Deer , Turtles, & Heron

 

Get lucky to make this shot of two deer (probably mother and child) roaming around neighboring town.

It is good  that may Pixel 6 Pro is always with me. Its telephoto lens is excellent.

One more picture  I shot next day  in another neighboring town. It is a pond near town hall.

The same phone, the same lens.

And one more at the park lake.

Four Years in Use

 Four years ago I published post about my Go terminal application which I use as  personal password manager.

https://www.jumbleview.info/2020/04/here-we-go.html

During all these years I used it on constant basis making some tweaking here and there. This post  summarizes major changes.

• Application now supports mouse interface. User can utilize keyboard  hits  and mouse clicks interchangeably.
• At start application can be supplied with some flags. That allows  to select application colors, initial application mode, even  add new table column or delete existing one.
• In case current cell contains valid URL user can open browser window on that URL with the help of WWW button.
• There is no button Add anymore (its functionality  absorbed  by button Edit). 
• When table is in focus user may select  row by hitting key which corresponds to the first letter of the  record name. 
• Initial implementation had a security vulnerability: content of clipboard was not cleared  in case application was terminated  by closing console window .  Now it is fixed: disregarding of which  way application is terminated (by Ctrl+C, Exit button, or window closing)  clipboard is empty.

Source code of the application  as well as readme is available to the public (same place)     https://github.com/jumbleview/tspur

Tetris House

Couple of photos of  new street art  artifact : "Tetris House". It is private house  in Duboce Triangle neighborhood of San Francisco. Owner recently made  his house to become piece of art.

 

Street where this house located is not that wide and it is hard to catch the moment, when there are no cars parked, but I tried my best.

And one more photo near the Market Street and 10th Street.

 

Syntax Prototype Board

 From my experience succuss of electronic DIY project in a big part depends  on how good  you  solder circuit  components. And high quality soldering depends on the prototype board. Three years ago I have published my review of  Adafruit Board . It is indeed excellent  for small projects accommodating Attinny85 processor but for project based on Atmega328 it is too small.  For a long time my favorite boards for such projects were Radio Shack  catalog numbers #276170 and #270150. Alas, there are no anymore  Radio Shack stores around  and, while Radio Shack web site  still exists, boards are not on sale on there site. Sometimes Radio Shack boards can be bought on E-bay, but cost with delivery reaches   $15 or even more. I consider this as  too much. So I have started to look for a replacement. Eventually I found  this site They sells some useful  stuff including prototype boards. On the picture  below you can see the board taken from there.  I paid  for five boards with delivery  ~$25 (~$5 per a board).

Boards came nicely wrapped into transparent material. On wrapper of each board there were labels: "Made in Taiwan". As you can guess board has  two power buses  and six rows of three  hole  pads.

What differentiate this board form other unexpensive  protype boards is the fact that conductor strips   are not on  surface  but sandwiched in the middle. On one side of the board there is white paint picture  of conductors topology, on opposite side there are isolated spots for component soldering. At first I got frustrated of this fact: (what if I need to cut conductive strip), but eventually I got  used to it. By using some external wire and with boards three hole pads  I can  accommodate any circuit topology needed. Soldering  experience is very good. At least as good as with Adafruit board (maybe even better). 

 Below you can see project I made with this board.

Project itself I published on Instructables site: https://www.instructables.com/Half-Dial-Wall-Clock/  

In Seven Years

 There are three pictures showing our front yard  at different stages within last seven years.

Top picture made today. That's how front yard looks now. (I just put fresh two cubic yards of mini red mulch on it).

Photo in the middle made a little bit more than two years ago in March of 2022.

And bottom picture is form April of 2017, right after we converted green lawn to garden.

The Pi Day

Yesterday there was March Fourteen. Since recently people around the world  used to  celebrate this date   as the Pi day.  After the work  my co-worker an myself   strolled   through  the  San Francisco downtown streets and found this view:

Would it be the decent tribute  to the 3.14 number?  

Overall the day was beautiful: warm and sunny. Here are some more street pictures:  

Transamerica Pyramid.

San Francisco mix.

Arks and Lights.

Early evening. Salesforce Tower.

Flower Bulb Day

Last Saturday (March 9, 2024) there was Tulip Day in San Francisco. Eighty thousands tulips grown in USA out of Dutch bulbs were deployed in Union square in San Francisco.

  Everybody could come to this garden and pick up ap to fifteen flowers. The only problem was a huge line. You can see two labyrinths with people lines (on the left and right of the garden) on the picture below, To avoid the line we decided  to enjoy the  view from windows on the Macy's top floor.

 

  Tulip garden was no only good thing in San Francisco this Saturday. The whole afternoon was beautiful.  "Sky of Blue and Sea of Green". Here is one more photo of Clock Tower  on Embarcadero.

  

Holiday Decorations

 Here are several photos made  during this Christmas season in our neighborhood. First two photos made  next to private Christian School in our city.

Next three photos are near houses located in the neighboring city. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Wheel Work

 

Here is spare fifth wheel from my 2008 Ford Ranger. It is full size, so technically I can use it in  rotation. But this wheel looked very different to other  wheels.  Spare wheel is definitely made from steel, while four others have shiny aluminum  look. 

I should not simultaneously put on the car   wheels made of different  materials for a long. How to find out if my other wheels are  made of steel and painted or made out of aluminum  alloy. Permanent magnet came in handy. Magnet got  attracted the same to the spare wheel or to any other wheel  on the car.  That means all wheels are made of  steel  and I can safely  use  spare  wheel for rotation. Still I would like  all wheels to have more uniform look.

In local AutoZone  shop I bought can of silver wheel paint.

Rubber part of the wheel I covered  with paper and masking tape. Then, following paint can instruction,  I painted wheel with several layers of  silver.

Here is my freshly painted wheel installed as the rear wheel  on the  driver car side.

And here is sideview of the car. As you can see rear (former spare) wheel  and  front wheel now both look the same.

   

Autumn Colors

 Some images from Bay Area (November 2023)

This is America!

Very unlikely these scarecrows may scary any crow.

 

This Thanksgiving gas is relatively cheap. Especially  if your car is that small.

Holiday Mushrooms family reunion. 

Children, don't be lost! Keep closer.

 

Soda Can: Bottom Part

 

Two years ago I published  the post   about using soda can tab in DIY projects. Now I have found one more usage  for a soda can: this time for its bottom part. I used can bottom part  as cheap LED reflector for some home lighting projects, in particular  for Halloween Decors. Above you can see  Pumpkin Glister with  multi-colored eyes.

Here is the Bat Decors  with Red eyes..

The last picture is the Bat Decor shot at the moment, when eyes were not that bright and with some whitish color, so reflectors are better visible as they are.

Making  reflectors is very simple: just cut bottom parts of cans, bend edges of these parts with pliers, drill holes for LED to fit, and attach reflectors to the Glister or plywood decor with staples or pieces of cooper wire.

Apples & Birds

 

We have an apple tree in our backyard. Apples from this tree are no that special, still  we like them. But there is a problem: birds like them too. Honestly speaking birds never  eat fruit as a whole: just a small part of it, but that is enough damage for apple fruit to start rotting. How to protect apples from birds? At the beginning we tried to hang scare bird ribbons, like this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3WBNCBT?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details 

That worked somehow last year, but not this year. Either different  birds found our backyard this summer, or may be birds adjusted, but scare ribbon does not work anymore. So  we have to find some other mean of protection. 

In one hour I built net canopy: wooden frame out of old floor molding (I took that molding out during room renovation). This frame I attached to the long wooden post. Length of the post is slightly more then tree height).

We put  square bird net https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-14-ft-x-14-ft-Polypropylene-Bird-Block-Netting-and-Barrier-NMVBB1414/310977979 on top of the canopy and tied canopy post to tree trunk:

 

After that we attached another net to the bottom of the canopy net with small pieces of wire. 

Below you can see that "engineering  beauty" in a full view. 

And guess what? It works!  Birds do not  eat our apples  anymore. On the photo you can see scarry bird ribbon   as well, but  only because I was lazy to take it out, these are useless against our birds.  Next summer I have to  rebuild this project in more aesthetically  looking way.

Update on October 23, 2023.

Thanks to the bird  net the harvest  was saved.  Here is the photo of  collected apples  under the guard of  our  corgi.