Weedwacker Steam Engine

A few years ago I took apart a weedwacker (homelite?) and wanted to turn it into some functional art. I came across an article where someone built a mechanical steam engine using a checkvalve and home-made push rod.

I revisited this topic a couple days ago via a google search, and found a computer-controlled steam engine which was way better. I would like to spend some more time with the google search results, but I think this nutsvolts article is gold and just beyond my level so I can learn something. Though to be honest, I still think there’s value in the pure mechanical approach.

The only reason I wouldn’t want to do the mechancial version is because you can also build your own engines mechanically, rather than converting a weedwacker. I’d much rather spend my time following along with this guy’s youtube channel then do a half-assed conversion.

That first article suggests using a pressure cooker to generate steam. The latter article one-ups the former again by suggesting the use of a mono-tube steam boiler. I haven’t read up on DIY approaches, but I know you can buy these, and something like this already exists in a $15 coffee maker, though it makes steam much more slowly and doesn’t really build up high pressure.

Why would I build something like this? Like I said, functional art :)

https://github.com/alanhorizon/hugo-temp/actions/new https://github.com/marketplace/category/continuous-integration https://githubuniverse.com/?utm_source=github.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=universe_banner_dashboard_almost

Data Viz

While looking into Sankey diagrams the other day, I discovered ObservableHQ. There was a review of it by a data scientist who worked on a 1-year long data project with a peer, project twitter feed here. Worth looking into.

I can’t appreciate the excessive artsy concepts, but admire the rigor. Would love to explore SVG for the custom visualizations, and explore datasets generate with some machine learning, rather than just surveys and movie databases.

For example, instead of using movie ratings to draw flowers, what if we ran object recognition algorithms on those movies, and visualized which movies displayed which objects. Then you can aspire to categorize movies beyond objects seen. For example, can I ask for all movies that a strong female lead, or movies that feature good food, or movies that are “emotional?” Probably beyond my abilities. Flowers it is.

Shopping

Got an ad for this while browsing Slant, Lustre. Haven’t decided if I should use stuff like this.

Being a paranoid procrastinating perfectionist, I don’t want to use tools like this because I don’t want tracking of my purchasing habits. But in reality, Amazon is already doing so.

Even so, I would prefer to fully get set up with a shopping VM before I install extensions like this that could very well be junk.

Mac Window Management

I used to use a window manager that allowed me to switch to different windows with the window key and a letter. I think that it was Slate, but that is no longer actively developed, and the download link has been commandeered by some sketchy domain. This is a comparison list of window managers available for mac that I’d like to look into. I would prefer something free, or at least something with a trial. I like to use my Mac as stock as possible and am uncomfortable installing poorly written third-party apps.

Alternatively, I can use a better task switcher such as Contexts. As long as the shortcut for hitting it is as fast as Cmd-Space, and a single key, then it might work. Oftentimes, I would rather Cmd-Tab a few times, then have to remember to type a specific shortcut.

Vim on the Browser

Don’t get me started on Vim. I am ashamed I never put in the time to get really good at Vim. I seem to have to try to re-learn it every year or so.

Once that happens though, you can browser the web with keyboard only using Vimium.

Solar Power

A few months ago, I was seriously looking into solar power, because the tax incentives are decreasing with every year. In 2022, there will be no residential incentives. Due to circumstances I don’t have control over, I know longer plan to take advantage of those incentives this year, however I did learn a lot about installing independently.

This is a link to a type of mounting option for those with tile roofs. There are a few brands listed, but they all accomplish the same thing.

Here’s another article on the same options.

During my research, if I assumed that me and a family member did all the work ourselves, we could build our own system (assuming $0 labor) for about $15,000. The approach I had was to go with microinverters first, to keep things simple and rapidly expandable, but that I would buy the large battery backup system in advance to maximize the expenses that could be covered under the tax code for 2020 (2019 would have been better, as 2020 is already taking a 4% loss on incentives). I was not going to buy batteries yet, because that is a huge expense, and I was willing to forgo the incentives in order to make sure I actually wanted batteries in the system after using the panels for a few years. I learned all of this on Wholesale Solar’s website, which actually recently renamed itself to Unbound Solar.

Camping

I’ve been meaning to go camping. I miss being outdoors and have fond-ish memories of backpacking a few years ago. Late this past summer, I spent a night camping in my backyard, but it was somewhat lonely.

Here’s the website to book california campsites. It appears that some campsites are open even during the pandemic, though the weather has been getting awfully colder, and one could argue gathering around a campfire is not socially-distant enough.

Still, I think I will book a campsite, maybe after I register for a gun for protection, and head out on my own before inviting my friends. I don’t have much experience planning these kinds of things.

Render

A little more on the company responsible for Render, the service I’m planning to use to temporarily host my Hugo site. These guys are a modern take on Heroku, claiming to be more flexible because they use K8s, and more cloud-agnostic. They also claim to have a clean UI/UX, and are hiring for a key UX position.

I stalked their team and found a cool article on how to stay cloud agnostic by choosing open-source technologies. And any team that has emacs in their dotfiles is a good team in my book. I am likely not qualified for their UX engineer position, as I’ve always been in limbo in terms of what to specialize in. Though it might be fun to go through their interview process just to remind myself how much I don’t know.

I still have yet to deploy Hugo on Render, still putting that off ‘til this becomes a bit more routine.

Oil Lamps

I bought a bunch of oil lamps a few months ago, and found an old blog post that has links to posters of coleman mantle sizes. I needed this because I needed to buy a mantle for a really old Sears lantern that I wanted to start using again.

I’m in the market for a Coleman kerosene lantern, but I already have 4 lanterns. I feel if I buy the 5th lantern, then people can call me a hoarder and not be wrong….

Radio Kits

I’ve been shopping for radio kits, kits to build your own radio. They come in classic forms where you build the entire radio using transistors, and modern forms where some or all of the transistors are replaced with ICs. I of course would prefer transistors, though I think there are some kits that let you do both, i.e. you can build with transistors first, and then solder a secondary board to switch over to IC’s instead (might be wrong on the details, but you get the idea).

Jameco also offers a product to build your own 8 bit computer. I believe it’s a book and kit. I’m really excited about that one, and look forward to buying and following sometime in 2021. That link is just part 1….

Jameco has some nice workshops, including this workshop to create a color organ. I’d never heard of a color organ before and maybe neither did you.

Radioshack Electronics Labs

Just another google search for radio shack electronics labs that I did not have growing up. I recently purchased one (28-259), technically branded “Science Fair.” I’ve only gone through the first exercise. There are 130 total, and one of the main ones is, you guessed it, a radio.

If I had this growing up, I would have actually been successful in college, rather than continuously depressed and lacking.

Here’s a link comparing a few of them.

Heathkit

I believe while reading that medium article linked above, I came across the Heathkit’s. These are discontinued, but the idea was that you would build a working computer that you could use. Here’s a quick link I never fully read that talks about alternatives. Here’s an Ebay Search that showed up blank today, but might have stuff whenever you click on it.

Here are a few other oldschool books/guides that were recommended while reading that I want to buy before they all disappear (all ebay links since they are obviously no longer in print):

At this rate, I’ll be poor by the end of the pandemic for buying things that don’t immediately make me any money.

The End

Phew, I think that’s it for the day.