Category: Hobbies
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Exchanging Postcards with Random Strangers
In typical internet fashion, a recent online errand to buy stamps sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole. I was on the US Postal Service website to order more international stamps, and at the top of the stamp page there was this colorful product. Maxicards? Postcrossing? What’s this all about? A few minutes later, I…
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An Amazon Diet
A couple of months ago, I saw the news about a group called the People’s Union organizing a one-week boycott of Amazon, and while I supported the intent, I was pessimistic about the approach. These kinds of easy, short-term actions against immense, entrenched interests never accomplish much. To make a difference, a whole lot of…
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Proof That I Can Bake
Being both an environmentalist and a cheapskate, I like to keep the thermostat set a bit cool in the winter and warm in the summer. That’s great for reducing our household energy use, but it’s not so great when I want to bake bread in the winter; yeast prefers a temperature about ten degrees Fahrenheit…
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Printing Minifigures the Wrong Way
As I said in the previous post, I’ve finally jumped down the 3D printing rabbit hole, and it’s turning out to be both useful and fun. It’s also a gateway drug to other nerdy projects. While tuning the settings, I got interested in figuring out how high I could crank the printer’s resolution. After some…
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I Can Now Summon Objects into Existence
It won’t surprise readers of this blog to learn that, to the extent that I have friends at all, they’re a nerdy bunch. As a result, I’ve become accustomed to hearing them talk about 3D printing. After years of waiting for the technology to mature, I’ve now bought myself one of these magical object-summoning boxes…
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Winlink and VARA on Linux: Surprisingly Straightforward
For years, I’ve been hearing about Winlink, an amateur radio system for sending email over shortwave frequencies. It’s become a standard tool for ham radio emergency communications, as it enables a properly equipped station to connect an emergency shelter, command post, or staging area to email even if the internet is completely wiped out in…
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Welcome to the FPLV Step-Down Facility
A couple of years ago, my daughter was looking for local volunteer opportunities when she hit on the idea of helping at our local animal shelter. We have a history with the place, having adopted a few cats there, and it sounded like a great idea. So great, in fact, that I suggested she and…
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A Saturday Morning Fox Hunt
One Friday night in early December, Larry Krainson, W1AST, forwarded an email to the WMAFoxHunters email reflector, announcing that a hidden amateur radio transmitter, or “fox box,” was now active somewhere in the area, waiting for people to find it. The game was afoot. Having put together a tape-measure beam antenna and offset attenuator for…
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Building a Custom Keyboard for my AlphaSmart
Continuing my AlphaSmart keyboard infatuation, I decided to fix the one major drawback of the AlphaSmart 3000: the keyboard. While the stock keyboard is usable, it’s not very pleasant, especially if, like me, you’ve been spoiled by using a custom-built mechanical keyboard on a daily basis. In typical internet fashion, others have already gone down…
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Restoring My Apple IIc
Sorting through boxes of old technology my dad had cleared out of his basement, I find a half-remembered piece of my childhood. After hauling the grimy components out, arranging them on my workbench, and hooking up the cables, I flip the switch. There’s a beep, then the chugging of an ancient disk drive, and a…