All the good aliens have left the planet. And now this news. Fair winds and clear skies, Dolly.
This week’s earworm is Reign, a track off the second album by UNKLE, from 2003. James Lavelle has always had incredible taste in collaborators (Ian Brown, Josh Homme, Autolux, Big In Japan, Mark Lanegan, 3D, Chris Goss), and even if the quality of his output has dropped since Psyence Fiction—which is an impossibly high bar to jump. Never, Never Land was a really good album, and this is one of the standout tracks. This is not the first time it’s been stuck in my head; something in the stuttering drum rhythm really clicks for me.
Fun Fact: Baltimore-based Big In Japan, a side project of another band called Lake Trout, was the touring band for UNKLE in the late 2000’s.
Bonus: The Harvard Gazette did a quick explanation of the earworm, which originated from the German Ohrwurm, which means musical itch.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been eighteen years since we brought this little tater tot home from the hospital. It’s been a confusing mixture of rewarding, challenging, maddening and invigorating, but the amount of love I have for this goofy nerd I made with Jen knows no bounds.
Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve spent a bunch of time trying to get an outside wireless access point set up at the house. Earlier this year Jen bought a BirdBuddy and struggled to get it to connect quickly or reliably; we get great reception and all rooms of the house from one router, but because our house is covered in thick sheets of Eisenhower-era aluminum siding, the effect is that of a Faraday cage: wireless signal doesn’t penetrate the outside of the house easily. I’ve done a couple of experiments with various off the shelf plugin repeaters but none of them are able to extend the signal past the back door, so I decided I was going to have to get serious and buy an outside unit. In order to make this work, I knew I was going to have to employ what is called power over ethernet, where the network signal and power both run on the same wire. This avoids having to run an extension cord outside, installation of an outside electrical box, or other dumb/expensive solutions.
Thus began a tumble down the rabbit hole of trying to find something that worked. The first one I bought was the same brand as our TP-Link router. But it came with a special name, which basically meant it was a commercial level unit which required the installation of a special app on my phone and all sorts of other nonsense to get it to work. I have an aversion to installing random janky security nightmare apps just to accomplish what should be a simple web-based task, so that unit got packaged back up and returned.
The next one I tried was another name brand, which got a bunch of good ratings online. I unboxed it, set the whole thing up, and found that the little power over ethernet injector that came with it was dead. So I had Amazon ship me a $10 injector, and when I plugged that in, I found that the repeater was still dead. This was really getting frustrating. I boxed that one up, returned it, and found a third unit with one of those word-jumble Amazon names that actually wound up being cheaper than the first two. While I wasn’t as impressed with the weather resistance of its design, I did a test run inside the house and was pleased to see that it powered right up. I mounted it outside under the porch and configured it via its built-in web interface, which is As Things Should Be.
Then can the next step: getting Jen’s BirdBuddy to see it and work with it. In order to change the network access point on the camera, you basically have to reset the whole thing. I also found out that it does not like 5GHz frequency, so I had to shut that down on the router. After doing that and connecting it to the new access point, we found that nothing had changed: the network indicator still spun and spun when we requested a livestream. I’m thinking that there may be something wrong with the BirdBuddy itself, but I will say it is nice to finally have the outside access point. It’s within line of sight of the garage, which means I don’t have to walk back into the house to load a website. More research on the BirdBuddy is required.
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In the living room, I’ve been assembling a simple entertainment center based around an old Denon head unit and turntable I’ve had kicking around. We took the old IKEA cabinet from my rowhome in Canton and put some new legs on it, which raised it up off the floor and gave it a more mid-century modern feel to fit in with the rest of our furniture. I hooked up a pair of bookshelf speakers I scored at a yard sale and one of dad’s old subwoofers underneath to get good sound. The turntable is a really nice Technics unit from the mildew house we went through years ago, and I splurged on a new needle for it. After doing a test spin, I found that the signal going to the head was super weak. It turned out the Denon did not have a photograph preamp, so I had to pick one of those up from the jungle site. Once that was in, I spun a copy of Steely Dan’s Aja, and it sounds really good. Next, I had to find a DC power unit for dad’s circa 1993 portable Kenwood CD player. I was able to find one in the pile of orphan power units at work and got that hooked up. Then I put a separate cable in for an iPod, and with that, we’ve got a working functional sound system in the living room.
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Last week I drove north to go look at some inexpensive Insta360 cameras, which were being sold for $10/ea via Marketplace. These were first-gen units which happen to be extremely small, with the drawback being a short recording time: 30 seconds at regular speed, or up until the internal 8GB card filled on timelapse. They were cheap, so I bought four, and charged them up when I got home. Getting them to mount to my laptop took some doing; I had to reformat their internal drives and do a firmware update, and was able to get them to connect reliably. After doing some trickery I was able to install an older version of the Insta360 app on my old iPhone 6, but couldn’t get the cameras to sync with the phone, so there’s no way to update things like their internal clocks, default recording modes, or other settings. Thankfully though, they do record and hold a battery charge, and I was able to do some recording with them, then use the Insta360 app on my laptop to edit and export decent-quality video. They’ll be good for short recordings or time-lapse shots hanging off the back of the truck, and if they fall off I won’t be too upset.
Alex Sujong-Laughlin writes over at Defector about falling down the doomsday prepping rabbit hole, and she put something into perspective for me that resonated deeply. I’ve also been thinking about this subject since the Second Coming of Cheeto, and given all of the warning signs and terrible news, I took some initial steps. She talks about her husband, a college professor, beginning his Intro to Government class with a lesson on the Hobbes vs. Locke philosophies: basically a Walking Dead humans-are-the-real-enemies mindset vs. a Star Trek we’re-all-in-this-together mindset. I definitely tend to be the latter rather than the former, but I also want to prepare for the Hobbesian hordes if and when they show up at my door. This paragraph really stuck with me:
The way you view the world determines how you live in it. These two theories also underpin the central policy differences between the left and the right. What is responsible for the problems in our world, and how do we go about solving them? If you believe that people are mostly selfish and hungry for power and resources, for example, you will be less likely to advocate for social safety nets. I realized that my anxiety was leading me into an imaginary Hobbesian hellscape, and I was using my impending parenthood to justify it.
I’ve always, since my early days, been focused on being as self-sufficient as possible: knowing how to frame and roof a house, plant and harvest basic crops, keep machinery working, handle weapons, and do basic repairs on most tools has been important to me not only because I’m cheap (and usually on a budget) as well as curious. This, plus my ADHD, has made me into more of a generalist vs. a specialist—something that bothers me less and less the older I get. There’s something to be said for stockpiling food for a Bad Situation, but much like she says in this article,
The amount of preparation I would have to do to maintain a semblance of normalcy in that instance would require such absurd investments of time and money that it would force me to adopt “emergency preparedness” as a main personality trait and hobby.
I think this encapsulates something I’ve been knocking around in my head for a while; I could spend immense amounts of time and money to prepare for the great unknown, but that would require a complete lifestyle change, which we are not prepared or financed to do right now. I’ll stockpile essentials—bullets, booze, freeze-dried food and water—but if the balloon goes up, we’re packing it in a running vehicle and heading north to the hills.
This video from Adam on the Tested YouTube channel features a visit to the Udvar-Hazy Museum, where he’s talking to some of the officials about their Sikorsky JRS-1, a prewar amphibious transport which has the remarkable distinction of being the only surviving aircraft from Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When I visited the museum with my parents nine years ago, it was sitting on the floor of the restoration hall with the wings and engines still attached. I figured it was being restored then, but apparently they’ve finally started work on it.
This plane is the cross-section of multiple interests of mine: World War II history and aviation, prewar design, mechanical restoration, a love of amphibious planes of the time (the Consolidated PBY is still my favorite), and the Smithsonian in general. What I would give to be on the floor of that shop to have a personal tour.
As with previous Labor Days, I spent the majority of mine laboring. I started out on Saturday with a long list of tasks to tackle around the house, and by Monday afternoon I’d accomplished all of them plus a few.
After making coffee and letting Hazel out for her morning constitutional, I drove down the street to a yard sale and was happy to find a bunch of tools priced exactly where I like them: cheap. I picked up a toolbox full of name brand box-end wrenches, two pairs of dikes, and a pneumatic cutoff wheel for $20. I’ve now filled all the gaps in my wrench sets—I was short on a couple of key SAE sizes as well as the metrics, and with this haul I’ve got full sets of quality US-made tools out in the garage, in my tool bag, and in the basement, so that I don’t have to continue running around to find a second wrench.
My trucks like to mark their territory, and the Scout was getting worse at this until I replaced the power steering pump. I bought a cleaning solution from the Jungle Site which promised it would remove oil stains from asphalt. This stuff is full of enzymes that are supposed to suck up the oil and then dry into silica, leaving puddles of white dust. After brushing the residue away, I sprayed the spots with the power washer until the water ran clear. I’m pretty pleased with the results—most of the smaller spots are now invisible, but the larger ones are going to need another application.
Over the last month or two, Jen and I have been pulling up the FLOR tiles in the living room and using the pressure washer to clean them. We’ve had them for almost 20 years, and they’ve held up very well given the abuse they take on a daily basis. There’s only so much dirt and pet hair that will come up with a vacuum cleaner, even one as good as our Dyson, so it was impressive to see how much came out—and how much cleaner the tiles look—after they dried in the sun. With that success, I hung the dining room rug up on the front of the garage and pressure washed it(you will begin to notice a theme for this weekend) to try to clean that up too. Given its location and proximity to food-related accidents, it’s a miracle the rug didn’t look like abstract art, but overall I think it came out OK.
Then I used Purple Power and a mop to wash and scrub down the plastic on the outside of the greenhouse. Over the last couple of years it’s gotten really dirty from all of the tree sap, especially the side that faces the house. After working it over a couple of times I was able to get about 90% of the dirt off, and then worked my way around to the other side. With the pressure washer, I carefully blasted all of the algae and dirt off the rest of the structure, and it’s about a thousand times brighter out there now. This plastic hasn’t lasted as long as the first batch I bought in 2005, and I’m going to have to replace some sections in the spring—but it looks a hell of a lot better now.
Something that’s been bothering us for a while has been the smell of our clothes after they come out of the washing machine: they don’t smell like they’re actually clean. I did some research and then disassembled the top half of the machine, which eventually required the employment of a car jack and two sections of wood to remove the main agitator basket. When I pulled it out I found the bottom half caked with yuck, and the container in the machine was brown with dirt and sediment. Out in the driveway I used more Purple Power and the pressure washer to blast all of the parts clean, then re-assembled the machine. Jen ran an empty load with some bleach to clean out the rest of the yuck I couldn’t reach, and told me it smelled like it was finally clean.
When I poured a new concrete fitting around the basement surround, I didn’t make the second step deep enough. What had once been a narrow lip around the edge was now half as wide as the other steps, so something had to be done. I put a masonry wheel on my circular saw and was able to cut about 3″ deep all the way across, but there’s still another 5″ left before I reach the top of the step. I think I’ll have to rent a full-size masonry saw with a larger wheel in order to cut it back and level things off.
There were a number of other smaller projects sprinkled in there that I can’t remember now, but by about 4PM on Monday I was beat. We made some guacamole to go on some grilled burgers with fresh corn (EXCELLENT idea, Jen) and I spent the rest of the evening sitting on my ass.
Gina Trapani was the founder of Lifehacker, a fantastic website featuring all kinds of tips, tricks, and toys to make life easier. She left that site years ago to do her own thing, and recently wrote about buying a 3D printer on her own site. She got a Bambu P1S, which goes for about $500 right now, and apparently can’t stop making stuff. I have, on many occasions, considered buying a 3D printer, and this article just re-awakened that itch.
I’m making a deal with myself: I have to learn how to use FreeCAD first before I buy one.
Here’s a video recap of August’s progress on the trucks; my accomplishments have slowed down as the month got busy, but I did get some small tasks completed, as well as hosted a workday last weekend.
I’ve posted this song here before, but I absolutely love the groove to this song. This is a live version from eight years ago, and the vocals are slightly flat, but I still dig it. I would love to see True Widow live.