Ross of Ottawa @ottaross@mastodon.social

I put off ordering circuit boards for a project for a couple of weeks for no good reason, but in the mean time I've thought of a good enhancement to add.

#Procrastination for the win.
#Maker #PCB

Someone used the words "skulls of aliens" in a comment and I now have an earworm on repeat of David Bowie's "Young Americans" with those alternate words in the chorus.

You're welcome.

Poetry publication shares a poem with two spelling mistakes.

I consider – did the poet do it on purpose for an alternate meaning? Can't see any point that could be made with the errors.

Do I flag them in a reply tweet? I don't like pedantic tweets and don't care about typos in tweets and do my own often. But a published poem? Where every word was supposedly weighed and considered?

As a once publisher of poems, I couldn't let it pass, so flagged two errors. Pillory me if they must.

I'm getting another cup of tea, anyone else want some?

Duolingo seems pretty good. Thankfully it started me a little ways beyond beginner, though the first level has been a bit ridiculously easy.

It assumed I knew hiragana characters (which I do) so that was nice.

It has been drilling me on katakana, though I'm pretty solid there too - have appreciated the review though.

Now I'm picking up some kanji too!

Thought I'd put a little effort into resurrecting my rudimentary Japanese since spare time is plentiful.

I've learned it three times, ea time starting almost from scratch.

The only bit I always retain is ordering sushi.😀

On the third time, I put a good effort into reading the characters - but have never made progress with the Kanji characters (Japanese has 3 char sets, Kanji being the chinese-like ones).

Signed up with DuoLingo, and I have to say it's pretty good as I approach my first week.

Success! I can't believe it all worked and we Earthlings have a new rover on Mars - plus its flying little buddy.

#perseverance #ingenuity

Okay - tuning in to #Perseverance landing. Hope it survives the elaborate entry, descent and landing scheme. That sky-crane thing is pretty complex. If something is going to fail, it will probably be that.

Attempted a sunny walk at lunch time. Of course the sun went away just as I stepped out. I'm sure it'll be back shortly, now that I'm inside.

Have been waiting for today's landing of the #Perseverance rover for YEARS.

Feels like things are conspiring against me to ruin this day, but I don't want to miss this.

Hey, some days a bad person goes away. That's probably a good thing.

Big snow day here in South Ontario. Then again, ain't nobody needs to go nowhere, so what evs.

That done, cracking open some Prosecco and a paté, then we'll bake a Camembert with herbs. Cin cin folks.

Baked a bunch of sausage buns, and a couple of baguettes for supper.

Frigid cold, but pleasant in a warm car for breakfast along the Ottawa River.

Stark snow and distant open water on the rapids. #winter #snow #BnW

Revision 2 of the dummy #coinCell wire up.

It's much better. No trouble at all to thread the 24 gauge wire thru the channels. Actually kind of fun. :)

Tidying step-by-step up pics and then will publish on #Thingiverse shortly.

Here's a pic of the first print attempt, wired up.

Works okay, but hopefully v2 will be easier to handle.

#electronics #3Dprinting #battery

Some coin-cell applications use connections to opposite faces of the cell, others use connections to the positive face, and the edge for negative.

Hopefully this convoluted design will accommodate both applications.

A peek inside the dummy coin cell (2032). The 24 AWG wire threading is a bit tedious, but I was able to wire a first prototype in a few minutes.

A new version printing now will be a bit easier with more flared access holes.

One thing this will let me do is alter a coin-cell-powered device to use a couple of AA batteries.

The result is 100x battery life in a situation where a coin cell is lasting only a short time (ie outdoors right now where it's very cold).