I wanted an indoor herb and lettuce garden, so that I wouldn’t have to buy a whole bag of lettuce, basil, chives, etc whenever I needed just a few pieces for a sandwich or recipe. So I bought two windowsill growing boxes, a bag of potting soil, and a few seed packets and got to gardening.

Of course, plants won’t grow this well indoors without a grow light, so I bought a LED one on Ebay, and had to build a stand for it out of 2×2 lumber and 1/2″ PVC pipe.

The light isn’t quite that purple in real life, but it definitely affects the color balance nearby.

Things to know if you are building your own:
A single 10′ section of PVC and an 8′ section of 2×2 is plenty for one stand.
A 7/8″ spade bit drills a perfect hole for a 1/2″ ID PVC pipe to fit into.
A 3/4″ to 1/2″ T adapter will slide easily over the top of an 1/2″ PVC pipe upright while holding a PVC pipe crossbar.
A 9/64″ drill bit works for making a pilot hole in PVC for an M4 screw, but the screw is tight.
It takes a lot less white spray paint to cover PVC than black spray paint.

A video of the build can be viewed here:

I built a night ninja mask using paper mache and crafting felt/foam/tulle.

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Our old family car, a 1998 VW Passat (B5) is still running great, but having lots of problems with trim pieces and misc non-drivetrain parts. For example, if you lock the car and then unlock it, it would take 10-15 pulls on the passenger door handle (inside or outside) before the door would unlatch.

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My rental garage has 10+ foot ceilings, and I have a lot of stuff to store. To utilize the vertical space, I built a lofted storage shelf from fourteen 2×4 studs and a single 4×8 sheet of 3/4″ plywood to go over my electronics project table. This is what it looks like before I added the electronics table, pegboard and shelves.

Because I’m renting, I needed the unit to be free-standing, and not attached to the walls.     I had the plywood ripped at 30″ at home depot for a 96″ wide and 30″ deep shelf, leaving me an 18″x96″ section that was used for both the back and side bracing panels.

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I have a 12 amp wall mounted shop vac, but I’m not allowed to screw into the walls of my rental garage. I also want to use it at the same time as other high power tools, like my table saw or drill press. This is a problem, because if the tool and the vacuum are both running on the same 15 amp circuit, the breaker trips. My rental garage has a single 15 amp circuit for all of the outlets. Except this one, which is on the same circuit as the lights.

I doubt I’ll be opening or closing the garage door at the same time as I run the shop vac, so putting the vacuum on the lighting circuit solves a lot of problems.

I bolted a 2×4 to the metal rail with 5/16″ screws and nuts and then mounted the vacuum to that.

My countsink bit was too small to fully fit the head of this 5/16 screw, so I drilled a 1/8″ pilot hole, then used my 5/8″ spade bit to drill a small impression before drilling with 1/4″ and 5/16″ bits and then using the countersink bit for the bottom of the conic section.

I needed somewhere for the hose, and the mount needed stabilizing along the Z axis so it doesn’t wobble when you turn the vacuum on or off, so I put another 2×4 on the other side for the hose mount and connected them together with deck screws for stability. I wired up a switched outlet that I can (just barely) reach from the ground, with an extra outlet in case I want to plug anything else into the secondary circuit.

Now I can run the vacuum at the same time as other high current shop equipment because they are on different circuits, and it’s off the floor and out of the way.

A video of the same content on YouTube:

This ratty old birdhouse has a secret. It was actually an “outdoor enclosure” for an indoor WiFi security camera (D-Link DCS-920). The birdhouse worked well over the last five years protecting the camera from the weather. (I lost one power supply, which hangs outside the birdhouse, so I waterproofed the replacement with hot glue and lots of layers of electrical tape.)

It looked better five years ago (the perch was gnawed off, probably by a squirrel), but it was never operable as a birdhouse, as the entry hole is covered by clear Plexiglas and acts as the viewport for the camera.   It’s basically the opposite of Dennis Nino Clasen’s birdhouse camera:

Now that I’m retiring it, I can post the secret on the internet. It was relatively difficult to notice the camera inside the birdhouse. Over five years of operation, I only know of one person who noticed that it was a camera (and then called over the whole crew to take a look…)

I did feel (only slightly) guilty about the number of birds that flew to the perch and tried to go inside….

One of these animals is not the same….

Adding cooling ducts to my chargers was mostly successful. I am still able to make the chargers overheat (and shutdown) when charging in hot 95-100 °F outdoor temperatures at the maximum 30 A rate, but it takes them longer to do so. I can work around this by charging at a lower rate or delaying charging until the day is cooler.   I have my “80%” charging profile set to use the recommended 25A rate instead (and may even lower this depending upon the results of future temperature logging sessions).

However, on rare occasions I may need to charge as fast as possible for one to two hours at a charger away from home (to extend my range). I would typically not be making long trips in 100 °F temperatures, so I tested charging at the full 30A rate on an 80°F ambient day, which generated the following graph. (I have two chargers, so they each have their own watts and temperature line.)

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