I collect stupid little cups. These are sometimes called ‘toothpick holders’ or ‘shot glasses’ but I call them stupid little cups. The primary reason I collect stupid little cups is the following.
They are cheap, so I can buy several on a trip and not feel bad about it
They are smaller than coffee cups
They are generally uniform in scale, which means they are easy to display
However, there are not a lot of great options for stupid little cup display settings, because not many people apparently recognize the values I outlined above.
so I took this as a learning opportunity within fusion to design my own modular and stackable stupid little cup holder. The benefit of this design is it’s simple to print, each cubby takes about 1 hour to print. I have LED strips coming from Aliexpress to light the individual cubby, which is why there is a hole at the top.
I had considered building this out of wood, however I discovered the cost of the wood at Home Depot for the dimensions I need (without a table saw) would be $120 for the wood alone and I decided that was much too much for stupid little cups as they serve no practical purpose whatsoever.
Eventually, I would like to swap out the controller from Aliexpress with an arduino and custom code to light up specific glasses at a time, selectable from a menu. For example you might want to illuminate only the shot glasses from the states, for example.
Bergan: Bergan was our first experience of Norway. It was really interesting to see what sort of things they had on shore and I was not sure what to expect in terms of a language barrier, but I quickly learned that everyone I spoke to was able to converse in English better than many folks back home could. This was very helpful. I also discovered that everywhere takes touchless Apple Pay, so while I am able to buy things without a foreign transaction fee, which is very helpful.
The attraction of the day was the funicular. The kids were able to sit in the front area with the operator, so we got a front row view of going up the mountain.
At the top of the hill, there were our first introduction to the many, many troll statues and troll themed ‘stuff’ – Norway really loves souvenir trolls. We found a normal sized playground where the kids had a good time. The kids got ice cream, and we eventually found a really, really cool playground complete with a zip line – Miranda did a great job with that. Henry was unsure of his ability to do it, and I’m pretty okay with that because I thought there was a reasonable chance he’d crack his head open. Henry did climb to the very top of the structure through a wire tube – it looked pretty precarious and I’m glad he was able to muster up the courage to come down because I’m not sure anybody could have gotten him if it came to that.
On the way down, we were placed in the same area so we could look out the rear view window. We walked through a fish market on the way back to the ship, a very interesting look into the local population and how they would get fresh seafood.
Molde: We went to an open air museum in Molde. It was very interesting to see what old timey Norwegians lived like, and there were two houses. One of them had a large room that they only used when the missionaries came to stay with them, and another one didn’t have a floor. Everyone had grass on their roof though, because that keeps the rain out I suppose. Miranda did a good job of taking the GoPro around, I think this is going to be a reoccurring theme. I’m hoping that the video she takes is usable. The kids are often less guarded when there isn’t an adult in the immediate vicinity.
Trondhiem: At the end of this day I was ready for a sea day – we spend three solid days doing a lot of walking so I was tuckered out. In Trondheim we visited a wonderful cathedral that was 1,000 years old. I don’t think I’ve been in a proper building that old before. I know I’ve been in Mexican ruins when I was a kid, but those aren’t functioning today. The cathedral was renovated several times over the course of the century, which would be expected. It was built as a catholic church but was converted to a Lutheran at some point.
After the cathedral, we went to the local fort that was designed to defend against the Swedish. I mapped it and discovered it was half a mile, and I didn’t feel like I could get a taxi cab to go half a mile. Henry wanted to go in the cab because this is a new experience for him, thankfully.
It was only half a mile, but it was half a mile uphill which made it much harder than if it was flat. I’m glad that my stubbornness around cabs did not rub off on grandpa, because that would have been a harder walk for the elderly.
Honningsvag: The morning started off with getting a ‘arctic circle certification’ under the door, which was fun and I think Henry will appreciate it more as he gets older and learns how rare this really is.
This was the first proper excursion we had, and there was a large gift shop right off the boat so I thought both of those things were great. Trondiem had some really good shopping for normal stuff but if you wanted something that said ‘Norway’ on it, Honningsvag is the best place we’ve seen so far.
We went to the north cape, the most northern part of Europe. It was pretty cool to be there, and it was good to have some ‘google maps’ evidence of being so high in the world.
Tromso: I didn’t know what to expect at any of these locations, but Tromso I think was my biggest letdown…so far. We took a princess tour and our tour guide had a habit of making a ‘hmmm’ after each sentence, which got very old very quickly. The weather wasn’t helping and was very foggy. We took a cable car to the top of the mountain, which was straight out of a horror movie. I remember at one point the children were asking if they could run down the path a little bit – there was a resounding ‘no’ from the adults because we could not see more than 30 feet and letting them into the mist was not happening.
Tromso was unfortunate because we were hoping to have some great views out of the cable car and some great views at the top – neither happened, unfortunately. The cable car seemed much safer than others we saw later on the trip, this seemed downright reasonable.
We also saw an arctic cathedral here, which was a bit of a letdown and seemed like a pretty regular church and the just added arctic on the front to fleece tourists out of money.
Andalsnes: We took an excursion into town to see the ‘Troll Wall’ – Norway really likes their trolls. This tour was fine, but mostly ridden in a bus. “time to get off for a quick photo op” was the phrase of the day, and we only got enough time off the bus to check the gift shop and to use the bathroom. Other than that, there was hardly any time for anything. At one of the stops I might have enjoyed an hour, and we were given 15 minutes – not nearly enough time. There was some wonderfully beautiful water that was the most amazing white-blue water I had ever seen.
Alesund: In Alesund we decided to sit on a bus stop for nearly an hour. Because I foolishly did not prepare for this, I did not bring a jacket and so I was not warm. After our bus finally came, we learned it was three quarters of a mile to get to the aquarium from where the boss dropped off. Because I did not have a coat, I was cold on this walk but I did survive. None of the Norwegian towns we visited were great at public infrastructure, but not having a bus going to “Northern Europe’s largest and most unique saltwater aquarium” seemed like an oversight. Perhaps there isn’t the demand. There was a hop on, hop off bus that we could have taken instead but that would have been $40 a person. We called an uber for the way back.
The aquarium was interesting. There was a huge outdoor demonstration of how dams work, so that kids can see what the real world implications of changing the flow of water is. I don’t know if they knew this or not – I prefer when children don’t know they’re learning. They had a lot of fun damming and flooding the areas below.
Olden: In Olden we took an excursion to see the Briksdal glacier. This was probably the most spectacular views I’ve seen on this trip. I was able to take some pretty good photos out of the bus window, and I think I was able to get some great video during the ‘troll car’ ride. The green water from the melted glacier is truly beautiful and does a great job of reflecting the fjords around the canyon. During the troll car ride, I had stared off by thinking that I could do the hike up without the car. Then some time later, I was thinking that I was happy we were taking it up but I might walk down. Eventually, I decided I was happy to take the troll car up and down.
The running theme with the excursions is there’s not enough time. Olden was not an exception, I could probably spend hours here, but that’s impossible with the format of a cruise ship. You get 8 hours in port, and tour operators are always hoping to have two different times, which means they rush you through things.
Brussels: We took a transfer from the cruise port to the town of brunges. This started off chaotic because there was not much in the way of signage for the transfer. When we came up to the bus, it was pulling away so we got to wait for the next bus. This came within about half an hour, but the reoccurring theme of waiting for buses on the trip is perhaps one of the worst aspects of traveling.
The cruise transfer said it would let off in the middle of town, but instead it dropped off a mile from town. I might have mentioned on another day that these small towns don’t have great transportation, and do not have a lot of uber drivers. We ended up walking over a mile to get into the town for the chocolate factory, which went waaaaaay deeper into the history of chocolate than I think anybody needs to know. They did have unlimited included chocolate, that was pretty good. Except there was no water for free or for purchase, so we were all pretty thirsty.
Next we went to the ‘french fry museum’ – and this went deeper into the history of the French fry than anybody would ever want to know, except they did not offer free unlimited French fries. They did have fries for purchase, but at that point it seemed pretty bad.
We finally found a small place to get a Belgium waffle, and then waited a long time for an uber before getting back on the 3rd to last bus.
London: I’m glad that I’ve gotten to see London – I’m not sure if I need to get back here. I have an interesting relationship with large cities. I feel like because I am close to Chicago, I get to experience a world class city and with few exceptions, I don’t see what London would have that Chicago does not. We were not in London long enough to fall in love with the city or anything like that of course, and this was the last stop on a long trip so we were all ready to come home I think.
This trip came right during the peak of the pandemic, which is why we are all wearing masks in the video below.
This was the 2nd Disney World trip with the extended family. Through an amazing website error, we were able to stay at the Grand Floridian for a very, very reasonable price. The Grand Floridian is not a bad hotel by any means, but it is not worth the cost in my opinion when you look at what you’re getting from sticker shock. If you are going to spend that much money you might as well stay at the Polynesian which has a more fun theme than “old stuffy estate.”
The other thing that really puzzles me about the Grand Floridian is there should be soda fountains in each of the hotel buildings. For as much money as it costs to stay there, having access to coffee within the building without needing to walk across the resort seems like a no brainer.
“Get the largest tank you can, it will be easier to stop bad things from happening” is sound enough logic, and realistically true. It’s easy to see videos and photos of these completely gorgeous large reef tanks, with beautiful fish, huge coral colonies and everything looks amazing and so perfect.
My experience was not completely unlike that for about a month or two. I bought a 300 gallon tank off of craigslist for $300 in 2014. I had a fantastic family friend build me a iron stand, because the unique shape of the tank meant plywood wouldn’t be an option. I got inexpensive LED lights that said they could grow coral. It was going to be amazing. I went to my local fish store and bought a frag or two. I brought them home and things looked like they were going great for a good long while. My son was born a bit after the tank was put up, which meant I quickly fell behind on water changes. Soon I’d be overrun with one or more types of nuisance algae. For months at a time the tank looked absolutely terrible, I hated it. I thought “I need to get this out of my house. Nobody would every buy it like this, I need to clean it.”
So I’d spend a week or two fully dedicating myself to the tank. It would look great and I’d think “…I should buy a fish!”
I would slowly start to ignore the tank and rinse and repeat for at least 3 years. Not a great saltwater experience. One of the issues I quickly realized, large tanks are very expensive. Heck small saltwater tanks are expensive. If I was going to do the standard 20% water change every other week or so that would come out to $13 a week or $335 a year in salt. That is an amazing cost for just keeping the tank pristine, and considering my water change system was two 20 gallon trash cans, I’d need to be preforming a water change every 5 days to keep that up. That’s a lot of water changing time and money.
I guess ultimately I knew what I was getting into with the large tank, but I hadn’t really thought it out to have the “huh, do I have $300 a year to spend on salt?”
I was not a good fishkeeper, my fish were ignored and forgotten. I did not want to kill them, and I would actively try to keep them alive but if there was a huge failure I’d be pretty okay with that and be able to say “well, I guess that some things just happen isn’t that sad.”
One day at work I got an alert that the temperature in the tank was higher than it should have been. I ducked out of work and found the return pump had failed, and so I had a choice. Do I let the tank die, go get a new pump for this big tank I didn’t want to the tune of $200ish, or quickly and unexpectedly tear down the big tank and move them into a smaller tank. I got an old 20 gallon tank out of the garage and got to work.
This is probably the single worst photo I’ve ever taken and kept of the tank. This is the last day it was full of water, still covered in hair algae and looking bad.
With the 300 gallon tank down and out the fish were swimming in a 20 gallon long tank from 1997. This tank had been around the block with some scratches and some discoloration on the glass. I was eyeing a different tank and I was looking for something that would fill the space on the ledge while still allowing me to get into the tank to do work. The ledge is a hair over 48 inches of usable tank space, with about an inch against the wall available. This meant I had to get something smaller or find some way to have an internal filter.
I ended up looking at a 33 gallon long. This is not a new super fancy rimless aquarium so it was pretty economical compared to the super minimalist aquariums displayed as centerpieces but that’s okay. The dimensions are perfect for the ledge, 48 inches long, 12 inches across and 13 inches tall. This allows plenty of overhead room to get into the tank. It’s exactly the same footprint as a 55 gallon, except a bit shorter.
I found FIJI aquatics and their boxes, I’m using that as the internal sump and I will say that it’s a very good looking black box and almost exactly what I was hoping for. Admittedly, if I was better at DIY stuff I’d be able to build a similar box but this just went right into the tank as is.
Grafana is one of those things that I had tried it out at least ten times. I would install a docker, follow a guide and when it wouldn’t work immediately I promptly gave up.
Until I didn’t. During the pandemic, I spent a solid weekend ignoring my family and configuring Prometheus and Grafana, lots of trial and error and lots of do overs later, I have something that I’m pretty pleased with. Using a reverse proxy through my Synology, I have it set to Grafana.Digilan.org but you can’t get there unless you’re on the network. Which given the audience of this blog, there’s actually a fair chance you are.
This dashboard went through at least a dozen changes, after learning about variables I created a separate dashboard for the remote sites once I realized not everything would fit on one page anyway. This page captures just about everything important on my network at this point, though I did see another guy using Home Assistant to capture information from homekit. That would be sort of fun to put on there.
This post is from January 2020, apparently I forgot about it and left it in draftsville.
I have a love / hate relationship with my drop ceiling in my basement. On one hand, it’s allowed more than one squirrel somewhere to live for a few days. On the other hand, it’s made routing wires and hoses through my ceiling possible and downright easy.
I was able to route the wires for the AI Prime 16HD’s through the ceiling and into the server room where the apex Neptune is. These lights are unique compared to the older generation because they are Bluetooth only and not wifi. From a security perspective that’s great because that means you need to be near the tank to turn the lights on or off, and let’s be realistic I have no need to change the color of the aquarium when I’m at work and after setting the tank on the schedule, I’ll never change it but I can still show off the lights qualities with the app.
This also means I don’t need to think about VLANS and put lights onto the Jarvis VLAN with the rest of the IoT things. Ultimately that’s a very good thing but admittedly a little bit of a letdown for no good reason at all.
Ultimately I’m very happy with the new lights, they should consume a little bit less power and in a house that has a server rack burning through 300w it’s good to cut corners where I can.
My sister bought a house, so I decided to help with some overkill networking. I wired my home when I bought it with some help, and I’ve since run a cable here or there at home, mostly around the basement.
The shopping list was as such –
2,000 feet of cat6 cable
Ubiquiti Edgerouter
Ubiquiti Unifi 24 port switch
2 unifi AP-lite
patch panel
8U wall rack
Synology disk station
what honestly made the project possible for an novice like myself is their sub-basement. I called it the Demon Hole when I saw it, but it’s been since renamed “The Mosh Pit” by the people who actually live there, which is fine. I guess. This is an unfinished area under about half of the house that allowed us to run all of cables to this location, and then over to where the network rack went. We ended up using a LOT more cable than expected, but we were able to get the job done with all of the wires.
In typical fashion, I did not take a lot of photos of the project while we were working on it. It took two 12 hour days with two of us working on this – climbing into attics, other attics, and spending a lot of time on our hands and knees in the mosh pit.
The other thing that was helpful, the previous owners had run a single cat5 cable to their kitchen, where they decided to put the cable modem. We used that to run a string through the wall, which then ran our first cables.
This was after we ran about half of the cables. Using hooks and zip ties, I suspended them from the ceiling so they weren’t all just hanging down loosey goosey.
You’re going to need to put some holes in your walls, that’s a given. Using these handy dandy super cheap brackets from your local hardware store, you can screw in your mounting bracket to look like a professional did it.
I taught my sister how to punch down keystone jacks – she’s a natural and has a real future in low voltage electrical.
We ended up filling a lot more of the switch than I thought we would. Though a lot of these aren’t being used, they will be ready for the future.
One of the more fun and ridiculous aspects of this network I’ve built is the cloud key that the Ubiquiti devices at my sister tie into is at my house. The Synology has software updates and package updates controlled from my main synology featured in a different post.
The game room has always had the goal of being where consoles go to retire. The idea is that while an older console might sit at home unplayed for decades, it just might get used at the Big House for the novelty of playing the original Halo game on the original Xbox, in all of that 2001 glory.
The previous media cabinet was not designed for game consoles, and I’m not entirely sure what it was designed for since the doors on either side of it were not tall enough for a DVD case to stand so it’s not like you could have loaded it up with your DVD’s.
I found this laundry cabinet on Wayfair.com and decided it would be perfect for the setup. I wish it had more shelves, but perhaps I can add some down the line.
There is a 5 port HDMI switcher and a 3 port Component cable switcher. The Original Xbox, Wii and PlayStation 2 are going through the component switcher while the NES is being converted to HDMI. It’s not perfect but it works and it’s actually really satisfying to play Mario on the original Nintendo system like it was intended way back in 1990.
