Category: HerpDerp

They want cats to eat ze bugz too, it seems.

  • October 4, 2022
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All My Friends Are Insects HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter
S. and I stopped in a local pet supplies store this afternoon and some peculiar flavors of canned cat fodder caught my eye. Sandwiched in between some of the traditional fish-and-fowl-based products were rows of unusual combos, proudly labeled as having been made in Taiwan: CRICKET & CHICKEN, RAT MEAT & CHICKEN, MEALWORM & CHICKEN, […]

Hardwired auto-off sucks. Don’t build it into tools/instruments you design.

  • October 1, 2022
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Testing TØØLS
Hardwiring an auto-off feature into a measurement tool or instrument, like a digital thermometer, is dumb and bad. Don’t do it. Providing it as an option is probably useful in a lot of cases, but turning a tool off after an arbitrarily chosen length of time is dumb and bad. Five-minute-and-change-long clip of two DJI […]

Decadal review of the Belkin Verve Tab Folio for Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Touch, Black

  • September 23, 2022
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Nearly a decade ago, S. and I bought Belkin ‘Verve Tab Folio’ cases for our then-new Kindle Paperwhites (1st-gen EY21 Wifi-only units). Neither of our Kindles, which we got out of an abundance of optimism, has been used terribly often. Mine was almost always kept in airplane mode and employed as a portable PDF reader, […]

Life Goes On, Save Me, Good Day, Save Me, Good Day

  • September 20, 2022
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Snickers in purple wrappers emblazoned with odd phrases on a 7-11 shelf. I found myself in a 7-11 a few days ago, needing to make a purchase, any purchase, and scanned the shelves for something small to buy. I’m not bigly into candy and rarely buy any, but the purple-wrapper-ed Snickers bars printed with odd […]

Some smaller HOPs

  • August 23, 2022
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
I like my Wera 42-piece 8100 SA 2 Zyklop Speed Ratchet Set [1/4″ drive, metric] and it sees a fair bit of professional-amateur tinkerer usage, particularly the included 8784 A1 Zyklop bit adaptor, 1/4″ (05003529001), with hex-inner or Torx drive bits. Often, though, I’ve had to dig out a separate bit assortment to get a […]

Hello from Judson’s Garage: Fiddling around with upscaling and enhancing low-res, low-quality video

  • August 16, 2022
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Personal Firsts
Concluding frames of the commercial for MEGO’s ‘Forbidden Zone Trap’ Planet of the Apes playset. Vault of Vintage Toys recently posted an image of the box for a 1970s-era MEGO Planet of the Apes (check out All PLANET OF THE APES Original Franchise Trailers (1968 – 1973) if you’re only familiar with the remakes) playset: […]

Having a gander inside a SMART SENSOR AS808 (an inexpensive, standalone 1xAAA-powered temperature and humidity sensor)

  • June 21, 2022
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Teardowns The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The screen of the (reassembled) SMART SENSOR AS808, displaying the ambient temperature and humidity as well as the date. We have some small and accurate-enough temperature and humidity sensors (“SMART SENSOR AS808”). They run on single AAA batteries and the batteries last for months and months. Their biggest flaw is the lack of any way […]

A mildly satisfying micro project: increasing the run time of a pull-string cat toy by making the string longer

  • May 18, 2022
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Teardowns The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The pull-string cat toy, disemboweled. Some recently-bought cat toys came with spring-powered vibration motors. The springs (likely spiral torsion springs, i.e. watch springs) are loaded by drawing back a length of string attached to the motor’s axle. When you draw back the pullstring and release it, the eccentric mass on the motor’s axle causes the […]

Get Set. Go Shopping! Some MTR posters from January

  • March 17, 2022
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HerpDerp Spitting Images
Get Set. Go Shopping! poster for some place called Paradise Mall. A warning not to feed wild pigs. Hong Kong Disneyland advert featuring kids with a park cast member in a Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl costume. Call me Bitcoin Queen poster featuring the founder of some local cryptocurrency enterprise.

Got some stubby bits ([JTC-7801] 78 PCS DOUBLE END MINI RATCHET BIT SET)

  • March 9, 2022
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Side-by-side comparison of the H4 bit that came with the low-profile, offset, ratcheting screwdriver (below) and the one from the JTC-7801 set (above). I bid you welcome to an exciting follow-up to a late-January post: Stubby bits for low-profile offset ratcheting screwdrivers. A few months back, I got a couple of low-profile, offset, ratcheting screwdrivers […]

Deep sockets and feeler, radius, and pin gauges

  • February 1, 2022
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS Tygers, Tygers!
Wera 05004525001 Belt A Deep 1 Socket Spanner Set (1/4 Inch). Plus a 4mm deep socket purchased separately. Deep sockets are one of those tools that, every so often, I could’ve really used but managed to get along without. So I got a , Wera’s 05004525001 deep socket set (1/4-inch drive). It’s got 9 pieces, […]

Stubby bits for low-profile offset ratcheting screwdrivers

  • January 28, 2022
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
This is the bent-up-end offset ratcheting screwdriver. The Japanese company‘s name, Rubicon, is translated into Chinese as Robinhood. With a specific task in mind, I recently got a couple of low-profile, offset, ratcheting screwdrivers. The kind that accept hex-shank bits. Specifically, two Japanese Rubicon brand jobbies: RGH-9A (straight and flat) and RGH-9B (bent-up at the […]