I started this blog because twitter is too anonymous and facebook is too personal, and both are way too limiting in user voice.
I like to make things and I will show them to you here.
Living on a Prehistoric Beach
I’ve been doing some digging in my backyard (after calling 811 of course) and finding tons of badass fossils. I got big into fossil hunting in my preteen years, and I’m finding better ones now (in the backyard) than I ever did then!
A selection from Paleoportal:
Ordovician sedimentary rocks cover a large portion of central Tennessee, in an area called the Nashville Dome. These rocks are primarily limestones deposited in the warm, shallow sea that covered the state during this time. Fossils of brachiopods, bryozoans, and crinoids are abundant in these rocks. Other Ordovician fossils in Tennessee include conodonts, trilobites, bivalves, sponges, and unusual echinoderms such as edrioasteroids.
Did you see that? Trilobites! I’ve always wanted to find a trilobite!
I put together these tools that seem to work well and allow me to work on the smaller fossils indoors without making a mess. The bowl is for soaking fossils in vinegar (~4% acetic acid), which softens up the grit surrounding some of them, and the dental tools help to pick the grit away. The old cutting board makes for a sturdy surface when I get impatient and use the hammer.
Garden Update 1:
It’s been almost a month since I laid the brick for this 6 x 10 ft enclosure. A couple of weeks ago I tilled the soil beneath it and topped it off with 1/2 cubic yard of topsoil/compost mix from a local mulch & stone supplier for $22, much cheaper than buying by the bag.
I snaked ~30ft of hose throughout the bed and poked holes every 10 inches or so using a leather hole punch, kinked and zip tied the end to close it, and buried it just under the surface. This makes a simple irrigation system I can eventually set on a timer.
I planted 5 tomato plants and 1 pepper plant, in addition to beans, spinach, and basil seeds. The tomato plants are a variety of types, 3 heirloom and 2 hybrids. I’ll see what else I can squeeze in there once everything begins to fill in.
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Building a garden
A few days ago I picked up a load of free bricks on Craigslist, beat the excess mortar off with a hammer and railroad spike, and started laying them out in a 6-10 ft rectangle for a garden. Mortar is remarkably cheap and easy to use, as long as you mix it well enough; I managed to lay the whole thing 3 bricks high with 1 $5 bag! Now I just need to pick up ~a yard and a half of soil and I’m ready to plant…
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Vinyl cut beer labels!
For my second upcoming batch of beer -an Imperial Nut Brown, I decided to take advantage of the vinyl cutter at the local makerspace to create some labels to distinguish my beer from the various other batches in progress. (It also helps in tracking bottles, which run ~$15/12 pack if you have to buy new ones). Originally I planned to simply use them as stencils for glass etching, but they look so dang good I think I’ll see how long they can stay on. It was recommended by an experienced user of the cutter that I apply heat to make the labels more permanent, unfortunately they already contained beer, so next time I’ll try and apply labels before I bottle a batch. Future label ideas include Duff Beer and Nuka Cola.
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[Flash 10 is required to watch video]So I’ve been away for a bit… Social media overload. Still, things are being made. Here’s a directional cipher I finally lasercut today. I’d like to incorporate it into some geocaching fun, I just need to develop a path and goal, then disperse them with starter instructions!
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Laser etching on anodized aluminum: Behold the flyPod nano! …I should explain.
Part of my job is to care for flies, which have their own room, because they stink. This iPod is for that room. Furthermore, I’ve assembled a playlist for myself and other coworkers to enjoy as we wrangle maggots:
- The Beatles - Flying
- the bird and the bee - lifespan of a fly
- Built to Spill - I Would Hurt A Fly
- Cap’n Jazz - Troubled By Insects
- Depeche Mode - Fly on the Windscreen
- Foo Fighters - Learn To Fly
- Frank Sinatra - Fly Me To The Moon
- Frank Sinatra - Come Fly With Me
- Minus the Bear - Absinthe Party At The Fly Honey Warehouse
- Modest Mouse - Doin the Cockroach
- Modest Mouse - Fly Trapped In A Jar
- Offspring - Pretty Fly (for a white guy)
- Pearl Jam - Bugs
- Pearl Jam - Given To Fly
- Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
- R. Kelly - I Belive I Can Fly
- The Rolling Stones - The Spider And The Fly
- Rush - Fly By Night
- Sugar Ray - Fly
- Three Six Mafia - I Gotta Stay Fly
- Weezer -All My Friends Are Insects (Bonus Track)
*I should mention that fly room is roughly 1-2 hours of my work week, nothing to lose sleep/lunch over.
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Adafruit will soon be shipping the FLORA, an arduino board for wearable projects. What’s interesting to me is the size, which may make it ideal for pocket watch refurbishment. I think pocket watch casings are beautiful, but as timepieces they are obsolete, and many are already broken anyway. I wonder what types of functions you might squeeze into one with this board.
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Another Boxmaker powered project: by trimming the finger joints from the tops of the sides and making 2 lids (one the size of outside of finger joints, the other with none) and gluing them together, you can make a box with a snug fitting lid. I’ve been cutting and assembling them from cheap plywood with a smooth veneer of dark stain. The fun part is choosing a design to raster on the top. I use white sealant to fill the etched lines, it really makes them stand out and the excess wipes away easy.
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Used one of my boxes to make a housing for my arduino uno… Now I just need to put it to use.
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Box Maker is a useful little site that creates finger jointed box designs. Just input the dimensions and it spits out a pdf with each side jointed to interlock. Then just convert to SVG, laser cut, and glue it together! Sanding the sides of these helped to smooth out differences in the joints (our laser does not respect the dimensions 100% so they’re a little off), it also created the checkered appearance. They remind me of mario blocks, so I may laser etch a Mario style ” ? ” on the tops.
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