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Build Log: Offcut Cart
After dismantling my plywood cart to make an indoor plywood storage case, I no longer have a way to collate and organize offcuts and scraps. This has led to a lot of material being leaned against any available surface and subsequently sliding, falling over, blocking something I want to get to or … all of the above. I needed to get an offcut cart, fast!
Build Log: Indoor Plywood Storage
The biggest downside of working with plywood is, well, working with plywood. Or rather, everything up to that point: getting it, handling it, breaking it down and storing it. By sheer luck, our garage has a nice straight-line transition into the house where we have a long wall which would make for a great spot to store plywood. Only if I can keep it pretty…
Wicked Thai Soup
I stumbled upon Wicked Thai soup as a wine-pairing during an icewine festival. Unfortunately (for icewine sales), I was far more interested in the soup rather than the icewine. I tried a few variations of this soup and they are all wonderful and belly-warming in the winter!
Worth It (2023.1)
In the second post on this series, I want to reflect back on some things, big and small that have made a notable quality of life improvements in my work space.
Security Audit
Over the year-end break, I moved my password manager away from LastPass. I didn’t move for security reasons but more so for usability issues and the security issues were purely an unfortunate coincidence. I used this transition as an opportunity to do a full audit of the credentials and I stumbled across some fun (read: annoying) discoveries.
Fixing Synology ‘Untrusted Certificate’
For the last few years now, every time I log into the management portal for my NAS, I have to click through the annoying ‘this page is untrusted’ warnings from Chrome. Enough is enough, I finally set aside some time to fix this.
Most of the guides online seem to be built around getting LetsEncrypt hooked up (which I don’t want) or they were written with DSM6 in mind…
Sadly, DSM7+ removed the ability to easily generate a self-signed cert so I had to do it ‘the long way’
Worth It (2022.1)
Making a shop space our own is mostly an exercise in taking inspiration from other shops and adopting products and practises to our unique space and scenario. With 'Worth It', I want to shed some light on products, practises and small touches that might be overlooked in favor of the more glamorous aspects of setting up a shop.
Upgrading my Networking Gear (2022.4)
In an earlier installment, I tackled “what if the ISP goes down?” and in this update, I tackle the question “what if the power goes out?” We have a UPS to catch the network for short blips, but what about extended outages? I wanted to get a way to maintain multi-hour uptime without a lot of infrastructure rework/expense all while keeping it super easy to implement.
Shop Talk: Retrofitting my Snowblower
We have a gas-powered 2-stage blower but last year, I got a cordless 1-stage snowblower for ‘free’. I made a specific point to use this as my primary snowblower as much as possible so see if it was up to the task (spoiler: it mostly was).
This rubber-paddle based unit comes up short in one area and I’m hoping that swapping out the auger will correct that shortcoming.
Epic Triple-Cooked Fries
Every time I’ve made these fries, it’s been a total hit: they have just the right amount of outer-crunchiness vs inner-softness. It’s definitely a bit more work than throwing some frozen fries in the oven but one thing is for sure: once you go down the path of making fries like this, you won’t be able to go back!
Upgrading my Networking Gear (2022.3)
In the last installment, I tackled redundancy and made preparations for getting the final bits of networking laid down. In this update: the last of the cable has been laid down and all of the major pieces of equipment are in place, so I can take a bit of time to finally give some attention to improving the day-to-day usability of the network.
Shop Talk: Garage Door Tune-up
I’m not quite sure what motivated me to clean the garage door but here we are. I think this was originally motivated by wanting to do a wipedown of the brace bars and finding out that it wasn’t a simple ‘wipe and done’. Once I cleaned the support bars, the rest was a inevitable rabbit hole.
Build Log: Basement Mega-pantry
Unfinished basements tend to become dumping grounds: where seasonal supplies, boxes, foodstuffs and supplies go to live out their lives in darkness. I wanted to make this space brighter, easier to use and just nicer before it got out of hand and fulfilled its destiny of becoming a dumping ground.
A smartwatch as a notification relay
The snappiness of my new phone was a bit out of place with the sluggishness of my old smartwatch so I set out to ‘just take a look’ at what options are on the market. Just looking at the headline features of almost every smartwatch out there, you’d think the user-base consists entirely of olympians and/or sleep-apnea patients. Thankfully my needs are a bit simpler: just reliably relay notifications to my watch.
A New Phone Adventure
I’ve been planning on a phone upgrade in the next year or so but my wife had the misfortune of breaking her phone recently. This was a perfect excuse to push that schedule up a bit sooner. It was a bit of an adventure picking out a new phone and then dealing with the various challenges in getting the phone into what I would consider a ‘usable’ state.
Data Loss
Two is one and one is none, right? Or at least that’s the mantra of preparedness as I understand it. Recently, I had the fun opportunity to have multiple component hardware failures. Now that I’m back up and running, this makes for a good time to take a closer look at my backup strategy and how I can improve it.
Upgrading my Networking Gear (2022.2)
I made the transition from consumer-centric networking gear to a more purpose-built setup a few months ago and there's nothing quite like living with a setup to highlight all the little fixes, tweaks and upgrades that you'd like to implement. And there definitely been a whole bunch of changes, both visible and behind the scenes and I think we're at a stable enough 'milestone' that I think I can recap where the journey has taken me.
Build Log: Improved Miter Saw Station (Mk III)
Ever since building, using and ultimately, living with my previous miter saw station, there were some quirks about that I didn’t like. Now that I’m in a more permanent space, I can finally take the time to build out a more permanent miter saw station that improves upon all the shortcomings of the previous.
Build Log: Hanging up Power Cleaners
It’s great having a cordless power-cleaner that you can use anywhere, but man, keeping them out of the way so you’re not tripping all over it or having them sprawled all over is a huge pain. I finally got tired of this and set out to just hang them up and out of the way
Build Log: Battery Organization
My power-tool and outdoor-tool collection spans a few different battery systems and I’ve either been tripping-over chargers or tumbling batteries over the years. With this shop, I specifically set aside some space dedicated to getting this under control.