Pink beams of light, at sunrise

  • July 7, 2024
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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
At approximately 5:38AM, dawn had taken the form of three wide pinkish beams of light. A photograph is worth a thousand words, but I’m not an especially skilled photographer and my attempts at capturing a sunrise or sunset, as it appears to my eyes, always seem to go awry and end up inadequate at best […]

Adding duration info to video filenames using Mediainfo and Powershell

  • June 28, 2024
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Contrivances Mucking About With Things Powershell The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Animated GIF showing Windows Explorer and a terminal window and the command being used and a video filename being updated with its duration. First, here’s a one-liner you can employ on Windows to add duration information to video filenames. It uses Powershell and assumes you’ve installed the command line version of MediaInfo for Windows. The […]

Tin-can time capsule

  • June 19, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Lid of the can of 2008-Olympics-themed band-aids. In the course of some tidying up, I happened upon this can of 2008-Olympics-themed Johnson & Johnson band-aids. They were manufactured in China but the labeling on the tin is Japanese. Front of the can of 2008-Olympics-themed band-aids. The can and all of the band-aids are adorned with […]

Some MTC nippers and Tsunoda pliers and their anti-counterfeiting stickers

  • June 13, 2024
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
An old tool haul from a relatively unexpected source. Left to right: MTC-3 125mm Micro Diagonal Nippers with Spring, Tsunoda 125mm RP-125SC-S Long Nose PLA-iers (Resin Jaw Pliers) w/ spring, Tsunoda 120mm MR-120 Long Nose Pliers, Tsunoda 115mm MP-115 Side Cutting Pliers, and MTC-4 115mm Micro Plastic Nippers: Flat Blade. Doing a bit of poking […]

New vs. used T130-2.0SK ATTEN soldering iron tip

  • June 8, 2024
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Bizznezz HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
New-in-tube ATTEN T130-2.0SK soldering iron tip. This is a mostly-photos followup to , which concluded with some photos taken of a lightly used T130-2.0SK ATTEN soldering iron tip, described online as a knife tip. It gets inserted into a corded handle that, in turn, plugs into an ATTEN GT-series soldering station (such as the ATTEN […]

Fingertip Microscope iMicro Q3 (late-2023 Kickstarter project from Shanghai)

  • May 30, 2024
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Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
Phone-camera-microscope’s-eye view of the surface of the wrist wrest pad glued onto a computer keyboard. Phone-camera-microscope’s-eye view of the surface of the wrist wrest pad glued onto a computer keyboard. A 2023 Kickstarter project for a high-magnification mobile-phone-camera microscope that closed to new backers last December (iMicro Q3 – A Fingertip Microscope toward the Optical […]

Treated with LILs, NILs, ZOLEs

  • May 24, 2024
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Grubbin' Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Empty bag of M&S Seedless Extra Large Oranges from Spain. Another post about oranges. Last time, . This time, we’re talking about a different cultivar, the Midknight Valencia Orange. The bag shown in the photo above originally contained four big oranges and was purchased at great cost (HK$ 65 or roughly US$ 8) from a […]

Cara Cara oranges: thinking about citrus fruit coatings
[and close-up images of their Sunkist-brand poly bag design]

  • May 20, 2024
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Grubbin' Is that the way it is? Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
Clip-on phone camera microscope view of a section of orange-skin-pattern from the design printed on the bag of Cara Cara oranges Last month, we tried a type of orange that was new to us: Cara Cara. The origin of this orange cultivar is a fascinating story and the way that citrus farming works in general […]

More conical? Or more trumpet-shaped? Result inconclusive.

  • May 10, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Post-soldering, post-cleaning pic of the protoboard and rows of pin headers used in this little test, labeled with the solder wire used for two pairs of 2×4 pin header blocks: 8 pins soldered with no added flux and then 8 pins soldered with Chip Quick CQ4LF liquid flux, done for each alloy. I’m saddled with […]

Never forget that rubber bands eventually go bad.
AND, if you need less-ephemeral, non-messy rubber bands, use silicone rubber bands (FREE ADVICE #002).

  • May 4, 2024
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Free Advice HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things RECCIES The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Fragments of deteriorated rubber bands. At upper left: bits from rubber bands that were, IIRC, bluish-green originally. Or were they purple? They’re bluish-green now. At lower-right: parts of what were once white rubber bands. Rubber bands (here taken to mean solid, non-woven elastic rings) degrade. Whether they’re made from natural rubber or synthetic rubber (e.g. […]

Testing fresh solder wire: various flavors of flux-cored K100LD and Innolot

  • May 2, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Post-soldering, pre-cleaning photo of the protoboard and rows of pin headers used in this little test. Numerous punishing soldering sessions have left this solderless breadboard stained, scorched, and cracked and it is not long for this world. Recently, I posted about picking up soldering again after a hiatus () and I’ve gotten some fresh spools […]

Odd (and oddly transient) software (mis)behavior:
Could not find file 'gifski.dll'.
ScreenToGif seemingly losing or forgetting gifski.dll

  • April 25, 2024
Categories
HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Yesterday, I encountered an odd issue where ScreenToGif seemed unable to use its own bundled or downloaded-at-install-time version of gifski (gifski.dll).