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The Geeky Nerdy Project Page


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3 hours ago, Kupar said:

I was looking at this thread the other day too, and thinking that we hadn't posted much here recently ... clearly the winter (for us in the northern hemisphere) obviously hasn't been a particularly productive time when it comes to tinkering around with nerdy projects.

But here's a not-very-geeky/nerdy contribution, just because I love an Excel chart. This is for my attempt to do 2800 press-ups in February. I confess part of my motivation is to see the chart develop over the month lol. (The dip is a couple of days' rest after I gave blood 🙂.) 

 

Picture1.png

That's way too much exercise!!   No way could I do that, but maybe it should inspire me to at least do a bit more than I do!  Nice chart though.

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Perhaps a step beyond geeky-nerdy...?

Backyard foundry.  Simplistically... That is melting metals at quite high temperatures and pouring them into a mould to make a metal object. A Metal Casting. Might take the form of something aesthetic of functional or a bit of both. Eg a plaque.

In the way I do it now, started a few yrs back wanting something that at the time that seeming nobody could-would  do for me, at least at a sane price. Long story, but interesting journey.

Not a hobby as such, just something I now do from time to time. Not everybody's idea of fun doing weird dangerous industrial stuff in the back garden. But I kinda like doing it 🙂

A couple of pics to give the idea..

 

A Bronze metal pour at  circa1150dec C ( 2100degF)

A plaque casting fresh out the mould in Aluminium but way too hot to touch for a while. The lumpy bit sticking out of the side is the left over bit where the molten metal was poured in from.

A finished and painted plaque

 

BzPour.thumb.jpg.50f3b562c9ff5757a8b6dd4d2900911d.jpg

LRP.jpg

MilSpecOliveLR.jpg

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6 hours ago, Euro said:

Backyard foundry. 

Hey,  brilliant!   I really want to learn to do this one day.   My hobby is learning milling and lathe work in my home machine shop,  and casting would go with this really well. 

A bit scared of handling crucibles though,  as I have problems with my back and I would not want it to cut loose at the wrong moment.

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7 hours ago, Euro said:

Perhaps a step beyond geeky-nerdy...?

Backyard foundry.  Simplistically... That is melting metals at quite high temperatures and pouring them into a mould to make a metal object. A Metal Casting. Might take the form of something aesthetic of functional or a bit of both. Eg a plaque.

In the way I do it now, started a few yrs back wanting something that at the time that seeming nobody could-would  do for me, at least at a sane price. Long story, but interesting journey.

Not a hobby as such, just something I now do from time to time. Not everybody's idea of fun doing weird dangerous industrial stuff in the back garden. But I kinda like doing it 🙂

A couple of pics to give the idea..

 

A Bronze metal pour at  circa1150dec C ( 2100degF)

A plaque casting fresh out the mould in Aluminium but way too hot to touch for a while. The lumpy bit sticking out of the side is the left over bit where the molten metal was poured in from.

A finished and painted plaque

 

BzPour.thumb.jpg.50f3b562c9ff5757a8b6dd4d2900911d.jpg

LRP.jpg

MilSpecOliveLR.jpg

Wonderful! Thank you for sharing this 🙂

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Not a nerdy project in itself, but a funny moment that happened to me when working on one (a mental health growth web application for work) that I wanted to share. Don't know how many of you are familiar with Docker but long story short, it's a software that offers a command line interface. One of the commands is docker-compose. I wanted to run the project on my machine using docker-compose build today, and this what my half asleep morning brain still on autopilot came up with:

658669138_obrzok.thumb.png.0c802029039c233ed8369b74dc8001a5.png

I know this is just the most immature thing but I've giggling about it for hours the whole day today   🤣  🤣

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1 minute ago, gldenwetgoose said:

Looking at the keyboard layout,  I guess there are lots of times people have tried to invoke a 'focker-compose',  and probably a few had their access restricted for attempting a 'fucker-compose' ?

You get your acocunt suspended for that, yes 😉

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2 minutes ago, gldenwetgoose said:

Looking at the keyboard layout,  I guess there are lots of times people have tried to invoke a 'focker-compose',  and probably a few had their access restricted for attempting a 'fucker-compose' ?

Oh that hasn't happened to me yet, but I can totally see that it's possible as well 🤣

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20 minutes ago, D-K said:

Wow. I didn't know this. Seems a bit extreme in my opinion 🤔 

No, no! You can’t get your account suspended for accidentally typing a rude word, I was making a puerile joke about the word “cunt”, and now I’ve had to explain it, which means to the extent it was funny before, it now isn’t 

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2 minutes ago, oliver2 said:

No, no! You can’t get your account suspended for accidentally typing a rude word, I was making a puerile joke about the word “cunt”, and now I’ve had to explain it, which means to the extent it was funny before, it now isn’t 

Sorry, didn't realize. Docker in general does some weird things so I wouldn't put this past it 😅

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This isn't my nerdy project, so not me in the video...    But I can relate to it...

 

Then again - I do like my coffee to be still hot when it's delivered.   And I can think of quite a few better engineering solutions.

Putting a coffee machine in the room where coffee is required for one.

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1 hour ago, gldenwetgoose said:

This isn't my nerdy project, so not me in the video...    But I can relate to it...

 

Then again - I do like my coffee to be still hot when it's delivered.   And I can think of quite a few better engineering solutions.

Putting a coffee machine in the room where coffee is required for one.

This is lovely 🙂 

I particularly like that (a) he made some silly mistakes ... like I would have done, and (b) it took him so long to stop the cup falling off

But ... it's not a funicular, and even if it was, it's *fun*icular, not *vern*icular!!

Thanks for sharing 🙂 

Edited by Kupar
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1 hour ago, oliver2 said:

That would be massively improved by removing the censor blur, canned laughter and silly 

That would be so much funnier without blurring the boobs. The looks on those faces are priceless though.

Edited by Johnboy777
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On 2/26/2023 at 8:16 AM, gldenwetgoose said:

This isn't my nerdy project, so not me in the video...    But I can relate to it...

 

Then again - I do like my coffee to be still hot when it's delivered.   And I can think of quite a few better engineering solutions.

Putting a coffee machine in the room where coffee is required for one.

Love this, but I can see several easy improvements which would make it better.  First of all the stopping of the loco is by complete cut of the voltage causing it to jolt badly, nearly throwing the truck off the track at one point.  Each of the stops could have either a controlled reduction in voltage, a pulse width modulated control to reduce the speed or even a simple capacitor which would allow it to roll to a stop rather than jolt.  A bit of experimentation may be required to get the stopping point to be accurate.  Same also applies for starting off which is very jolting.

Also, the route of the track straight across the middle of the kitchen must be annoying if actually using the kitchen.  Maybe move the coffee machine to the side near the elevator - it as has been said previously just put the coffee machine on the room where the coffee is drunk.

I guess another expansion could be to have the track go to various rooms with various control points so you can order coffee from wherever you are. 

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11 minutes ago, Alfresco said:

Love this, but I can see several easy improvements which would make it better.  First of all the stopping of the loco is by complete cut of the voltage causing it to jolt badly, nearly throwing the truck off the track at one point.  Each of the stops could have either a controlled reduction in voltage, a pulse width modulated control to reduce the speed or even a simple capacitor which would allow it to roll to a stop rather than jolt.  A bit of experimentation may be required to get the stopping point to be accurate.  Same also applies for starting off which is very jolting.

I thought exactly the same.  A simple MOSFET or other power transistor driven by a PWM would work perfectly. 
And then the other area for improvement - mounting and electrically driving a servo to mechanically operate a switch that applies electrical power to a motor…  when instead it’d be far easier to just replace the switch with another semiconductor device. And that would allow soft start of that motor too. 

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