Also made this, just to practice knurling and parting some more. Now I have another metal object to put on my desk and fidget with :)

My first TIG welds! Yes, the plates on the left are super dirty. The person teaching me said I’d have bigger issues than contamination-related pososity on my first attempts so not to worry about it, and he was right 😂 got about a millimetre in before I dipped my tungsten into the puddle. But then didn’t do it again the rest of my practice session, so I’ll take it.

I need a lot more practice, but it’s fun and I can now look at my welds and identify what I did wrong, so next up is just a lot of hood time to improve.

To answer some questions that have already come up more than once in my day today: Yes, I am still an Adobe user. Yes, I have heard about ArtCraft. No, Adobe has not “made [me] angry enough to use something vibecoded instead”.

Just having a normal night over here sending a fax from Windows 98, like you do.

Anyone have recommendations for "iPod but with Bluetooth built in"? I use a Shanling M0 Pro when I'm skating or doing other things where a very tiny player firmly attached to me is important, and I use MiniDisc at home and sometimes when out and about, but I want something for day-to-day playing which I can carry all my music on but is not "Cloud" in any way. (To be clear, I'm looking for a complete product not a project)

I'm working up a reference guide for Franklin for our railway now that he's operational, so people other than me can do maintenance on him in the future, and so that I can start teaching others to drive him. Here's his control panel, I thought people here might be interested in how you drive one of these. They pretty much made the simplest possible engine and carburetor, moving all of the complexity onto the operator instead.

Lights and Ignition turn those circuits on and are fairly self-explanatory. Mixture/Choke controls the fuel/air ratio in the carburetor when turned (it screws the needle valve in/out), and applies the choke when pulled out. Timing controls how far before or after TDC the spark begins, Throttle controls how much fuel/air mixture can get into the cylinder, Brake pushes metal blocks against each wheel to slow/stop you (very quickly!) and Belt applies tension to the belt that runs between the pulley on the engine and the pulley on the rear axle.

To start it you set the timing to ~80% back and throttle to ~50%, relax the belt, apply the brake, pull the ignition button up to turn it on, and give it a crank. He usually starts on the first crank these days! Then you make tiny adjustments to the timing and throttle until he "sounds/feels happy". Once he's warmed up you lean out the mixture a little bit, or you'll get super smoky exhaust (since he runs on a 16:1 gas/oil blend)

To start moving you push the timing control up to about the halfway mark, increase the throttle a little, release the brake, and apply the belt slowly, letting it slip a little bit as you start gaining speed. Eventually once you're up to speed you lock the belt control into a notch, lean out the mixture half a turn or so (until he "sounds/feels happy" again), and adjust the timing and throttle to control your speed and provide extra power as needed for grades etc. Then when you want to stop, you do the opposite of all of those things to get back to a reasonable idle!

It all takes a bunch of practice to learn and get good at, it's been interesting to see how much the fuel and water consumption has gone down as the two of us who currently drive him learned to operate more efficiently. I'm excited to start teaching other people! #choochoo

My wall status display stopped outputting video in windows recently. Okay, safe mode then, that used to be “press F8 on boot”, but that doesn’t work anymore, I wonder how you get there now.

Oh. You turn the computer on, then quickly force-power-off, three times in a row so that it thinks there’s some kind of boot failure. It then runs diagnostics (which took an hour), then said diagnostics didn’t find anything. Then I could select Advanced Options, which required a reboot into a special menu that includes Safe Mode, after a 5-10 minute further diagnostics process. Except if you don’t select any option at the menu after 5 minutes, it shuts the machine back off instead. We’ve gone so far backwards with tech.

(Yes, I am familiar with Linux, please don’t suggest it. There are good reasons that I still need Windows for some things.)

Been awhile since I’ve had this out, came across it when looking for something else and figured I’d play with it a bit. Sure is very cute but very very slow, as I remember it being.

oops. As I was laying out this board I went “wow I sure picked an overly-fine pitch part for this buck regulator, weird!” but continued with layout anyways. I did not in fact choose a part with that fine a pitch.

Seems to me like this line on the graph should be at a 45deg angle. Also I'm confused what the datasheet is trying to illustrate with this one 😆

During simultaneous red warnings (the most severe here, the “you may die if you disregard this” level) for a severe thunderstorm and a tornado, in the midst of a storm that has our streets now littered with small trees and large branches, a courier came by and dropped a package off. 😬

Courier companies, I would pay extra if one of you would stop pushing your employees so hard they have to be out working in conditions like that.

Someone somehow got into the hypervisor that senCloud-CA1 runs on and cryptolockered the whole thing. It'll be a full rebuild and restore from backups, likely a couple days of downtime. Sigh. There must have been a proxmox vulnerability I wasn't aware of. Other nodes are not affected. #sencloudstatus

Tied up all the loose ends today, me and Franklin are all ready for tomorrow's railway expo I think! Did a few test runs across the yard tracks, since CN was doing major repairs on the mainline today so I couldn't get out for a longer test.

Recorded a couple of them to test a different GoPro mount, which ended up being _very_ shaky the way I had it mounted unfortunately. The video is warp-stabilized hence the "jello" look, but it's better than the original looked at least. #choochoo

Radio install fully completed, ran it for a bit just to make sure it seemed happy (it is!), replaced the ignition ground wire that had been worn through rubbing against the flywheel (and rerouted it to prevent that happening again), sealed up the exhaust leaks temporarily as best I could with some high-temp silicone (exhaust replacement is on my list for the fall), tidied up all the wiring, flushed some of the rusty water out, and refilled the fuel and water. Also made a plan with shop managers to have plenty of fuel (and oil) and cooling water on hand for the expo runs (it boils the water by design). I’m back on Friday for a couple little finishing touches and some more test running!

One week until the expo 😬 But I think we’re in very good shape. #choochoo

If you wanted to make a simple touchscreen UI for a raspberry pi application, what would you use software/library/etc.-wise? Preferably not a web browser based thing, that feels like way overkill for a few menus.

I made part of this aluminum round bar slightly smaller and much shinier!

It’s not much, but everyone starts learning lathe skills somewhere :)

Some bonus photos of Franklin getting oiled before the run, and taking a rest after we got back. #choochoo

We did a shakedown run of Franklin up to Elmira today, and he passed it with flying colours! Zero mechanical issues, the cooling system and the new alternator worked great, and I’m so happy with how he performed. Almost a year and a half of work into this, and it’s paying off! A bunch of little things to finish on Saturday, then shakedown run 2 next week. #choochoo

I’ve been quiet with #choochoo stuff for a bit, but it’s been progressing! It’s been a couple months of doing fitup on the new plywood body panels, sealing them all with epoxy, painting them, and drilling hundreds of holes and fitting all the fasteners to secure them.

The last two weekends have been tying up a bunch of loose ends. The new (stainless!) replica fuel tank arrived, which will solve our rust-blocking-the-carb issue, so that got installed, new fuel line run, and a new fuel valve that actually shuts off installed, which will make maintenance easier.

I reinstalled all the lights and the horn, ran new wiring and got all of that hooked up, so we have working marker lights, strobe, headlight, and air horn.

It hasn’t run in a few months while all this has been happening, but it fired right back up today and runs nicely! Planning to take it on a few hour shakedown run this week if I can coordinate time on the rails :) There’s still stencilling to do, the radio to install, some exhaust repairs to take care of, and a bunch of other stuff, but after a year and a half of work we’re getting close!

Hmm, the non-black one went less well, the magenta separated from the cyan a bit somehow? And the black ended up a bit blurry. More research and testing required.