Category Archives: probably boring

A really stupid feature set

Posted on November 14, 2016 by paulwallich

In the process of getting solar panels, we talked ourselves into a heat pump with a couple of split heating/cooling units (gotta find something for all those nice renewable kilowatts to do). But it turns out that Mitsubishi designers are … Continue reading →

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What time is it?

Posted on February 25, 2016 by paulwallich

My next kit build is an Ice Tube clock from Adafruit. Which brings back lots of memories, because one of the first kits I built and wrote about was a nixie clock from Jeff Thomas, who was pretty much the … Continue reading →

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Progress is Bad

Posted on February 1, 2016 by paulwallich

I’ve been working for a while on a wearable accelerometer/datalogger project, and I came up with a nice breadboard prototype using a spare Seeduino Stalker plus a bunch of other parts. But that’s kinda big to actually wear. Next up: … Continue reading →

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Right Hand, meet Left Hand

Posted on January 9, 2016 by paulwallich

I am trying desperately not to use the word “stupid”, especially in conjunction with intensifiers such as “incredibly”, “unbelievably” or “predictably”. My delightful spouse got me a new camera for christmas this year. It’s waterproof, shockproof and a bunch of … Continue reading →

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Blinkinlabs Rocks

Posted on December 21, 2015 by paulwallich

I’ve liked Blinkytape ever since it came out. Sure, you can hook up LED strips with an arduino or whatever easily, but sometimes having the controller built into the tape just makes things so much easier no wiring, no mounting, … Continue reading →

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Fat Marvin

Posted on November 5, 2015 by paulwallich

While I was fiddling with the acceleration settings on my Printrbot JrV2 to get less shaking and perhaps more accuracy, I discovered that reducing the acceleration below 1000 mm/sec^2 pretty reliably caused the machine to stop working  partway through a … Continue reading →

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Sometimes the old ways are best

Posted on October 22, 2015 by paulwallich

So after HP finally replaced the lemon laptop that I’d gotten this spring with a brand spanking new touchscreen laptop, I waited until I had a few completely open days to do a dual-boot install of ubuntu on it, just … Continue reading →

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You get what you pay for, yet again

Posted on September 17, 2015 by paulwallich

Dunning and Krueger strike again. I thought I knew the retail PC industry well enough, just because I’ve chatted with so many of the people who invented it. But times have changed. This spring I bought a refurb windows laptop … Continue reading →

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I don’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed

Posted on May 22, 2015 by paulwallich

I got a refurbished  HP laptop off a discount site a couple months ago, so that I could have a machine for doing hacker/maker stuff away from home (we have a macbook, but it’s flakey with arduinos and only runs … Continue reading →

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Nasty things, adventures

Posted on March 18, 2015 by paulwallich

When my freshman-year college roommate was in medical school, he told me that surgeons were trained to say “There!” instead of “Oops” when they made a mistake like cutting the wrong organ, so as not to panic everyone around them. … Continue reading →

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