Category: HerpDerp

The state of being mildly chuffed about carbide box-cutter blades
AND a brief characterization of the recycling and safety iconography on their packaging

  • April 7, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Yep, like it says in the title, I’m moderately chuffed (i.e. UK/Commonwealth lingo approximately corresponding to pleased or enthused) about having acquired some Stanley FATMAX tungsten carbide utility-knife aka box-cutter blades. Tungsten carbide box-cutter blades aren’t new. For all I know, you bown-bag your lunch five days a week and, Monday through Friday, you’re daintily […]

Rodent surveillance

  • April 3, 2024
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
As we were navigating through one tiny swath of this the vibrant, bustling, effervescent, etc. urban milieu yesterday, something in my peripheral vision struck me as potentially interesting. Down an alley to our right, I spotted a box bolted to the pavement, a tall mast, and a couple of cameras aimed parallel to the alleyway […]

JUST BARLING EGGZ

  • March 5, 2024
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Grubbin' HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
Today’s post: two short clips of the changing condensation patterns on the inner surface of the glass lid of a stockpot, filmed consecutively while I was hard-boiling a couple of dozen eggs at some point in the past few days. The videos are set to loop and are muted by default but the audio is […]

MDF and rubber; spiral swarf from Forstner drill bits + LDF/MDF/HDF

  • February 19, 2024
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HerpDerp Swarf + Copeaux + Scobs The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Old-ish photo today, from a small project that entailed countersinking thin, flat fastener heads in fiberboard and in thick, fabric-reinforced synthetic rubber. A couple of Forstner bits, below samples of their respective target materials, with (middle) spiral bits of swarf produced during drilling. Before drilling the through-holes for the fasteners’ shafts, I used Forstner bits […]

A’sittin’ on a rainbow: Using Buzz to transcribe speech from audio files

  • January 12, 2024
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HerpDerp Metagrobolized Mucking About With Things Personal Firsts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Have you ever listened to a long interview or podcast or a nice, long vlog and then, just a couple of days later, when you got the itch to look up something like a book or a song you heard them mention found that you just couldn’t quite remember the title or the name of […]

Viennetta, but made of minerals instead of vanilla ice cream (efflorescence?)

  • January 2, 2024
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand We'll go much more a roving
S. and I recently visited a local landmark-slash-mini-park: Blackhead Point, the site of Signal Hill Tower, a brick structure erected in 1907, subsequently enlarged, and shortly thereafter abandoned. Photo of Signal Hill Tower (in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong), taken by yours truly in December 2023. Each day at 1pm, a large copper sphere […]

Ratcheting wrenches for small fasteners (≤M4)

  • December 15, 2023
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Today’s story begins a few weeks back. While tightening up some loose kitchen cabinet and drawer handles and the screws that attach drawer sides to drawer slides, I replaced several of the handles’ countersunk Phillips-head screws with hex-head bolts and washers. Phillips-head screws that were easy to reach straight-on with a screwdriver were snugged-up and […]

Mind the Swarf and Deburr the World

  • November 25, 2023
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HerpDerp Swarf + Copeaux + Scobs The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Nearly all of my fasteners (nuts, bolts, washers, et al.) come direct from the ol’ Big Rock Candy Mountain [#], usually in heat-sealed clear plastic bags bearing adhesive-backed labels that have been run through thermal printers and have the same hand feel as thermal-printed receipts. The crisp black text on some, though not all, of […]

A busted espresso machine leaves town. A new espresso machine comes to town.

  • November 6, 2023
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Recently, after a long and gradual decline that culminated in a series of acute failures of escalating severity until finally no espresso was bring produced at all, our superannuated De’Longhi bean-to-cup espresso machine (a Magnifica ECAM 23.120 B [B for black]) gave up the ghost. Bands of condensation droplets in the new machine’s water reservoir. […]

Rebarrr and… Giant Centipedes

  • October 13, 2023
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand We'll go much more a roving
Below is a photo of some corroded rebar, exposed through spalling, on the floor of a multi-level underground car park in a residential complex here in Hong Kong. Snapshot of a section of floor in a multi-level underground parking lot. Today’s other photo is of a rusty cover for some sort of plumbing/electrical infrastructure access […]

Not *JUST* tableware… “Soft Silicone Baby Utensil Mass Production Process. Silicone Tableware Manufacturing Factory” [APoW]

  • August 27, 2023
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? RECCIES
Are you the sort of person who takes an interest in how some of the things you use are manufactured? If so, then permit me to recommend the All Process of World YouTube account. APoW gives viewers a peek into manufacturing processes of an eclectic variety of goods in Korean factories. Their choice of content […]

Double-volute-spring-havin’ wire rope cutters

  • August 18, 2023
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HerpDerp Sassafras! Horsefeathers! Fiddlesticks! The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Until I got some of the Knipex wire rope cutters shown below, I’d never seen a volute spring and didn’t know they existed. Guess I’ve led a somewhat sheltered life. The uncharacteristically brief Wikipedia article says they can frequently be found as a component of garden pruning shears and, though I have used pairs of […]