Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

Maybe you’ve heard, it’s all over the interwebs – I’m getting married to MariaG.  In keeping with my deeply held principles of “why do something the easy way if I can learn new stuff instead”, I started organizing using a whole bunch of Google Docs spreadsheets.  While I use Google Docs all the time, my principal use of spreadsheets is as a gigantic table.  It turns out that they’re also pretty good at being a calculator.  And, thanks to our Google overlords, we can also bring data from the web into our spreadsheets.

While the first spreadsheet I made was a guest list, the second (and more interesting one, in my opinion) was a scheduler.  Several very important guests are on academic schedules, whether as teachers or students, and of course no two of them appear to be the same.  Having decided to try for a Saturday event, and having selected the location (big enough to accommodate the entirety of the draft guest list), I made a tool to help narrow down the candidate days.  It looks like this:

So the idea here is that I want to let the spreadsheet do the work of identifying all candidate dates and hunting down some useful information to use in making the decision.  Given any set of start and end dates, it will identify the first Saturday (hardcoded at the moment) in the range and every following Saturday.  Then it will go look up in the Old Farmer’s Almanac (http://www.almanac.com/) the temperature, rain/snow, and wind for that day last year.  It’s not perfect, but I like where it’s going.  If you want to play with the formulas or copy it for your own use, you can grab the template here.

Most of the stuff in this spreadsheet is run-of-the-mill formulas and number crunching that you can do just by looking at a calendar, but what puts this into the “useful” category is Google’s “importXML” function.  While maintaining the well-ordered and well-understood spreadsheet functions like rows, columns, formulas, etc., it also allows me to operate on data pulled from arbitrary URLs using XPath functions.  I’m no power user but I’ve run across XPath before, and it’s pretty neat: it’s basically a way to navigate to a particular element or set of elements in an XML document with highly configurable granularity.  Since the Old Farmer’s Almanac website is conveniently rendered in XHTML (thanks!), and the data is available through RESTful and deterministic URLs (again, thanks!), it’s a snap to extract the info I need and pop it into the cells.  You could easily see how this could be useful; more historic data and predictive data as well as charts would quickly make this a great tool for picking dates for all kinds of activities such as picnics, camping trips, etc.  Hopefully it’ll also help us with the wedding planning.

Enjoy!

As some of you have no doubt sampled, we’re playing around with homebrew beer.  It’s all turned out drinkable, and some of it was downright delicious, but it’s been mostly luck.

Our beer supplies have come mostly from William’s Brewing, and although I don’t have any other datapoints, I’ve been pleased with the ingredients, equipment, and service.  The instructions are clear and straightforward, which is probably why things have turned out so well.  But there’s one thing we haven’t been following: the brewing temperature requirements.

Temperature is a major factor in the brewing process.  We’ve been brewing ales, which are relatively forgiving, but too hot or too cold can impair the yeast activities or impart strange flavors to the beer.  We’ve been leaving the beer to ferment in a cabinet in the kitchen, so that it would be in a cool dry dark place, and hopefully brew well.  But in truth, we have no idea what temperature it is in there.  Sure, I could buy a thermometer… or I could use this as an excuse to buy more microcontrollers.

The result is the “Beerbug”.  Right now, it’s an Arduino mounted in a cigar box, placed in the brewing cabinet.  It logs temperatures every five minutes and wirelessly sends it to another Arduino, which sends it over USB to a laptop computer, which uses a Python script to read the temperature data and logs it in a Google Docs spreadsheet, which then updates a line chart, which you can see at http://mattborn.net/beerbug.

The source and some of the technical how-to is on at http://github.com/mattborn/beerbug.

My 1984 Honda Nighthawk 700S came with some added character, including a burnt out light behind the tach.  Here’s my how-to on changing the bulb.

1. Get the right tools for the job
   You will need a 10mm ratchet or wrench and a Phillips head screwdriver, as well as a replacement bulb. My bulb came from Honda with part number 37237-SA5-003. If you’re not using stock parts, it was also labeled as “Stanley 158″ which might help you find it.
2. Be safe
   Always do electrical work with the key removed and the bike left in “lock” or “off”. Do not do electrical work with the ignition in the “park” position. It is still possible to get zapped if you touch the wrong wires, but it is probable that you will get zapped unless you leave the ignition in the “off” or “locked” position.
3. Remove the nuts from the brace at the bottom-front of the front cover
   Using your 10mm ratchet, remove the nuts (x2) attaching the brace to the front cover.
4. Remove the bolts from the frame on the inside left and right edges of the front cover
   Using your screwdriver, remove the bolts (x2) attaching the front cover to the frame assembly. On my bike, I had to nudge aside the hydraulics to even see the bolts, much less unscrew them. The front panel including the headlight will probably fall off at this point. Mine was attached to the frame with a wire but you may not be so lucky. If it doesn’t…
5. Remove the front panel from the frame
   Tug, pry, cajole or otherwise entice the front panel off of the frame. To the best of my knowledge you should be able to freely move the panel about at this point. There should be wiring to the headlight and a safety wire but these should not restrict your freedom of movement.
6. Pull the bulb assembly from the back of the instrument panel
   Using your fingers, pull firmly back on the rubber tab on the back of the bulb. There are two of these located on the extreme edges of the panel, so it should be pretty obvious which one you want to replace. I don’t recommend using a pliers to grip the rubber tab, nor do I recommend pulling on the wires.
7. Replace the bulb
   Extract the bulb from the sock by pulling gently but firmly on the glass. Replace with the new one. Mine was idiot-proofed so as long as you seat it properly in the sock it should work. After you have inserted the new bulb in the sock, I recommend that you put the key in the ignition and turn it to “on” to check that it works.
8. Put it all back together
   If you end up with parts left over you have probably screwed up.