Category: The Diary of Lupin Pooter

When Goop goes bad

  • May 11, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
It had been a year or more since I’d needed the cleaning power of Goop, but need it I recently did, so I dug out my mostly-full 14-ounce container of orange-scented Goop-with-pumice. To my surprise, I found that the lid had cracked and its top had separated from its rim. Of course, it would’ve been […]

You Need Cry, Dear

  • April 27, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
You Need Cry, Dear sort of, very loosely, sounds like the characters printed in Chinese beneath the nonsensical English. The Chinese translates to something close to “Have your express delivery.” Once you start down this path, making the mascot a bowtie-sporting cartoon deer is the obvious next step.

Back in the cut: WEAR HELMET

  • March 30, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
It was a public holiday and so we spent the afternoon back in the cut, crawling through promising-looking industrial buildings in a corner of the New Territories. As connoisseurs of light-industrial decay, we savored the innumerable signs of shoddy construction enhanced by decades of deferred or improperly executed maintenance and the exquisite stratigraphic layering of […]

Best fuel I know!

  • March 29, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
Rad sign, eh? Workspace Search 2018 seemed to be inching towards a satisfactory dénouement, but it was just one of those pesky false endings. The adventure continues. “It’s freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?” “Indignation,” said Michelangelo. “Best fuel I know. Never burns out.” Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy […]

Notice: Please beware of the undulating pavement

  • March 22, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
Why go to all of the fuss of repairing “undulating” pavement if you can simply tape up warning notices about the issue and call it a day? In one industrial neighborhood we visited today, identical copies of the helpful sign shown above were taped to the I-beams sunken into the cement ridges bifurcating the sidewalk.

Looks like a worthwhile use of GPUs to me!

  • March 21, 2018
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HerpDerp Personal Firsts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Count the ZOTAC GPU boxes. Don’t forget to smile and wave at the surveillance camera pointed at the open door. It and the street-facing windows are open to facilitate a cross-breeze for free, or at least cheap, cooling. I’m looking for workshop space. It’s Hong Kong and we’re dealing with Hong Kong real estate agents […]

Bodge of the week: replacing a naked piezo buzzer

  • March 20, 2018
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Two specimens of the same model of timer. Top: an as-yet-unused timer, opened up to show its innards. Bottom: my good-enough-for-now five-minute fix: soldering an SMD pieze buzzer to two of the leads on a transistor inductor. A few days ago, a dual-clock kitchen timer we’ve had for years stopped making much noise when its […]

A buck-fifty soldering iron tip-cleaning sponge versus one that cost thirty cents

  • October 4, 2017
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Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The two sponges, side by side: cheap third-party sponge on the left and official Hakko-supplied sponge on the right. I’m still using the same cellulose tip-cleaning sponge included as an accessory with my Hakko FX-888D but I’ve been soldering more frequently in recent months and anticipate doing even more in the near future. When is […]

What would a fridge magnet made out of that stuff look like?

  • August 4, 2017
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Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
The patterns for the letters I wanted to cut from the meter-square sheet of yellow astroturf. When I spotted meter-square sheets of cheap astroturf on sale and saw that it was available in bright yellow, it occurred to me that oversized letters cut out of the stuff and turned into fridge magnets might look neat. […]

Curious markings on a Bosch Sensortec BMP280 sensor: “117 YP”

  • August 2, 2017
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HerpDerp Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Handheld-magnifier view of the BMP280 barometric pressure sensor on my CCS811 sensor breakout board. A sensor breakout board which I recently purchased features a CCS811 sensor (designed to detect and quantify ambient indoor levels of VOCs) and, to supply the data needed to correct its readings, two additional sensors: a SI7021 (relative humidity and temperature) […]

Being John Searle inside the Chinese Room

  • August 2, 2017
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Google Translate gives Spot as the meaning of 现货, but it actually means in stock merchandise. I was asking whether they could fill an order for a list of specific items and they were answering in the affirmative. Squeaking by on a good-enough level of communication with Taobao sellers via Google Translate and a text […]

Look closer

  • July 22, 2017
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All My Friends Are Insects Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
See anything interesting in this photo? Neither of us did at first, either, when we were having a gander at the original scene a few months back, but I paused our walk for a moment, to her minor exasperation, to give the spot a quick once-over. Here’s a closeup. That vase-like object is a potter […]