A blog of a variety of projects
Last year we replaced our grass in the backyard with a layer of wood chips to cut down on maintenance. This works really, really well. The wood chips don’t need to be mowed or watered. Every couple years we will have to put another half ton or so of wood…
This is a hack for the old model Fiat 500e GPS stand to convert it to a powered phone holder and charger.
Two weeks ago I started a new job. It has been going very well, but I am now required to operate in a Windows environment while I am at work. I’ve tried to only run Windows sparingly in virtual machines for about 5 years, and moving from Linux-based OSes back…
Continuing on a roll of 3D-printing projects, I have always wanted some of those cool wall-mounted speakers in our garage so that I can listen to tunes while I work in there. It’s part of the mythical DIY/home-engineer garage ambience I’m trying to cultivate. I happened to have a couple…
We are in the process of remodeling our kitchen (which will be its own story when it is done). One of the huge improvements was replacing our kitchen sink with a deep aluminum apron sink. It is very similar to a farmhouse sink, except for 2 things. First: it weighs significantly…
At this point, I’ve been fully converted to an Ikea engineering fanboy, (he said, sitting in an Ikea chair under an Ikea lamp). I don’t much like the experience of shopping at Ikea and prefer to buy used furniture supporting local thrift stores, but the Ikea design-for-manufacturing engineering is damn…
I spent some time recently looking for a simple stand for the Nintendo Switch. When I didn’t find what I wanted, I went ahead and made one. I wanted something that would meet these requirements: You can view and download my design here. Most free designs for Switch stands do…
This is one of Smith’s “Corona” portable typewriters, manufactured in 1926. At some point, it entered my grandparents’ typewriter store in San Francisco and, after they retired, it entered my grandfather’s basement collection of over 150 typewriters. After he passed away, my dad dug it out of the basement and…
This is a sweet little handheld emulator that sells on Amazon for about $30, and the developer community is significantly more responsive than the company that sells them. This week I made some changes to the keyboard input driver in a fork of the kernel. It is a really simple…
Last year I helped some friends move out of their apartment. They were going to throw out this dining table because it was badly damaged, with some burn marks and a broken leg. It’s a typical Ikea-or-something dining table. I needed a coffee table for our game room, and I…
