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 […]

Shrinky-dink sneaker insoles

  • May 14, 2022
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter
One of life’s little vicissitudes: shrinky-dink sneaker insoles. We send laundry out and get it back washed, dried, and bagged. I’ve washed sneaker insoles many, many times. In a first for our household, a pair of insoles came back heat-shrunk to about two-thirds of its original size. The image above shows an identical pair of […]

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.

Ugly, but it works: DIY Lightbulb-grabber because we couldn’t find one locally or get one shipped from the Mainland

  • March 10, 2022
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Contrivances The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Once upon a time, this was a water bottle. The light bulb in our storeroom blew back in February. The ceiling in that room is high enough that replacing the bulb from a stool isn’t do-able and the layout of our place (little doorways, narrow hall, and tight corners) makes maneuvering the fiberglass stepladder ladder […]

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 […]

Purring is reportedly very complex and often misconstrued

  • February 3, 2022
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter Tygers, Tygers!
Marceline grooming Bubblegum. Marceline grooming Bubblegum. Both cats seemed content, but neither was purring. I’ve only ever heard a cat purr when being brushed or stroked (aka petted) by a human being. Certainly that’s the only circumstance under which any cat I’ve owned or cared for has purred, but the BBC says that a cat […]

Deep sockets and feeler, radius, and pin gauges

  • February 1, 2022
Categories
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, […]