Raspberry Pi enclosure

I picked up a Raspberry Pi model B and needed an enclosure for it. Some image searches online yielded a nice design that I wasn't willing to pay for, so I made my own.

I have absolutely no clue what the timber is. If I had to take a wild stab I'd say it was cherry. (edit: Dad reckons it's Cypress, which I think is right. It's commonly used as a construction timber, and the color varies from pink through to nearly indistinguishable from regular pine.)

Here's the finished product with 2 coats of Tung oil.

After some testing I decided to put in some airflow holes on top and bottom. Several hours of use showed that it was capable of making the box warm, though certainly in no danger of combustion or anything crazy. Problem solved.

And here's a bunch of construction pictures in reverse order...

Blah the gap between the pieces is from the timber contracting after having hogged out the core. The two blocks mated perfectly before now. I sanded it all back, however when I applied the tung oil, I got expansion in the OTHER direction (curled back out). /sigh /reSand

Some damage from the routing. Easy glue fix.

BLARGH!! Broke my router bit. :( Ended up switching to a larger bit which hogged the timber out more cleanly anyhow.

The piece is too small to clamp directly, so I've locked it in place with an enclosure of scraps, with guides on 2 sides to keep the router inside the desired boundaries.

I want to hog-out "this" much.

My bench-top sander looks an awful like a regular belt sander turned upside down.

I cut the desired block out of a 4x4inch upright post which previously held up our deck roof.

Most horrifying nightmare ever...

I woke up really distressed!!! For whatever reason during the dream, I was stuck on solving an equilateral triangle with angles other than 60 degrees. When I woke up, the premise was stuck in my head and it took a few moments to work out what was going on. Really quite disturbing. It was hard to get back to sleep!!

Small earring box built to survive an explosion.

I've been sitting on some earrings for the better part of 2 or 3 years. They were sold for some sort of charity/philanthropic agenda, and I seem to remember paying waaaaaaaay too much for them. They were in a rubbish plastic sleeve (so cheap that I was unwilling to gift them in it), so I whipped up something a little more presentable from scrap bits at work.

Some 10mm thick polycarbonate offcuts form a basic box. A 5mm steel bar should make a nice mount to hang the earrings on.

Back and sides screwed together. I used thread-lock (LololoLolol !! ) to secure the earrings to the bar. I guess whoever gets these is gonna have to wash them. Most gals have acetone (nail polish remover) at home anyway...should work fine.

Front screwed on with allen-key bolts. You can't actually get into this box without an allen key. Hilarity ensues.

/shrug. Looks pretty cool to me. I dunno. Better than the plastic slip anyhow.

Bag weights insert

Dave and I went up the Thousand Steps in FTG as a "cardio" day the other week. We took a few kilos of weights in our backpacks for added challenge.

I wasn't particularly happy with the 4x2.5kg weights flopping around in my backpack, so decided to whip up an insert to go in my backpack

It has 2 layers of that cheap camping-bed-roll foam, then a vinyl cover.

Tested it last week with 2x5kg weights, worked really nicely. The weights were close to my back, and held up high. The longer stem allows me to put a 10kg plate on top of the lower plates, totaling 20kg if I go full-tank-mode up the mountain (unlikely!!)

Cool dining table

Found another cool thing to add to my "I'll build one of those one day" pile.

Website here: http://www.tracktiletables.co.uk/pacific.html

But you got cookiee, so share it maybe...

An absurd amount of editing



...You cookiee showing, and me hunger growing...

More roadside table stuff

I found a small table on the side of the road, and performed some basic refurb work here.

I've since applied 2 coats of Tung Oil and a coat of wax to the top. No thinners were used with the oil, and I'm too lazy to pre-burnish/polish the timber with steel wool. If this was an elaborate, expensive piece of furniture I might consider such lengths, but not for a knock-around kitchen table. The base hasn't been disassembled or stripped down yet.

Yeah not particularly exciting. The teak-stained base is shown for color comparison.

The lighting is poor (overcast), but the top has a nice sheen with a burnished look.

Buffing out wax on timber is HARD work. A buffing disc on the drill might have been a good idea.

Tung oil and wax. This is plain old normal Tung oil, not heat treated (polymerised).
I'll get the base sorted soon enough. Even boring tables provide a sense of accomplishment. Go fix something.

Measure the effects of gaming.

Jane McGonigal has participated in another presentation regarding real world impacts as a result of gaming, and goes further to show its innate positive effects are actually measurable in terms of scientific measure. (Including plenty of tongue in cheek stuff!!

I've linked Jane's previous TED talk here. Well worth your time.

I hear some really ugly opinions from people about gaming which Jane outlines at ~12:30, and then she continues with an example of some of the most commonly stated life-regrets from terminal-near-death, or elderly patients. The latter being the ones who are in a position of knowledge to be able to make observations of a much broader measure. In either case, both make the same observations which do not match the comments of the afore mentioned ugly-opinions.

Put some science in your brain, and mix it with a pep-talk and an amusing mental exercise.



Some really interesting stuff at ~38:00 of mental activity measurements while actually playing games, vs an observer (ie: watching TV). The disparity is so immense that you'd have to be watching Farmer-wants-a-wife not to notice that you're missing out on something awesome.

Join me in a game.

D3 "Cow Level" staff

I farmed up the D3 "Cow Level" equivalent components.

League of Legends, for fun and profit...

More roadside pickup furniture

I found a nice little table on the side of the road. (again) It had sustained some serious damage in the leg assembly and the top had a very deep gouge extending about 60% of the length, like a marble had been rolled underneath a heavy girder along the table or something.

I re-glued the shattered foot assembly, and slammed in some 19mm dowel perpendicular to the break. Little hard to see in this photo, but it was a serious break. The dowels were cut down after everything dried.

Doesn't show well in the photo, but the gouge is quite deep.

3M Stripping disc starts the long job of removing the surface varnish. The belt sander just clogs up otherwise.

Then the belt sander gets some action

Ta-da!! Just under 2hrs of work. Man I love the look of raw timber. (yeah I know the base isn't stripped down yet...I'll get to it) I'll hit Bunnings tomorrow and see if I can find a nice light colored oil finish. I'm a little over the dark mahogany stain and gloss varnish I've been doing for years. If the top comes out OK, I'm going to disassemble the stand assembly and use the four uprights as regular legs, turning it into a more traditional table. I'm not excited about the current leg configuration, and by just using the uprights I can shed a heap of weight also.