What have you fettled today?

[David Martin]

Finally got round to hooking the CD drive parts up to a microcontroller and seeing if I could get it to go. Not sure what the power rating on the stepper motor is but it was getting rather hot when driving a coil continuously so I should probably put some resistance inline with it. It did (as always) necessitate buying some new parts but that is always the case, is it not?

[IanN]

Over the last few days (where I could grab an hour) have fitted a 12-32 cassette and replaced my derailleur with a 9 speed long cage MTB one to suit. A dodgy knee and pretensions to 400K+ made me want a bail-out option!

New chain. New rear gear cable and housing. Stripped and greased rear hub. (in reverse order)

The new dynahub needs wiring in now 

[nikki]

2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

[Butterfly]

2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

cooooooooooooooool

[nikki]

2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

cooooooooooooooool

Hedging my bets because I'm not sure which of those is getting you excited

[Wowbagger]

2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

Surely that should have been yesterday?

Todays' ought to be:-

3 French hens, 2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

[David Martin]

We have had teh broken end of a knife for some time. I finally got round to reshaping it to make life easier.
from this:

pre-chestnut knife by davidmamartin, on Flickr
to this:

Chestnut knife by davidmamartin, on Flickr

Much better for scoring and suchlike purposes.
It could probably do with a bit more extreme shaping to make a better 'hook'.

[nikki]

2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

Surely that should have been yesterday?

Todays' ought to be:-

3 French hens, 2 shelving units and a camera obscura.

He's a right proper romantic that true love, ain't he!   

[TimO]

I just prepared the commuter to use it tomorrow, on The Fridays last ride of the year, which is a bit anomalous because it's not on a Friday, not a night ride, and a lot shorter than the other rides (this one is planned to be around 12 miles).

I had to move the seat pin mounted rear light higher up, so it wasn't obscured by a rack pack, and shift the front light mount slightly sideways, so I could put a GPS mount on the stem.

I've also got batteries, and lights plugged in charging, which is not necessarily essential, since cycling back from All Bar One shouldn't take much more than an hour, even if I manage to get more inebriated than is sensible.  Still, paranoid preparations don't generally cause too many problems.

[David Martin]

I had planed to do a tour de garage on the rollers but a rather poorly timed oven breakdown has left me doing other things. I will be fettling an oven shortly.

[Vince]

Repurposed an old cable previously used for ISDN and phone as a network cable. A task not simplified by having 4 white wires, which were unidentifiable once separated from their twisted pair and not helped by a crimper stripper that partially cut through wires.
Now trying to find a Linux media server that will stream to an xbox.

[tiermat]

Repurposed an old cable previously used for ISDN and phone as a network cable. A task not simplified by having 4 white wires, which were unidentifiable once separated from their twisted pair and not helped by a crimper stripper that partially cut through wires.
Now trying to find a Linux media server that will stream to an xbox.

Twonky ftw. Iirc the Xbox will work as a upnp receiver, so twonky wins hands down.

For my part I have connected a sound bar to the TV, increasing the sound quality exponentially! Whoever thought the best place for speakers on a TV is on the back, facing backwards, needs shooting!

[Kim]

A pile of cargo-cult Arduino code that doesn't work.   

[David Martin]

Taking a hammer and chisel to the pleistocene deposits inside the oven. I can actually see enamel in places now.. The replacement element should be delivered on Tuesday.

[Chris S]

I removed huge chunks of East Anglia from the tandem, courtesy of five days of the Rapha Festive 500.

Degreased the drive train, checked brakes and stuff. It needs a proper strip-down and deep clean, but as ever - another audax looms on the calendar.

[David Martin]

Started fracking the burnttoacrisp grease layer in the oven. Tempted to try a blowtorch and paint scraper.

[Vince]

Repurposed an old cable previously used for ISDN and phone as a network cable. A task not simplified by having 4 white wires, which were unidentifiable once separated from their twisted pair and not helped by a crimper stripper that partially cut through wires.
Now trying to find a Linux media server that will stream to an xbox.

Twonky ftw. Iirc the Xbox will work as a upnp receiver, so twonky wins hands down.

Result!
I had previously used Twonky with a Streamium box, but it was a long way out of date. New version worked fine.

[closetleftie]

Yesterday: Bodged mudguards onto a frame with plenty clearance but no mudguard mounts. (Planet X XLS 'cross bike). Took blimmin ages and lots of cable ties. Secure and rattle-free but cosmetically not great. I will have to have a bit of a think. 

I also cleaned & re-oiled the drivetrain on my commuting bike. Standard Operating Procedure at ours is to do this outside the back gate with a hose, cold water anna bucket. But Mrs L and the kids are away. It was cold. And the house bathroom is effectively next door to the garage.... 



Today I will mostly be fettling the laundry and a stack of paperwork that's been building up for months. 

[JonBuoy]

Fettled my mountainbike into a singlespeed version when the mech hanger snapped.  In the middle of a field.  In the mud. 30 minutes into yesterday's 3 hour trailquest.

It was dark by the time I got home and hosed off the results of my mud rustling so I haven't checked the rest of the bike over yet for further damage.  Hopefully the frangible hanger has done its job.

[alexb]

Cleaned the transmission on the commuter, then pumped up the tyres last night. I was so glad of it today!
I also spent about two hours carving butter knives as a warm-up project for some spoon carving in the new year. All these fallen trees need to be used up somehow!

[Tim Hall]

Just finished fixing The Boy's laptop, wot had died from a poorly fan. Scored a replacement off Ebay for a few quid and using the excellent Lenovo hardware guides removed this, undid that, dropped the other and put the new fan in. Note, not a complete cooling module, just the fan, so some amateur metal working was required.  Even put new heat sink paste on.

Tools used: Tiddly cross head screwdriver, slightly larger cross head screwdriver, small pliers, Mora Clipper knife. No swearing, one glass of red wine.

Only two bits left over, both of which The Boy had removed earlier.

I call that a result.

[David Martin]

Nearly finished  cleaning the oven. It has been soaking in a high strength hydroxide gel with a few surfactants (oven pride) overnight and, with the aid of a paint scraper, I have managed to get the worst of the concretions off. As it is a floor standing cooker/hob, doing all of this at floor level is hard work, especially trying to remove black gunge off black enamel in a dark oven.

Just the grids to go, then when the new element arrives I should have a fully working oven again.

[matthew]

Set the church clock going again, the normal winder is away for the Holiday period and had stopped the clock rather an ask someone else to wind it for the duration. Had to get the hands and chimes back in line with each other but it is now set and ready to ring in the new year.

The went through the sound desk channels for each of the radio mics to reset the EQs to the resonant frequencies of the mic --> Desk --> amp --> speaker loops so hopefullt they won't be 'ringing' quite so much in the future.

[David Martin]

Finished cleaning the oven. The grids shine like new (mostly) and much of the enamel inside is visible. Back in place, burned in and now happily roasting the joint we would have had on Sunday.

[mcshroom]

Fitted some Tektro 520 cantis to the front of the Horizon, which will hopefully fix the judder issue it had with the Oryx's it had on there before. Also changed the bar tape and saddle from white to brown.

It looks like the rear mech has got bent when I bashed it the other day so that might need replacing with a new one soon, and it needs a new chain and cassette fitting. I also think I'll fit the front rack as a statement of intent for the coming year.