Category: Hobbies
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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…
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Amiibo Coasters
We have a Nintendo household, and over the years have accumulated a small collection of the company’s amiibo figurines. If you’re not familiar with them, these are sculpted miniature figures of game characters from various Nintendo franchises, each with a little NFC chip in the base. By holding the figure over the right spot on…