Category: The Diary of Lupin Pooter

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 […]

When you have microscopes but a magnifying glass and camera are closer to hand [Photo]

  • June 27, 2017
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Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand
INVENSENSE MPU-6050 [D4H592LAT EL 1539 E]: snapshot taken with a Canon G7X through a handheld 40x magnifying glass because they were good enough for my purposes and the scopes are all packed away at the moment.

Rainy days can be the best days

  • June 21, 2017
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Child’s copy book lost or abandoned to the elements on the pavement. A gelatinous mass on the rain-pitted sand of our local beach. The leaf in the background can provide a notion of the scale of the thing. A dead fish being surveyed by a green bottle fly and, at right, a cuttlebone.

Rising early has its privileges [photos]

  • June 12, 2017
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Here, the Moon is hovering just above a layer of clouds. A short while later and Moon has descended slightly, placing it beneath one tier of cloud cover. Gorgeous, isn’t it? One of the perks of waking at zero dark thirty is getting to see the sun rise.

Sunset snapshots

  • June 11, 2017
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Clouds scraping the hilltops. A black cloud hovers over an antenna (?) of some sort.

Double rainbow at dawn

  • June 10, 2017
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Is that the way it is? Personal Firsts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
How long did it take you to spot the rainbow? The rainbow faded from one second to the next and, even at the moment I took the above photo, S. had to point it out to me. The fainter second rainbow, above and to the left of the first, only became apparent when I opened […]