I wrote The Last Gasp of Trust a few days ago. I just updated that article to include a section titled, "(Dis)Trust and Verify". I needed a term to describe web content that had the quality of being actually generated by human …
read moreI spent a brief stint as a website content writer in the early 10's. It was for several of the thousands of click-through sites designed both to be helpful and to …
read moreA little background: I have IPv6 turned off in my main router because it creates more problems than it solves for me at this point in …
read more
This rat-like creature has just had a bath. He looked much worse before that.
You may recall from my previous treatise that my wife found a pitiful mangy-looking furry object in our front flower bed late one night. She named him Charlie.
Practically a Miracle Transformation …
read more
We traveled to Mississippi and did an overnighter at a KOA campground 150 miles away. It was a good test of The Bug's systems.
This project has FINALLY reached its end. We just wrapped up a 300 mile round-trip overnight shakedown test of The Bug …
read more
This is the stereotypical SPST toggle switch. These are everywhere.
I like toggle switches. I like the tactile impression they make on my finger as I flip them. The satisfying click that tells me, 'yes, it did'.
But sometimes mounting them is a bit of …
read more
The woods behind our house. Thick, full of danger.
"Did you hear that?" I ask. "What?", she says. "I thought I heard a cat crying in the woods out there." She stops, listens and says, "No, I don't hear anything."
I go on about my business …
read more
Clipped from the Legrand website, this is the Wiremold 500/700 Small Raceway we've all come to know and love.
You've seen it. You probably just didn't notice. It's ubiquitous like walls and floors.
Wiremold has been around a long time, and is a very useful product. In my …
read more
What in the world happened here!?
If you have pets, it's generally a choice you've made. Kinda like getting married or having kids, or both . . . or neither, but you get my point.
We love our pets. Dogs, cats, weasles, skunks, chickens, skinks …
read more
Bored. So bored. So very bored.
It was the 1980's and the sky was the limit. The Internet was going to change the world . . . and it did. We were excited by all the possibilities, like a child on December 20th looking toward …
read more
Choice and Peers: Two concepts important to this post.
Dropbox, Ubuntu One, Google Drive, OneDrive, and don't forget Box and ownCloud.
What do all these have in common? I've tried them, and I don't like them …
read more
The Yaesu FP-1030A is a great power supply. 5-stars!
I never said everything I post here is going to knock your socks off. This little blurb certainly will not do that.
However, when I find something that is pretty easy to do and makes my …
read more
Coming. Going. Streaming. Flowing.
"If this is too long for you to read, then maybe you don't need to know."
Teaching Men to Fish
I'm new to HF. And HF is new. HF is being reinvented every day. For …
read more
Four antennas and 3 guy lines. Yes!
Ham radio is a hobby. It can be much more than that, but it goes well with a large dish of experimentation and learning. That's the biggest appeal to me.
I knew when I made the leap …
read more
Image: The yoke holding the pulley is there.
I am past both the social and legal definition of retirement age. I still work full-time, and will continue to do so as long as they want me and I want …
read more
Image: This was purchased to replace a very old AA battery powered cordless trimmer.
. . . or so they say. But sometimes you don't even get that.
My old Wahl AA battery powered beard and mustache trimmer was on its last leg. It had endured leaky …
read more
Image: This is what I call fun.
. . . there lived a not-quite-so-young man who was about to realize a life-long dream: he was about to get his ham radio license.
It was the mid-90's in the Great Republic of Texas and my wife and …
read more
Image: This is The Monstrosity. It was thusly named by my wife.
My hobby bench was in a seriously sad state. I can't believe I don't have a picture. I can only guess I was too embarrassed to let anyone see …
read more
Image: It all started here: a condenser fan motor.
When I was a child I rarely needed a good reason to do a thing. When asked why I had done a thing, quite often my first response was, "Uh, I dunno. Just …
read more
Image: The screen served by Brilliant on my local network.
(PlayerPi? Brilliant? wha?) 1 Photo gallery below.
It is possible to control devices using IR with a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian.
In the old days if you wanted to …
read more
Image: This is an IPv6 address. Gaze upon its glory, mortal.
I was having problems with random wifi dropouts.
WeatherPi, DoorPi and LilWeatherPi all suffered from a tendancy to just randomly lose their wifi connection for no apparent reason. Video …
read more
Does this look like a project to you? It does to me.
It's one thing to read about recycling on the Internet, or to see kids shows promote the ideals of good stewardship of resources. It's another thing altogether to actually make something useful out of junk. I maintain the …
read moreWhen I built WeatherPi, I was trying for a robust, reliable, repairable Raspberry Pi based weather station. So far, it has lived up to every expectation.
WeatherPi has now lasted three times longer than either of two consecutive Accurite …
read moreSome time ago, one of the GPIO pins on WeatherPi stopped working. It was the one the tipping bucket rain gauge was attached to. I was able to move the wire to another pin, and change my program. Problem solved.
When the rain gauge stopped working again, I assumed I …
read moreThis post is a listing of the OpenSCAD code for the 3D printed parts of the LCDPi. Slideshow at the bottom.
This is PiddlePi, one of the P*Pi's. 
Here is the main body file. I have it saved as "2004 LCD case.scad".
// Dr.Gerg's Pi LCD Mount …If you have more than a hundred lines in your Python script, remembering where in the flow any particular print output comes from can cause you pause. I felt like having the line number from my code would help me more quickly and easily recognize the output.
I googled to …
read moreI've printed a bunch of parts on the Prusa printer. But today (yesterday, actually) I printed the smallest functional part I've ever done. Roughly 7x7x5mm. Tiny thing.
The tiny thing is part of PoohPi.
PoohPi sits at my wife's desk and greets her every morning with statistics that will inform …
read moreHere's another model in my project. It's a 2-row 16 character per row LCD screen with an i2c interface module attached. I'll be using this to display whatever I want on my portable project.
You may be wondering what the value of this is. The value is in fitting this …
read moreWhen I build things using the Prusa 3D printer, I like to also create a model of the part I'm making brackets or enclosures for. That way I can see how the whole thing is going to fit together without making bad assumptions about how any particular part is going …
read moreI like knowing what the temperature is in my back yard.
And the rainfall amount when it's raining. And the wind speed and direction. That's why I've had a weather station in my backyard for several years now.
We had two Accurite stations in two years. Both crapped out after …
read moreWhen my wife's in-ground pool was completed, it quickly became apparent the controls for the pump and lights were designed in a tech vacuum.
The control head (receiver, and manual buttons) was attached to the power panel through a knockout on top. It looked like …
read more