Still working on the electronics for the 3d printer, my overdue thing a week, so posting another tip I’ve just discovered regarding cleaning a soldering iron tip quickly. Simply remove the tip, place it very carefully in the chuck of a cordless drill and spin it against some sandpaper. I’ve only a cheap iron so no qualms over doing this, for fancier irons you may want to think twice.
There may be good reasons for this being a bad idea and if so feel free to get in touch, until then it seems to work a treat!
Cleaning a soldering iron tip using a cordless drill and some sandpaper.
Hope this helps and that I’ve the damn electronics finished soon!
Between a minor electrical explosion at my local and a string of migraines my thing for week three is taking longer than expected so this week I’m sharing a kitchen trick that works a treat.
I love to cook but live by myself which means that sauces and things in jars often go off before I use them, the worst offenders for this was pesto and Passata. I’ve discovered that silicon ice-cube trays are brilliant for storing these in the freezer in single serve portions.
I often take cous cous based salads to work and putting a frozen cube of pesto in to the box in the morning will help keep the food chilled yet defrost by lunch. Likely it doesn’t help that much but it can’t hinder matters.
The next post should be a Thing a Week post back to the more geeky topic of 3d printing as I’m currently working on the electronics for my 3d printer. Stay tuned!
Week two of the Thing a Week challenge is a simple but effective modification to my bag, the addition of a second strap to keep my bag in place while cycling.
I’ve been looking for a decent bag for a while but stuck with this one as it’s yet to die or find one better, I think this will be a much abused item in this project and this wont be the last mod. Adding padding to the back is on the lost but I’ve not figured that one out yet.
At the start of every year there are things people embark on, more a new years hobby than resolution, like take a photo a day or go for a run each week. I hadn’t planned on joining in but found myself making a case for my tablet at the end of the first week and though, sod it, why not do this for the year? I’m also using this as a weekly excuse to use my DSLR and hopefully get more used to it, had it for a while but still useless with it if I’m honest. It’ll also spawn a weekly blog post so it’s a triple threat of productivity in the guise of a game.
The only issue with these “{X} a {Y} per {Z}” projects is that people often hear of them after the year has started which is a shame as it has a tendency to dissuade people from joining in. I’m not sure if this is an artefact of the human nature to pattern match and that being out of step with the calendar is somehow offensive but it sounds plausible. The thing with the calendar is that it’s arbitrary, invented by man and easy to tweak or ignore.
TLDR; If you like the idea of making a thing a week, taking a photo a day or any other such thing then choose your own damn calendar just do it anyway and to hell with anyone who calls you for being out of step!
Quick update regarding the printer, the frame is built and all three axes are finished. Next up is sourcing the hot-end and electronics. I’m lucky enough to have a RepRap user group nearby in the Thames Valley RepRap User Group who have a custom electronics board so I’ll be sourcing a kit from them. They also hang out every month at a bar near me and are regulars at the Reading Hackspace. Speaking of which, it’s been way too long since my last visit…
Hopefully I’ll get the rest of the parts soon and have the printer up and running before Christmas, if nothing else it’d be nice to be able to print some custom presents for people. That and the parts for a mobile robot base, something I’ve wanted to build for years. For now, an obligatory photo;
When I started this blog, way back when, I started with a series of posts regarding a desk build. The idea was to make a set of Hungarian shelves, similar to the bookcase I’d previously built, as both DVD storage and a folding desk. This plan stalled when I couldn’t find a hinge mechanism that I liked. Since then I’ve lacked a desk, a fact which meant I’d no permanent location in which to make things. Typically I’ve been coding on my sofa and using a folding table, today that changes.
Earlier this year I had my kitchen replaced and there was a few lengths of wood left over and today I decided to ditch the previous plan, buy some legs from Homebase and call it job done. It worked better than expected, I’ve not only a sturdy workbench style desk to work on now but it’s also a thing of simplistic beauty.
The legs have plates which screw to the wood and the legs then screw onto those panels, I thought ahead when spec’ing them out as it will make it easy to move if needed or take down to make more room if needed. My cluttered shelves sit behind me when seated at the desk, I’m planning clearing the space to store tools and parts. The shelf parts from the previous build will be finished off as movie storage still and I’ll cut off the section that the desk would’ve sat in so they won’t go to wasted.
After pulling my finger out, I’ve a workspace to call my own.
[Updated] “Gamification” is a term I first heard at a Microsoft internal conference a few years back when Jane McGonigal gave a talk on the topic. I’ll admit I was a little sceptical to start with but the talk she gave was very similar to the TED talk she gave not long after.
What prompted this random musing, and the recollection of that talk, was that today was a tough day at work. They happen from time to time, it’s work after all, but rather than sitting on the sofa and watching something random on TV when I got home, I fired up a game I’ve been meaning to try for a while and hit the road. That game was Zombies, Run! I chose a playlist and pressed start mission. The story unfolded while I ran, intermixed with my favourite tracks and as I ran I collected items and received radio messages from a nearby camp. I ended up running just under 2k, with a few walking breaks I’ll admit, but that is 2k more than I’d have run had I thought of this as simply running.
Now the interesting thing here is that I think of it as a game, because it is, but it has me running for the first time in a long time and the first time outside of the gym that wasn’t a race. Had I only had music and no narrative I don’t doubt I wouldn’t have run as far or fast as I did, there were times when the “radio message” said I was being surrounded and I ran despite being tired and didn’t give up. It’s spooky the effect the narrative had on my actions and the mental boost it provided to keep me going. I’ve not finished the first mission, and already I can’t wait to go for another run to finish it off!
With the proliferation of technologies that enable such games to be developed it’s an interesting time to be alive and it’s early days yet. AR (augmented reality) is still in its infancy and with developments in wearable technologies it’s only going to be easier to make these games more immersive and involving. For example, imagine a device that could monitor your metabolism and the energy you consume and expel. A health bar would be literal and if you over-eat you can see that in real-time. It would be more Xbox Life than Xbox Live;
This concept and the advancement in technologies combine have potential to have a massive impact on the way we deal with problems as a society, imagine the difference that could be made to our towns and cities if urban planning games required you to actually plant a tree, pick up little or help someone in need. I’m a sceptical optimist so the flip side of the amount of data about us that could be collected is an obvious concern but the potential remains nonetheless.
Now, excuse me while I go play LavaQuake which requires a clean home with my belongings secured away. I wouldn’t want them to hit the lava when the quake hits after all. Don’t be silly, it isn’t tidying, it’s just a game…
Today was a big day for science and for the advancement of space exploration in general, Curiosity landed on Mars.
I was up at the crack of dawn(ish) UK time to watch this online just to see the look on the faces of the guys and gals in mission control when word came through of success or failure. For the record, I was on the side of success but the skycrane manoeuver was balsy to say the least so was prepared for “the bad day” as one of the engineers put it.
The landing was only one of the many moving parts involved today and I wanted to highlight two of the others, Mars Odyessy Orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The former has been in orbit since 2001 and was recently saved by the activation of a spare part that had sat idle since launch and is acting as a relay for the rovers on the planet, the latter launched in 2005 and has been taking some stunning hires photos of the planet since.
Today all three missions came together beautifully; Curiosity landed without a hitch, moments after landing Odyssey was in position to relay photos and was relaying telemetry in the descent phase but most impressively is this photo from MRO;
All three of these missions had to align perfectly to achieve what NASA achieved today and this photo is by far the most impressive to me. Taking a photo of an object falling at around 200mph, from an vehicle that itself is orbiting at a hell of a rate of knots! I tried tracking down the orbital velocity but failed, if anyone knows please mention it in the comments.
The three vehicles came together in an epic event, perfectly timed, and the results are stunning. With day one on the planet coming to a close though Curiosity has a big act to follow, that of Spirit and Opportunity, with Opportunity currently on day 3116 of its 90 day mission and still returning stunning images.
There are plenty out there that don’t understand the fascination with such endeavours, I suspect few of them read this blog, but think of days like today as Science and Engineering winning a gold medal for the home team and you’ll not be far off the mark.
There is nothing quite like the feeling you get when a long running project splutters to life for the first time. Be it an engine firing, a piece of software running bug free for the first time or even the simple pleasure of a set of shelves in place, it’s a wonderful feeling that I really wish non-makers could feel more often.
This random post was inspired by the story of the efforts of an epic few who have been working for decades to restore the original footage from early Moon surveys and one of the first photos that they recovered;
Hard work, well rewarded. LOIRP are considering a kickstarter to raise cash to recover the rest, a project that’s worthy of funding.
