Daren Schwenke's pages

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

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..

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.  :)

At the beach the other day and stuff started to go flying.  Reflexes got the better of me, but I didn't shoot the sheriff.  I tried to grab for the stuff just as it was going under a fence rail.

I nicked the edge of the fence with the center two nails on my left hand.  Both nails split, and folded back.  OW.  I did catch the plastic bag I was grabbing for though.  Success?

The split nails kept catching on stuff after that, and bending more.  More OW.

So I super glue the split.  Not the fleshy bits, just the nail itself.  Super glue in the fleshy bits is bad.

That lasted for about a day, and broke again while putting on a pair of socks.  Fail...

I recalled how super glue reacts with paper fibre basically instantly curing. (it is exothermic, so be careful...)

So I super glued them both again, but this time embedded a tiny bit of paper towel over the top to bridge the crack.  

This worked so well, I'm here writing about it.  A bit of clear nail polish and the paper towel almost disappears too.

I accidentally opened a can of soda with that fingernail today and didn't scream in pain.  I'd call that a success.

URL Shortener links for hackaday.io.

• Link message boards
  • http://hac.io/m/2369 goes to  https://hackaday.io/messages/room/2369
• Link to projects
  • http://hac.io/o/399 goes to https://hackaday.io/project/399
• Link to users
  • http://hac.io/u/daren goes to https://hackaday.io/daren

For users, you need to use the username instead of the user number, which may or may not be shorter than just https://hackaday.io/hacker/2335

I realized today as I mowed the grass I was taking the same path that a slicer would take.

First I did the perimeters, outside first, then one inner perimeter.

Then I mowed the remaining area in strips.  As I had waited too long, I made another pass opposing the first.

I sliced my yard 2 walls, outer first, line infill, 2 layers.  :)

Now I need to go clean up the print with a string trimmer...

Our toilet started burping when you flushed it.  Not very pleasant. 

That's a good indicator that your vent stack is plugged up.

Rather than removing  the 10mm of adhesive securing the vent stack cap, and then messing around with a snake (ewwww), I made a tool.

It fits over the entire vent stack cap and against the adhesive, which pressurized it when I turned on the water.

Problem solved, 5 min, no mess.

Make sure the drain is open when you do this, as you are pressurizing the only inlet, or what ends up in the black tank would probably end up in the RV.

Around the holidays (pick one) random useful products show up at chain stores.

They call it decoration.  I call it wire loom.  

Various sizes, with Halloween being the best time to go look.  You can get anywhere from 20mm to 5mm then, and black.

However, Easter seems to work too if you don't mind bright colors.

Gmail strips the periods added between first and last name, and will happily deliver all your mail sent to first<insert period(s)>lastname@gmail.com to firstlastname@gmail.com

Most sites count that as seperate emails, allowing you to have multiple accounts, with the same email.

Whenever I find myself trying to reverse engineer a surface mount circuit, I invariably end up using this:

https://www.sos.sk/pdf/SMD_Catalog.pdf

That is all.

The attachments for a Dyson dc14 vacuum happen to fit a telescopic pool handle perfectly.

Now cobwebs 20 feet away are at my mercy.

Quick prop build of a foam tree stump using cardboard and foam in a can.

Ok, who planted the tree in the living room...

Patel Conservatory needed a prop tree stump for an upcoming student production.

The specifications were 2ftx2ft, a child needs to be able to move it, and someone will be sitting on it.

From cardboard to the final shape, in about an hour, time lapsed down to 5 minutes.

I speak, offering up the sum of my knowledge in working with this foam.  The sum of my knowledge consumes about 9 minutes.  :)

Another time lapse of painting it.