Timmerov's Blog: July 2016

Timmerov's Blog

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

mating

we re-did the back yard last summer. put in three flower beds. so we don't have much grass any more. we ran pvc pipes to the auto-magic watering system. and we connected soaker hoses to the pipes. great plan. except one tiny detail. the connectors for the soaker hoses are metric. and the pvc pipe is archaic. i pulled the inset ring that mates the soaker hose to the connectors from the connectors. they're really close to the right size for the pvc pipe. just a wee bit small. i tried using gorilla glue. but it's not exactly water proof. so one of the flowerbeds leaked badly at the junction. sigh. the hardware store sells pvc pipe with a soaker hose inset ring thing that's too big for our soaker hose. sigh. but! i have a 3d printer. so i printed four test rings to get the diameter just right. (i really need to get a super accurate caliper tool.) then i printed two actual insert rings that mate the pvc pipe to the soaker hose. they fit great. i really like my new toy. thanks sweetie!

¶ 8:00 AM

Monday, July 18, 2016

power up

we got solar panels. woo hooty. still kinda amazing to me really. cause we use about 15 kwh a day. so our monthly bill is under $100. but apparently, the panels themselves are getting cheap. and the tax money seems to be running out. which means the solar installation companies are offering deals. the beautiful and talented alisa did all the leg work. kept calling different companies. kept getting better and better deals. peak production is about 3.2 kw. which means we'll have a small bill at the end of the year. score.

¶ 8:00 AM

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

tootholder

the thing about 3d printers... nothing can ever be easy. last weekend the upload feature on the site was non-functional. fortunately, they knew it and had posted a workaround. which actually gave better results than their normal solution. weird. anywho, i sketchup-ed a pair of pancaked boobs. the inset nipples are just the right size to hold my toothbrush and the beautiful and talented alisa's too. it's hot pink. all my prototypes are hot pink. this is the first print that needed a support structure. it just worked. the nipple is 1 mm too small. and the inset is 1 mm too big. cause with the normal mod-t slicing everything ends up 1 mm bigger than specified. i want to make some other changes. like slots on the insets so any kind of fluid can drain away instead of building up. not sure if i want to print it the new matter way. or the work-around way. probably the latter. cause i harbor dreams of printing from centos. and cutting new matter completely out of the loop. i think they're a great company. but the odds of them going bust are pretty good.

¶ 8:00 AM

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

funny reserves

okay so we've been here before. but i guess everything old is new again. sigh. okay. does the us really have more oil reserves than either saudia arabia or russia? like most questions asked on the internet, the answer is no. unless you count shale oil. the term shale oil is misleading. it sure sounds like it should count as oil, doesn't it? of course it does. if it didn't, nobody would count it. shale oil is a black rock (like coal). you dig it out of the ground with shovels (like coal). you ship it in dump trunks (like coal). you burn it in a furnace (like coal). you can turn it into gasoline using the fischer tropsch process (like coal). there are other processes with different names but are pretty much the same thing the nazis used in ww2. so... you tell me? should shale "oil" count as oil? cause if coal counts as oil then the fact that we're slightly ahead of saudi arabia and russia is irrelevant. cause china has so much more coal than everyone else put together. us bragging about having more coal than someone else has oil is kinda dumb.

¶ 8:00 AM

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

$500 button

b lost the button on his cargo pants. the beautiful and talented alisa had very specific requires for the replacement button. it had to be 19 mm wide. the holes had to be 1.2 mm wide. there had to be 4 holes. the button had to be round. and beveled. the holes had to be recessed into the top of the button. and it absolutely positively could not be hot pink. sheehs. and i thought i was an ocd perfectionist. needless to say, we didn't have one that met spec. but we do have a 3d printer. hence the not hot pink requirement. anywho, the freebie stuff on the internet had issues. like i could download the file. but there was no obvious way to know size. i'd used sketchup a long time ago. it took a while. but eventually we had a model of what we wanted. save as obj. upload to the mod-t website. download it to the printer over the usb cable. which btw, is a damn fool stupid way to do things. anywho... the first printed button had no holes. well, it did have holes. they were just tiny. really tiny. like sunlight could get through. but not much else. back to sketchup. the second print worked. yay! except it was hot pink. so unload the filament. reload the black filament. print another button. success. this is the first useful thing we've actually printed. so it gets to bear the full cost of the printer. so i'm teasing b. he's got a $500 button.

¶ 8:00 AM