I was cleaning out my car and found a small toy plastic spider. I suddenly realized that if I were to hit it with a heat-gun, I could bend the legs into any pose I wanted. So I printed out a tree stump from Thingiverse # 3033820 scaled appropriately to be a stand, and bent the spider legs so that it would stand on the stump. After that, I just had to paint it….
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I’ve been very happy with this 28mm Cobra model from Thingiverse. Even printed on my low end FDM printer it retains enough texture so that dry brushing works well to accent the scales. I used a heat gun to rotate the left model’s head 90 degrees in relation to it’s body, and the center model’s tail into a loop so that the three figures look slightly different, but mostly the color choices are the defining differences.
I 3D printed and painted this Slurk from ClayRade’s Thingiverse # 4417796. The print worked well even on my low end FDM printer (I used the version with “Drool” to act as support for the fangs, but cut the connection to leave the fangs free standing).
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The number of detected COVID-19 cases has been flat or going up for the last five weeks. The latest week had a 50% increase (from 1002 cases to 1503 cases), up from a low of 673 cases in the second week of November.
Orange County FL’s new case positivity rate is 4.5% (below the Florida State average of 5.4% in the same time period), but is almost certainly going to go above 5% next week. This increase can be attributed partially to the new Omicron variant, and partially to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
These treasure chests and barrels are from Dutch Mogul’s Loot Markers pack, Thingiverse number 2010492.
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I tested the VECYS IC1209 countertop ice maker.
It takes 1h 20min to make a pound of ice, and draws 100 watts per hour average (max draw is close to 250 watts when heating the evaporators to drop the ice, and may surge to 350-800 watts for a second when the compressor kicks on).
I was surprised to find that my fridge/freezer door mounted ice maker only made 0.19 pounds of ice in the same time, justifying having a separate appliance if you need to make a lot of ice in a quick amount of time. [You will have to add more water and remove the ice every 1-2 hours, so it’s not for completely unattended operation…]
Amazon Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3FtQIVO
When I charge my (2015 S) Leaf up to 100%, you can see the input AC current/power draw slowly decay as the car finishes charging, and then a little while later 3 little spikes of current draw as it finishes balancing.
Maker Faire Orlando (2021) had a lot of interesting exhibits.
Here are a few that drew my attention:
We have reached the end of the Delta Surge. The October 29th 2021 weekly DOH report shows that Orange County only had 834 infections in the last week, and the case positivity rate has dropped to 2.9%. The OC Mayor has dropped the state of emergency, and the OC Public School District has removed the mask mandate in schools. (Faculty, Staff & adult Volunteers are still required to wear masks, as are students, but now a parent note is enough to excuse students from the mask requirement.)
In the last month the OCPS dashboard has reported only 690 new cases.
We have had nine weeks of decreasing case numbers and are now back to a level similar to that of the June/July timeframe before the Delta variant surged. Orange County currently has 75% of the 12+ population vaccinated, and the Pfizer vaccine has just been approved for use by children aged 5-11 years old.
Deaths
In the last month, Orange County has only had 140 deaths from COVID-19. Overall, Orange County FL had 2,185 COVID-19 deaths out of a population of 1,457,445 (149 deaths per 100,000 residents). This is better than the state of Florida average of 285 deaths per 100,000 residents. However, 149 deaths per 100,000 residents is a per-capita death rate higher than the countries of South Korea (5), Australia (6), Iceland (9), Japan (14), Norway (16), Egypt (17), India (33) and the Philippines (36) combined.
I purchased an old (1977 manufacture date) AMF Alcort Sunfish 14 foot sailing dinghy. It was mostly complete and almost “ready-to-sail”, except for the broken auto-bailer, and cracked rudder, but the price was right.
Since I had to repair the crack in the rudder, I decided to go overboard and completely restore the entire rudder and tiller assembly. And once the rudder looked nice, I had left-over varnish and decided to go ahead and re-surface the daggerboard as well.
I also added a ratcheting mainsheet block, replaced all of the lines and purchased some necessary accessories (deck cover, beach dolly).
After the first sail I drained all of the water out of the hull (which MIGHT have already been in there…..maybe….) and purchased a better drain plug and rigged up a solar powered fan to dry things out. If I find water inside after the second sail, I’ll probably be doing some fiberglass hull repair.
You can see all of the details by watching the (multiple!) videos in this YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHP4lUqxKmv13lkNpPqG2FbnV9L4aaL0
I’ve found that the Better Boat Mini-Paddle fits perfectly into the rear cubbyhole on my 1977 boat.