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
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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).

Getting back into the soldering saddle (Indium SAC305 vs. Kester K100LD with and without extra flux)

  • April 22, 2024
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Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering Testing The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
One of a few snapshots I took of the same soldered pins, in between twiddling the focus height adjustment on a microscope. In this first of three images, the uppermost bits of the pins are the most in-focus features. This and the next two photos are taken of a small region on the prototype board […]

Requiem for a pair of shit-kickers:
Nike Air Max Deluxe Pure Platinum [Autumn 2018]
Product SKU: AV2589-100

  • April 14, 2024
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HerpDerp In the Track of the Bookworm The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Much like Time for the Stars‘s Pat Bartlett (the Bartlett who stayed on Earth), one of two identical pairs of Nike Air Max Deluxe Pure Platinums (product SKU: AV2589-100), purchased with some difficulty back in the Fall of 2018, recently arrived at the end of its useful lifetime and has exited our household.

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 […]

MACROPLASTICS ATTACK!

  • March 23, 2024
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Grubbin' The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Yesterday, while picking up some necessities (coffee beans) in a local supermarket, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to pick up some overpriced ground beef and some other items to soup up the regular tomato-based sauce for the leftovers from the Italian sausage I’d cooked the night before. Delicious beef, sporadically available as an increasingly infrequent […]

The mystery of the rusty ceramic knife (SOLVED), or destructive partial disassembly of a Kyocera ceramic santoku knife

  • March 12, 2024
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Mucking About With Things Teardowns The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
Last time, I mentioned that our older ceramic knives’ plastic handles had developed cracks and propounded my hypothesis that the cracking was a consequence of the blade material and the handle material having different coefficients of linear thermal expansion and my having, in the past, run them through our dishwasher periodically.

Dishwasher-safeness claims are often fibs: Free Advice #001

  • March 11, 2024
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Free Advice Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Remember… free advice is worth every cent you’ve paid for it. Rule of thumb: If it’s not all-metal (e.g. a plain stainless steel saucepan) or all-ceramic (e.g. an unadorned coffee mug) or a solid lump of plastic like a one-piece, you perhaps ought to hand-wash it. Dishwasher detergents are less sudsy but significantly more chemically […]

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 […]