Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 20, 2025, paint it black.
Five years ago today: August 20, 2021, on the bottom.
Nine years ago today: August 20, 2017, my new wall.
Random years ago today: August 20, 2009, 250,000 each.
A good day already. I saw the varmint, it is a possum. I’ll set up the trap but don’t expect much. My energy meter is 50% so maybe we’ll accomplish something. My choice was to get the place more organized, but I’m past the point of no return on that count. Everything I move is in the way of something else. With one exception. Some of my stuff is in neat boxes. I learned how to make a, hang on, that is the Reb. Later, I forgot what we were talking about, but cancel the good day. We have another incident so I will be distracted well past the weekend. Financial recover is pushed way back into mid-2027.
I have boxes to distract me. Glad as I am for choosing this hobby, I think my appreciation has just begun. Today, I will focus on boxes to keep my sanity on an even keel. There is a reason I did not get into recording music, let’s leave it at that, meaning as long as possible. Watch these boxes slowly, they are a cover for what I’m having to ponder and plan these days. Read between the boxes, you might say.
These are smaller boxes that have design trials. All five were completed today, this does not mean built today. I’m experienced enough to leave a stage, say cutting the bottom plate, until later. Careful if you try this, it is damn easy to get lost and lose time. The only purpose built box is the one with the thumb holes. This is for the small “toy” clamps that re getting more use as some laser tabs must be glued up.
There is another important change, not ready until this afternoon. I call it the K-box because it is designed for economy. If it turns out, I’ll provide some details. I require the distraction, I have put away six cups of coffee and now it’s raining early. The focus on this box is cheap and easy construction while maintaining the strong construction. I think I’m ready for this step, though beware of shortcuts. Will it make a good box?
Glue is also becoming a fastener of choice for these more generic boxes. I call it cheap, or “elmo” glue. It has to be clamped as I cannot afford an electric brad gun at this time. The best small clamps I have are the Harbor Freight 9” plastic, if there’s time there’ll be a picture. Ah, here we go, this shows a small label being glued to the home-made handle of my “bicycle spoke” tool.
Have you had trouble finding this blog? I had to disable all but personal access, and that may not be enough. It took me a while to catch on because this blog has experienced surges before. Analysis shows that beginning July 23, I began to see a rapid climb in non-standard browsers in the referral statistic. The Seychelles figured prominently July 24, 25, 26 but this was typical of “blooms” and it fell off. So I did not get suspicious other than the weird time zone.
So I ran some independent tests and there was a moving average of 6,600 extra hits per day for 20 days. Now I know it is a robot of some kind, so all automatic access is disabled. I figure my readers are wise enough to know if a referred line fails just log in directly. I must consider other measures, so please don’t give up. I’m not going anywhere that I would not tell you, now that I myself am living vicariously through the recording career I never had of my own.
Picture of the day.
The Wetumpka bridge.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Well into the evening, I have something for you to examine. Once more, the primary qualities are not visible, but here is a box made with five cuts and two drill holes (four if you count the pilot holes). The biggest savings of this style is there is no waste slicing the bottom panel. The box is designed to be one picket wide. This throws off the Golden Ratio. I could use the formula, but it would mean the box is shorter and I do not view that, in light of experience, to be an advantage. This box is the same length as a Z-box or J-box. If you are new here, the Z-box is the biggest I build from the large fence pickets, the J-box is the same dimensions using the small picket.
Introducing the K-box. It’s stood on end to show the entire construct is solid pieces. No splices, just the corner joints, They are glued and stapled, this is the prototype. No finish, no logo, and it is unlikely it will naturally fit anything. However, the cost in direct materials is $3 so conceivably I’d sell this for $6. That’s a profit on paper, I’d have to sell six an hour to break even on my time and flat out I can only make three of these in that time. Selling on-line, as described before, is a hassle. “I was going to ship you a box, but I couldn’t find anything to ship it in.”
I’ve considered a narrow box using a small picket for the bottom. Maybe a trial, but this design is nearing the point of no return. The box gets proportionately stronger but the really narrow boxes (same width are a button box) become less handy. I’ve found most boxes that need such strength or suited for tools and parts at least 10” long, which requires a 12” box so you can reach your finger inside.
Here is another glimpse at the K-box. But for a ton of experience this is just a fence panel. All the rest is aesthetics that are tricky to pinpoint but I could not have built this box a year ago. This is day 202 of my recovery and I’m not doing great avoiding stress. Not today, anyway. However, this will not improve by my fretting so let me get lost in some programming. More research on FPGAs, it is teaching me a lot about Arduinos, oddly, because that is what is inside the Arduino chip.
Lingo is not that bad and it is sometimes required. But rarely at a beginner or intro level, and once again the Internet is full of fried-brains on that count. A tutorial for newbies is not the place to demo your jargon. I want to program a chip, not implement some fabric. I first programmed a computer over fifty years ago and I know this game very well. I’m going to hazard a description of how I think it works, which could be as comical as other beginner’s observations I’ve recorded. Okay, in a regular computer, every input goes through a single CPU one at a time. Use up one and the others sit there in a queue.
This means if you had ten inputs, each would have to wait its turn. And each turn takes one clock cycle. It looks to me like a FPGA could input all ten signals at once and execute them all with a single clock pulse. In a regular computer, you would read the inputs one by one, and store them in memory locations. I note the lack of FPGA memory for this purpose. This material is still over my head.
So I took another easy look at spray painting. I’m satisfied dipping will work well enough. The dip tank is fastest for flat panels and boxes that fit, it is practically instant. Drip is not a big deal as the rough wood soaks up most excess. I have two constraints, the major one being room for only one relatively small tank. The other is a second coat of differing liquid, for instance, poly over stain. Even sun-baked dry stain will slightly discolor the coating noticeably as you dunk more pieces. There are already two situations where I find a second dip less than optimal. One is when you want a very light coat, the other is boxes already built that don’t fit the tank.
Four videos later, I don’t think I want to use a sprayer. Between thinning, straining, cleaning, and all the taping and prep work, plus storage and the need for masks, booths, and dragging around hoses or cords, I’ll pass. Give me an aerosol can which only seems more expensive until you start adding things up. I’ll copy the way the Bearded Viking applies the top coats.
For diversion, I watched a video of that MiG 21 captured intact by the South Africans. This was the Soviets top fighter and it was not a tech marvel. It was one of the simplest jet fighters of all time, carrying minimal navigation gear, rather an actual Shell road map. The video showed nothing new, but reminded me of the sad embargo the US placed on South Africa, how it made me lose faith in our policies. We should have been helping the country fight an invasion. Thirty years ago, South Africa was a nuclear power with a space program. Today, there is garbage blowing in the streets. Diversity.
Sometimes I regret not having a picture filing system, but I never thought I’d own a hundred thousand digital pics. In a way, I do have a system in that the date and topic is in the name, and humans who figure prominently are often nicknames. This last trip, JZ “remembers” we always went to Naples in his pickup. Not so, I like women who like Cadillacs. But I cannot find even one such photo, although some of them are almost iconic in this blog. Like the time he bought out the Dollar Store. He recalls that, but not standing at the door of the Cadillac. One of the most accurately documented of life stories and I can’t locate the photos. What computer era?
ADDENDUM
In one of my on-line reads, I’m in a back-and-forth with some lawyer who has a warped concept of what a Libertarian is. Lawyers tend to take any political view to the extreme, to where most behavior always breaks down and they can finger-point. It’s interesting to see how he considers his views the popular, whereas I am the guy that published the scale to tell how “Jewish” your law professors were. If they stress right and wrong, your score is 10, if they see only the legalities as money opportunities, you score 0. I consider my view practical.
A Libertarian is simply someone who believes all participation should be voluntary. Other ways to say the same thing is a Libertarian believes in minimal government. That you may not compel others to pay for things.they don’t want. That freedom is self-limiting, you don’t need to police most issues. Always within reason, I stress, we do need police for those who go to extremes or cause harm. But not otherwise.
It turns out the lawyer, like so many, doesn’t know what a Libertarian even is. He confuses it with that pack of dodos who call themselves the Libertarian party in America, but are a ridiculous clown show. It seems they confuse closely spelled words, like “liberal” and “libertine”, which are not at all the same thing. Libertarians highly respect the rule of law and individual responsibilities.
He brought up the example of the drowning man, once again an extreme most people never see. Do we rescue him? To the lawyer, the only correct answer is an unconditional yes or you are a killer. To a Libertarian, the correct answer is yes, but later, depending on the circumstances, send him the bill. Was he the victim of unforeseen circumstances, or did he get drunk and go swimming alone at night?
The real argument is who should pay for self-inflicted harm? It’s a familiar stance for me. You are free to help just about anybody with your own money. You are not free to compel others, that’s why you have to steal it. And call it taxation.
Last Laugh
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