unclear how many boxes Adam would be involved in, but it definitely sounded like multiple. Turns out there will be two, announced in a teaser of the first box. At $99 per box, it’s a pricey subscription compared to others. What they don’t tell you is that it’s another $8 for shipping, so really $107. Bit of a surprise when my other subscriptions include shipping in the quoted price.
The first of Adam’s boxes, which is Quarterly’s Maker Box #MKR08, arrived this week. Of course I did an unboxing video. Doing these has become good practice at describing things on-the-fly.
Neat box. Very unique. I’d been thinking about buying several items in the box, so it’s nice when a surprise comes through like this. Each Quarterly Maker Box must come with a puzzle that leads you to a web page about the contents. So naturally I worked on the puzzle before diving into the projects. To go along with one of the themes of the box, the puzzle involved doing a scaled drawing. It was actually a lot of fun and I think it turned out pretty well!
I’ll publish some other posts as I work on the projects.
Link Dump – 2017/12/16
- Bitcoin could cost us our clean-energy future ⇒
This is insane and doesn’t make me want to jump on the bandwagon. I think I’ll stick to the stock market. - Paper Signals: A Voice Experiment ⇒
I need to build more simple stuff like this. Would be easy to do with a bunch of microcontrollers I already have and have them talk to Home Assistant. - Electronic Dice
Next level gaming. It’s exciting when people bring new technology to times that have been around for a long time. - Disney Illustrator Combines Star Wars And Calvin & Hobbes, And The Result Is Adorable ⇒
Brilliant and fun. - Team USA Wins 8 Medals, Sets 13 Records In Historic Weightlifting World Championships Performance ⇒
‘Merica! - Amazon Prime Video arrives on Apple TV in over 100 countries ⇒
Finally! Though I rarely use Prime Video it’s really the only reason I still have an Xbox one hooked up. - Your New Favorite Movie Theater Chain Is Offering Cheetos Popcorn At Every Location
OMG! - A Bit About Bitcoin ⇒
Bitcoin sure is in the news a lot lately. But it has no intrinsic value; it’s a speculation like gold. Rapid gains can be exciting, but it’s easy to lose your ass.If you’re going to buy it, try to limit it to an amount you are willing to completely lose, which we typically define as 10% or less of your net worth.
- White House launching redesigned website on Friday
Might be the only positive thing Trump’s administration has done in an entire year.
Avoid the “Second Shovel”
Good tips posted by the Saginaw County Road Commission on Facebook yesterday.
AdaBox006: CircuitPython
The last AdaBox of the year was delivered yesterday. I was able to avoid spoilers so I did a quick unboxing video.
I’ve been wanting to try the AdaFruit M0 boards like the Circuit Playground Express, but figured they’d be including one soon in an AdaBox. Pays to wait, especially when I have a backlog of projects. This is a really neat microcontroller with a lot to explore. It works with the MakeCode block editor, which will be fun to hack around with.
More info on the box can be found in Adafruit’s Learn guide for AdaBox006.
Hiding in Plain Site
Earlier this week I found this hanging in the boiler room.
I replaced the thermocouples on my boiler and hot water heater in the last few years. Would have saved a trip to Home Depot if I had noticed this at some point in the 10 years I’ve lived here. Price is a bit different from the $13 I paid for a thermocouple last December.
Makes me wonder what else is hiding around the house.
Sweet Potato Pie
Stocked
Made a trip to Sam’s Club to get my cleaning lady some gifts. I learned about the glass cleaner from her, which works much better than Windex.
Nick Momrik 