This website is not masterful. It is devoted to things
I do either because they need doing, or because I enjoy doing them,
and which someone else might possibly want to do. Perhaps if my
mistakes are included here in enough detail someone else might not
make them…
I am not an engineer, or a software developer, or a mechanic, or a
carpenter, or a bookbinder, or anything else I might pretend to be on
these pages. I am just an Amateur, but in real life I’m a PhD student
in Theology. Except insofar as the aformentioned things I am not come
in to it, this is unlikely to be apparent here.
This website is purely static, and is the successor to a wordpress
blog.
Thermostat
Posted on October 11, 2020
(Last modified on August 13, 2021)
| John Morris
Our thermostat has an annoying feature. If you press any button—but particularly the ‘OK’ button you have to press a lot to change anything—it reboots. Worse, it loses everything you’ve just entered. Last night it started doing this without my pressing anything. I first thought a dead battery might be to blame, but even with a steady 3V from my bench power supply it refused to work. I put it aside, and when it came back on ten minutes later, very carefully increased the temperature till it turned on.
[Read More]Microwave Repair and Volume Control
Posted on October 11, 2020
(Last modified on August 13, 2021)
| John Morris
My microwave went on the blink, a few days before I got married. It started turning itself on, randomly, as soon as it was plugged in. You could use it—I did in fact use it—by putting something inside, waiting for it to turn on, and then opening the door after the required time had elapsed. Hardly ideal. I unplugged it and left it for later—there were other things to think about after all…
[Read More]Anti Rsi
Posted on October 8, 2020
| John Morris
There are lots of anti-rsi packages out there for windows. I even found a few for Linux. None did what I wanted them to do: to enforce short and long breaks at configurable intervals, allowing me to push them back when I was in the middle of something, but getting increasingly insistent that I actually took them.
Enter anti-rsi, a python script which does everything an anti-rsi package needs to do and nothing more.
[Read More]Webcam on and Off
Posted on October 8, 2020
| John Morris
Currently we are all stuck in front of webcams, at least half the time. I do have a laptop—a gift from a kind friend—and it does get used, but the rest of the time I am sitting before two old monitors (one of which recently had to be repaired) and a lovely cherry keyboard: and no webcam. No matter: I’ve a cheapo usb-thing and it works fine. I’ve also an old phone handset from an 80s landline wired into two 3.
[Read More]Workbench: first shot
Posted on October 7, 2020
(Last modified on August 19, 2021)
| John Morris
Background This workbench is built almost exactly to a published design and following the videos. One has to buy the videos. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this, and it was a very good idea. Buy them; watch them; copy them. Unless one is very lucky one simply doesn’t get to watch a good craftsman up close very often, but the ability to pause, zoom, replay, and see exactly how to position your hands and body when paring with a chisel, for example, is worth any amount of textbooks.
[Read More]Volatile Tmp
Posted on October 7, 2020
| John Morris
What does one do with temporary files? For things one really doesn’t need, there’s /tmp, which is wiped on boot—though sometimes it’s a ramdisk, and one should be wary of dropping large files into ramdisks. But what about e.g. downloaded isos, pdfs prepared for printing, and the like? Things one needs now, might need tomorrow, but definitely won’t need in a year’s time?
Like most people I used to use ~/Downloads and go through it (with ncdu) every time it got too large.
[Read More]CLI Countdown Timer
Stop procrastinating and do some work
Posted on September 29, 2020
(Last modified on October 3, 2020)
| John Morris
I wrote this a while ago, and it’s been in use ever since: a very simple script which counts down (or up) while printing the remaining time. Controlled with standard job control, it’s one up on sleep as you can see how long is left. This is occasionally handy; if I only have ten seconds on the clock before lunch I’ll not start something new, but if I’ve got fifteen it might make sense.
[Read More]Leaving Wordpress
“...and all we raise aloft must soon decline”
Posted on September 28, 2020
(Last modified on August 13, 2021)
| John Morris
Wordpress is a glorious conglomeration of PHP which works very well, PHP which works poorly and PHP which doesn’t work at all. The former is generally written by the Wordpress developers, the next by me, and the latter by me after around 11pm.
This website existed for a while on wordpress.com. It was the natural choice: everyone uses wordpress to manage blogs, and this is little more than a blog. On the other hand, writing in a web browser is irritating (writing is what text editors are for) and does one really need the whole wordpress architecture to serve a lot of static pages and images?
[Read More]Shaver Repair
Posted on April 18, 2020
(Last modified on August 19, 2021)
| John Morris
My father’s electric shaver wasn’t holding charge; he asked if I could have a look at it and see if the internal battery could be replaced. Here’s the exploded view:
The green battery is a NiMH, not NiCad as I’d expected. I suppose it’s not that old. Which is as well, as I couldn’t find any NiCads in the drawer when hunting around before, and was planning on gutting it and fitting a LiPo battery and tiny charging module.
[Read More]Quick Sunrise Alarm Clock
Posted on April 14, 2020
(Last modified on August 19, 2021)
| John Morris
This was a sudden impulse last summer: I’d seen a ‘sunrise’ alarm clock (which fades on slowly to simulate sunrise, theoretically bringing you out of deep sleep naturally and waking you up gently). My sister mentioned having difficulty getting up and needing multiple alarm clocks. Ergo.
First thought: where to get the light? I had a look in the LED parts draw, but it was disappointing, as was the draw of old led torches and bike lights.
[Read More]