Archive of posts from 2021
Not a bad year for me personally, I know I’m very lucky, but 2021 is probably not a year I’d choose to repeat. I’m very grateful for the scientists in the world who didn’t hate biology (like me) and ended up developing a life-saving vaccine to save so many lives. And while it’s not (and probably never will be) eradicated, has let me do many simple things, like go to the grocery store and continue to work without worrying about my health.
Dec 13, 2021 Back to MakingI finally got around to using my workshop again after the solar panels went in. I had a fun little project that I started around Thanksgiving and just finished last week. My friend wanted a table that would sit right outside her window to make it easy for her to put food out for her cats when the weather got cold. I’m not much of an animal person, but this project sounded like fun. I think I mainly liked it because it sounded like the perfect thing to make out of some of the junk wood in my basement. And it was a fun project. I had all the materials for the project in my basement, except for an outdoor finish and some bolts for adjustable feet. So I spent around $20 in total. And now I have some finish that I can use on other outdoor wood projects.
Jun 23, 2021 Half Year Check-InIt’s definitely been a while since I’ve even looked at my website. The past few months have been kind of crazy with me working a ridiculous amount and not having much time to do almost anything. However, back in March, I made a decision that I was going to change the main focus of the year. I wanted to see if I could lose enough weight to no longer be classified as clinically obese, so get my BMI under 30. I joined Noom, which has helped. And I’m happy to say that as of the other day, I was down 20 pounds and made my first target.
Feb 28, 2021 New Biking YearBroke out the bike today, so I can say that I did bike in February. I definitely skipped December and January. But the weather is getting better, so it’s time. I had to go to my brother’s house and decided to pump up the tires and take it for a spin. Since I then left something at my brother’s house, I had to go back to pick it up. So I’ve biked two miles this month. That means around 2242 more miles to go to beat my best biking year ever, which was 2015. That might be a fun challenge.
Feb 20, 2021 Icy WallI think the pictures below perfectly show why I was concentrating all my tuckpointing repairs on this particular section of my house. I have to work on the gutter this summer to fix this issue. Hopefully, the little bit of tuckpointing that I did will limit the amount of water that gets into the basement. I’m sure that some will get in, but as long as it’s not too much, I should be ok. If it’s a lot, I’m going to have a huge mess to clean up.
Feb 20, 2021 Version 2For practice and to get better, I made another voltage controlled oscillator. This time, I also ordered a custom front panel that I designed. The front panel ended up costing me around $55, so it’s by far the most expensive part of this project. It’s also something that I doubt I do again, but it was way fun to figure out how to do it.
Feb 20, 2021 Lousy SweatpantsI bought these sweatpants in October from LLBean. Usually I like their clothes, but $50 for a pair of sweatpants that didn’t last four months is ridiculous. It’s not like I’m a mechanic working in these. I’ve been using them to sit in front of a computer all day. I hope I get a refund. Otherwise, I’ll have to find a new place for clothes.
Jan 31, 2021 Can't Believe It WorkedI’ve been very slowly trying to learn more electronics for a few years. Recently, one of my brothers let me know that he’s getting into electronic synth music and showed me a bunch of youtube videos of different projects. One of them looked to be something that I thought I could do. So I ordered a bunch of parts, some bench equipment and decided to give it a go. I’m writing this post because today I finished the oscillator and it actually works. I’m quite amazed that it works, but it’s giving me a huge amount of confidence to try to do more things with electronics.
Jan 10, 2021 New Tools/New ProjectMy brother is getting into electronic sythensizer music (which is what I think it’s called). I mentioned that I was trying to get back to learning electronics (yet again) and he suggested I look at some of the music stuff that he’s been reading/watching. He wasn’t sure what to buy to get started. I wasn’t sure either, but this seemed like a relatively simple way for me to get back to learning electronics. He gave me a bunch of youtube videos to watch. One guy who seems really good has a bunch of videos for making different boards. So I decided to start with his Synth Voltage Controlled Oscillator.
Jan 3, 2021 First Repair of the YearMy brother gave me a cable for his Wurlitzer keyboard that was broken.
Jan 1, 2021 Hi to 2021!I’ve decided that 2021 is the year I’m going to try to get organized. I’m getting pretty good about doing lots of projects around the house, but I spend too much time looking for things. And even the stuff that I know where it is, is basically just in a big pile of boxes. So my “system” works for me, but if anyone else uses or moves anything, I get frustrated by not being able to find things. If I could make it more obvious where things should go, I think it would work better for everyone. So 2020 is the “Year of Organization”. How exactly this will work remains to be seen. But even if I just gather like things together, I’ll be making progress. Hopefully this will also clean off some of the horizontal surfaces in my house so I’ll have more workspace.