• Big Brother is watching (and perhaps that is a good thing)

    03/19/2020 at 14:47 • 0 comments

    Location history.  If you have Google maps, your location history is being recorded.

    It is sitting up there in the cloud, right now, going back months or even years.

    What if that could be put to use to track possible exposure to Covid?

    An known infected person could voluntarily release the relevant section of their location history (already recorded due to the above).

    From that we could go back in our own location history and see if we were possibly exposed, and take measures to prevent spreading it ourselves.

    Location history faq from Google:

    https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6258979?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

  • Superglue windshield repair?

    01/13/2020 at 08:39 • 7 comments

    I saw a post about a 'new product' for repairing a cracked windshield where the product wicked into the crack and filled it.  It looked optically transparent for the demo.

    The naysayers of the post were touting that you could use superglue to achieve the same effect.  

    Tried that...  It worked!  Mostly...

    So now begins the journey of finding a more suitable material, as close to the index of refraction of the glass as possible, and in my possession.  

    On hand so far I have....

    1. Superglue
    2. Gel coat nail polish primer (UV cure)

    I have a vacuum pump and the ability to make thingies to draw said material into the void of the crack.

    Let's do this..

  • Intermittent DC control

    01/03/2020 at 09:56 • 0 comments

    I recently needed a foot switch to control a DC load.  

    This was actually for a hot wire foam cutter I winged, and it worked great... as long as I did not let the wire heat for too long without actually cutting material.

    To mitigate the latter restriction, I added a foot switch.  By shorting across the plug on a stock intermittent AC foot switch, you then you get your switched output from the mains terminals on the cord end.

    Yes, a binder clip was sufficient for the current I needed.  :)