I love getting my phone out to find it's been having a fun pocket adventure. Wifi hotspot and torch are on. Brightness on max. Language set to Croatian.

Do you wanna improve the world a little bit using your thumbs? Get the FOSS StreetComplete app and start adding details about your part of the world.

The app prompts you for details on footpaths, bike lanes, crossings, public toilets, handrails on stairs, etc, etc. The data feeds into Open Street Map and unambiguously makes the world better for everyone.

#foss #osm

A visitor politely waiting to come back in and resume eating our pup's dinner.

#wildlife #possum #australia

Bodged some lighting into my home-made 3d printer enclosure. I had some white LED strip from my old office, so I zip-tied it to a length of wood and screwed it in there. Now I don't need to shine a torch in through the window to see how the print is going.

The only slight bummer is that when the printer is running there is a slight flicker in the lighting caused by the print bed heater PWM. It's not too bad.

If you use CAD software and care about properly owning what you make:

Do not use Onshape.

Do not use Fusion360 (or any other Autodesk product).

Using these tools binds your work to someone else's profit motives. You are a temporary guest in their house. They *will* fuck you over the moment they decide they can make more money by doing so.

#freecad and #openscad are incredible tools. Learn them and become free.

#foss

Can web developers stop fucking with scroll bars please? No website is so beautiful that it justifies losing the ability to see how far the page scrolls down. I don't give two shits about your design vision.

Very important kitchen discovery: You can use a potato peeler on a block of refrigerated cooking butter to produce thin slices of butter for toast.

This is revolutionary. You can lay the slices on the toast and they soften almost instantly. Incredible.

#kitchen #cooking #butter #innovation

I'm doing some mucking about with threads in #freecad. I had steeled myself for some hardcore learning, installation of plugins and whatnot.

Nope, just a few clicks to make a rough copy of this weird unthread for a bung on our sailboat. Good stuff. I have a few versions printing now to see which one fits best.

And no, the printed bung won't be used below the waterline. It's for securing a hatch lid.

#foss #cad

Today's fun project: Print the contents of my clipboard on a receipt printer when I type ctrl+alt+r

This will be incredibly useful.

Gold.

I'd love some advice from #pottery folk. I've switched from a brush-on glaze to dipped. It's working well, except for two problems:

#1: The glaze doesn't seem to stick to the rim of the cups very well.

#2: The glaze cracks as it cools, rendering the cups functionally useless. I assume this is because of a mis-match between the thermal coefficients of expansion, but I'm not sure. Do I just need a different clay? Or can I tweak the glaze?

Private instance, so boosts = ❤️

I saw a butcher bird on the verandah rail. I went out and stood a few meters from it and whistled my best butcher bird impression at it.

As if to show off it then began a 10-minute recital, directed at me, with no gaps for a response. It went through a huge range of butcher bird songs, interspersed with mimicry of other birds, including a kookaburra, a crow, a rainbow lorakeet and little chirpy one I couldn't place.

It then puffed itself up, did a shit on the verandah and flew off.

#birds

Today's output: A shelf for my pottery wheel to hold tools and water and stuff. All made of scrap wood from under the house. Should make tool management a bit easier. The whole thing lifts off for ease of cleaning.

#pottery #diy

I've always used kindles and I've been reasonably happy to do so, recent store/software degradation notwithstanding. The number of active readers in the household has increased, so I'm looking at buying a third e-ink book reader of some flavour.

I normally load books with #calibre, so I'm not technically wedded to kindles, though the hardware is solid.

What's everyone's favourite e-reader?

#reading #books #kindle #ereader

I made sticky date pudding for dessert. It is the best possible food.

Our family loves going out on the river or bay in our little 4.3m caper cat #sailing catamaran, designed and built in #Brisbane. We're thinking about upgrading to a slightly bigger, but still trailerable, keelboat of some flavour. Somewhere around 6m, like a farr 5/6000, kestrel 18, sun 2000, castle 650, etc.

Under 1.3 tonnes towed with a cabin to get out of the sun, and a sit-down cockpit. Any suggestions?

#sail #moretonbay

Youngest picked "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons" for books time a few days ago. We just finished it and he came back with my entire Calvin and Hobbes collection to read next. These are all very well-loved from my childhood. Revisiting them is going to be great.

Fun fact: Bill Watterson never allowed any use of his characters for any purpose other than these books. He just didn't want the hassle of suing people making car decals.

#books #calvinandhobbes #billwatterson

Remember this important comparison when reading an article about a new breakthrough in carbon capture and storage:

Check whether the price per unit of atmospheric carbon stored is better than buying some coal and putting it in a hole.

Pro tip: It never is, and will never be. CCS is a scam. Coal in a hole wins every time. Hell, it STARTS in a hole. Just leave it there! Win/win!

#climate #renewable #carbon

Edit: Typo.

I got some photos! They're amazing! The birds, not my photos.

They almost exactly blend in with the driveway. Well-adapted to their environment.

#brisbane #curlewwatch2024 #birds

Any #pottery folk have some advice on fixing the plate of my old pottery wheel? The top is heavily pitted which makes it a rough on my hands sometimes.

A few years back I cleaned it thoroughly, filled the pits with epoxy, and then sanded it smooth. This worked alright but over time chunks of epoxy have come out.

Do these have standard mounting threads? These look to be 3/4" 12 TPI. Could I just get a replacement plate?

Single person instance, so boosts for visibility = ❤️