sam firke dot com

Rare blog, rattlin’ blog

Category: DIY

Do-it-yourself

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    Another site migration complete

    In 2020, I migrated this blog to A2Hosting – I know that because I wrote about it at the time. I’ve just migrated again and am writing this brief post in part to check that everything is working (including sending via email to subscribers).

    I was up for renewal again this year at A2Hosting (now Hosting.com), looking at $450 for the next three years. I have gotten both more skilled at and more interested in self-hosted web stuff in recent years, so I took the plunge and started renting a little DigitalOcean Droplet virtual machine. I installed a little Docker Compose stack of these containers:

    • WordPress
    • MariaDB backend
    • Caddy frontend for SSL (and to lay the way for hosting other projects on this box)

    Then I exported my WordPress blog from my old admin panel, imported it on the new site, and it scraped all the media files from the old site. That’s all I had over on the old host. You’re now reading this page served from the DigitalOcean Droplet!

    I took the occasion to choose a new theme, Twenty Twenty-Five. I hadn’t realized that my old theme, Twenty Twenty, was not 100% compatible with the “new” Gutenberg block style that WordPress uses these days. This is a nice quality of life upgrade.

    Unfortunately I still have a lousy sense of style, including web design. I cycled through different layouts and color schemes, loving none of them. This was the best I could do but I don’t love the main font or the colors. If something is hard to read, let me know, especially if you have an idea for a better set of choices!

    EDIT: I’ve worked on this and am much happier with the aesthetics!

    The Droplet is about half the price of the hosted solution, but that’s not the only advantage. I can now also host family members’ WordPress blogs at no additional cost to myself using the shared infrastructure, including backups I’m piping to a separate cloud provider (Hetzner, in Germany). And I can host any other web projects that need a home. I have tinkered a little with a tool that will help me mealplan, basically suggesting to me what I should cook each week. If I ever get it running, I’ll host it on this droplet too.

    Just need to remember to do my maintenance on this VM and install upgrades. I have calendar reminders for that.

    I started this blog in 2015 which means I lasted five years at the first host and six at the second. I hope I can keep the self-hosting going indefinitely!

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  • Mending Chipped Ceramics with JB Weld Kintsugi
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    Mending Chipped Ceramics with JB Weld Kintsugi

    Kintsugi is a Japanese technique for visibly repairing pottery. It’s aligned with the aesthetic of wabi-sabi (I still don’t fully understand wabi-sabi despite having enjoyed reading this book about it to my kids). Kintsugi is right up my alley and is similar to sashiko, a visible mending style I’ve come to love.

    Traditional Kintsugi is done with ingredients that are hard to work with (urushiol, think poison ivy sap turned into resin) or acquire (gold leaf). And it takes a long time to cure. I looked for a modern equivalent that would provide a shortcut. And I found this comment on Reddit from the appropriately named user Zentactics:

    I’ve done it on a few plates and bowls. If the chip is deep, I’ve used painter’s tape to support the JB weld while it cures. Afterwards, I’ll remove it and sand it down to the shape I want it to be. Depending on the chip, it may be easier to layer it, both methods work. Once the JB weld is built up and cured, I’ll put a super thin layer of JB Weld and dust it with gold Alumidust (Alumilite). A brush can be used if needed. I’ll then gently pat it down with my fingertip to embed it. All of the items I’ve fixed have been in the dishwasher and microwave dozens of times and seem to be holding up well.

    I followed that approach and it worked great! I’ve repaired a few things but my biggest and favorite repair has been on a large, one-of-a-kind handmade ceramic bowl I’d received as a gift. Here’s the story of that repair and what I learned, with pictures.

    The break: with the bowl sitting on the counter, I reached way up on my tippy-toes to get the hot sauce and bang! The hot sauce toppled off the shelf and crashed into the rim of the bowl:

    The fresh chip

    Notes on materials:

    • Some people seem to use the JB Weld SteelStik product but I used the classic two-part epoxy and it worked great.
    • Amazingly, from what I can read, both original two-part JB Weld and mica dust seem to be non-toxic when cured.
    • That said, I have been hesitant to use JB Weld on a part of a coffee cup that gets submerged under hot liquid. But I feel confident repairing chips in handles and rims that hardly ever come in contact with food.
    • For my Michiganders: Alumilite, who manufactures the mica dust I use, is headquartered in Kalamazoo!
    • Warning: mica dust gets everywhere! It’s worse than glitter. I work outside when possible.

    Okay, onto the repair. I don’t typically have the foresight to take photos but this time I did so I’ll mostly let them speak for themselves.

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    A Vision of Standardized DIY Kitchen-Mounted Household Tablet Displays

    It’s 2026. People can use AI to generate copious amount of decent code, especially if they already program and especially if it’s for a low-stakes use case and imperfections are tolerable. And the world is awash in used tablets.

    Thus it’s no surprise that at least 3 of my coder dad friends have mounted old tablets to the walls of their kitchens and living rooms and hacked together displays of information for their households. It replaces the paper calendars of yore with digital calendars, yes, but also displays family photos, weather forecasts, meal plans, shopping lists, chore lists, and various bespoke widgets.

    A commercial version of such a product is the Skylight. But who wants to buy a new device and then pay a monthly fee? Everyone DIYs it instead. There must be thousands of takes on this project. But are they all one-off implementations of crufty code? And I can’t just deploy someone else’s solution? When I investigated the space six months ago for my own purposes, there wasn’t a single go-to candidate that looked usable. DAKboard is SaaS, Magic Mirror² runs on Raspberry Pi and a display?

    EDIT —————-

    After posting this, two other options were suggested to me:

    Home Assistant: good fit if you’re in that world already! But too technically difficult for most people and not meant to run on an old tablet.

    TRMNL: these devices are pretty cool and I like the mix of paid and self-hosted options. There’s not exactly a grid where you can plug anything in, like the Vercel-hosted dog coordinator app. Also not meant to run on an old tablet. But this was the closest thing to what I had envisioned so kudos to that project.

    END EDIT —————-

    It makes me think there’s a need for a standardized framework. I’m inexperienced when it comes to frontend development and have no mobile experience, so I’m not the ideal person to make it happen. But here’s my vision:

    • A well-made, simple Android and iOS app that can run on the tablet 24/7
    • It supports things like on/off/dim hours or waking-on-motion-detection
    • It has a framework for building plug-ins. These are widgets that can display on a grid. Like dropping widgets on a smartphone home screen, they can be various sizes, moved around, and be assigned to new screens you can scroll to.

    The plug-ins I would build would be for Google Calendar, Google Photos, a chore list for my kids, and a generic web view widget. My neighbor created an app deployed on Vercel where we coordinate which dog is outside so they don’t bark at each other through the fence.

    (I think this latter part is where this product shines: you can plug in janky vibe-coded web apps via a single widget).

    Other devs would contribute plug-ins for Home Assistant, Notion, shopping lists, weather, etc.

    Apache Superset, the data visualization software I run at work and contribute to, has invested massive effort in refactoring the codebase to support extensions. VSCode is an inspiration in this regard. The idea is that extensions will make it way easier for developers to contribute new modular pieces to Superset. I’m thinking something similar here.

    Then an end user doesn’t have to know coding to use it. They install from their app store, then select and configure the widgets they want. They just populate the necessary config and credentials for each widget.

    Initially I wouldn’t worry about the “accessible to layperson end users” or “on the app store”, those have a higher bar for code quality and then someone is on the hook for maintenance (though maybe that can be monetized, especially if it provides API services like weather?). I would just make an app you can sideload (I have sideloaded onto Android before, apparently it’s possible on iOS too).

    What I really want here is that instead of thousands of us doing a crappy job on this, we get one rock-solid framework app and then individual devs build high-quality plugins.

    Does this already exist and I can use it & contribute instead of building from scratch? Please?

    If not, who’s coming with me? What stack are we building this in? Where do we start?

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  • My Tote-ally Awesome Rain Barrel
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    My Tote-ally Awesome Rain Barrel

    I’ve now had a full season with my mega-sized rain barrel. It’s great. Here’s how it works and what I learned along the way.

    The “barrel”: I also have a proper 55 gallon barrel collecting rain from my garage, but the barrel that’s the focus of this post isn’t actually a barrel – it’s a caged IBC tote (“Intermediate bulk container“) that holds a whopping 1,040 liters of rainwater!

    Status: full.

    I bought it from a local government unit, the Washtenaw County Conservation District (store link). It didn’t fit in my minivan so I carried it home on my cargo bike – that’s a whole ‘nother story that I wrote up as The biggest thing I’ll ever tote on a bike.

    I won’t lie, these IBC totes sure are ugly! And mine is visible from the street. Here’s how it looked at first:

    I had planned to build a wood screen in front of it and paint a mural or something, but it was simpler to buy online a black cover that zips right on. Also, apparently these totes will grow algae inside if you don’t cover them or paint them black to block out the sunlight, so this was a 2-for-1 solution.

    Fully installed
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  • DIY Upholstered Seat Cushion for Yuba Spicy Curry Cargo Bike
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    DIY Upholstered Seat Cushion for Yuba Spicy Curry Cargo Bike

    I got my first Yuba Spicy Curry bike in 2017 and have been riding one ever since. It is the long-tail bike seen in many of the photos of Things I’ve carried on a cargo bike and The biggest thing I’ll ever tote on a bike.

    This year both of my weathered passenger seat cushions split open (Yuba has entirely changed the seat cushions they sell since I bought mine, and I hear the new ones are more durable). So I undertook my first foray into upholstery, refashioning my old and busted Soft Spots into one double-length cushion, a couch of sorts.

    My coworking friends at Workantile have many interesting skills. One of them is a hobbyist upholsterer! With her tools and know-how it only took an hour or two, using materials we already had lying around.

    First I measured and cut a piece of plywood to cover the full tail of the bike. It turned out that the foam from the old seats was still in good shape, so we reused it. We stuffed some foam scraps between the two old blocks of foam:

    the foam cores of the two seat cushions, laid next to each other
    All the foam, resting on the plywood base
    Packed tight and held in place by special spray adhesive
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  • Replacing the Logo on a New Era Baseball Cap
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    Replacing the Logo on a New Era Baseball Cap

    My brother recently suggested I could upgrade my hat game. He was right: the crusty, adjustable-strap White Sox hat I’d worn for years was due for replacement. I liked the fit and look of the New Era 59Fifty wool ballcap he lent me. But I didn’t care to advertise for a team (a.k.a. company) I don’t care about, nor did I wish to invite small talk about sports.

    My mission: replace the logo on an official New Era baseball cap with one of my own design. It was a fun mixed-media project, part art, part craft, and part hack.

    I ordered a gently-used cap from eBay. If you don’t care about team logo, the choices are vast! I purchased a 1990s vintage black hat with a black Yankees logo for $13.

    A black vintage Yankees hat, untouched
    The original hat, ready for surgery

    First I removed the existing logo. I used a seam ripper to slice threads and pliers to yank on loose ones. When removing logos from other garments, I rip stitches from the back, but that wasn’t possible here due to the white backing liner on the inside.

    Many of the threads have been picked off
    Going…

    This part was slow going. All of the yanking with my dominant hand bent the cap slightly. I probably should have done more slicing and snipping and less brute force with the pliers.

    Going… (this was messy)

    The result wasn’t perfect. A few threads from the logo remained and I pulled out a little material from the hat itself. But it sufficed once I covered it up. I wonder if contrast would have helped. Would a white logo on black hat work better (because the white logo stitches would be easier to selectively remove) or worse (anything left over would stick out)?

    Gone! The outline visible here can’t be seen under the new logo.

    Next I made the new logo, using the community laser cutter at All Hands Active. I downloaded the Extinction Symbol and loaded it into Lightburn, which auto-traced the outlines. I was ready for the laser.

    I cut the logo out of corrugated plastic sheeting, often called Coroplast. Most plastic is unsafe to cut on a CO2 laser, but Coroplast is okay. In Ann Arbor, unscrupulous companies print advertisements on this plastic and illegally place them in the public right-of-way near highway off-ramps and busy intersections.

    I considered 3D-printing the symbol. That way I could have controlled its depth – the Coroplast stock is a tiny bit thicker than a New Era-style logo – and added touches like tiny holes through which to sew the logo to the hat. But that would have taken a while to design and print. And I liked the spirit of reusing roadside litter.

    The laser burned nearly through and I finished it with an X-ACTO knife.

    extinction symbol burned into a plastic sheet
    After the laser cutter
    shape cut out of plastic sheet
    Trimmed with the knife

    Next, I wrapped the logo. I used a small bundle of embroidery floss, I believe a 8.7 yard bundle of 6-stranded DMC 25. That was exactly enough for this project.

    beginning to wrap the plastic with embroidery floss
    Wrapping underway, trying to keep the knots on the back

    A crafty friend at Workantile suggested I wrap the logo before attaching it to the hat. Brilliant!

    logo almost entirely wrapped
    Mostly wrapped
    fully wrapped logo sitting on the brim of the hat
    Fully wrapped and ready to mount

    I got it almost entirely wrapped, then tacked it onto the hat in a few places with the same thread. Finally, I completed a few tricky wrapping stitches that were easier once the logo was anchored to the hat.

    The wrapping is imperfect and in one spot I pulled too hard and compressed the plastic. But from across the room it passes for a commercially-made hat!

    The completed hat with logo finished
    The finished product

    I’m pleased with how it turned out. I have a comfortable, well-made hat and instead of promoting a sports franchise, I’m starting conversations about living during the Sixth Mass Extinction. Seeing the logo reminds me to think timefully.

    If I hack another hat, I’ll consider 3D-printing the symbol to try to precisely match the depth of the hat’s original logo. And I’d start with a hat that isn’t black-on-black so the New Era logo on the side pops: I enjoy the tension and confusion that comes from this being a mass-produced object with a hand-made logo.

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    Tips for Fixing a Dripping Widespread Sink Faucet

    These are notes from Jan 2023 me to future me – here’s what you need to know:

    • To fix the 2007 Pegasus [is that a Home Depot brand?] widespread two-handled faucet on the upstairs bathroom sink
    • About fixing leaking sink faucets more generally

    Diagnosis. Figure out if the hot or cold is leaking by turning off the water supply lines one at a time.

    The part to change to stop the dripping is the cartridge (in a one-handled faucet) or, in this widespread two-handle bathroom sink, the faucet stem. It comes with a new retaining clip. Cartridge vs. faucet stem is mostly a matter of terminology.

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  • The biggest thing I’ll ever tote on a bike
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    The biggest thing I’ll ever tote on a bike

    I have carried a lot of things on my cargo bike. It’s become a game: what unlikely object can I next transport via bicycle? I clearly remember the rush of hauling my first big item, a suitcase, five years ago. That load was liberating then, pushing the boundaries of what I could do, but now I wouldn’t think twice about it.

    I returned this suitcase to Macy’s and went shopping at Briarwood Mall. October 2016.

    Yesterday I reached my high score in this game, if you will. Like in a heist movie, I sought to pull off the world’s greatest job before taking it easy evermore. And I did it.

    I’m not done hauling – I’ll still carry things on this bike every day – but during the record-breaking ride I swore that if I made it home without incident, I’d not try anything this big again. This is the tale of hauling a 275 gallon plastic tote, in a metal pallet, six miles across Ann Arbor.

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  • Making a coat rack from a buckthorn log
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    Making a coat rack from a buckthorn log

    This project hit many of my interests:

    • Eliminating buckthorn, a nasty invasive species
    • Reuse / making things from leftovers
    • Amateur woodworking
    • Contributing to Workantile, the co-working community I’m a part of

    It turned out nicely. Here’s a writeup and some photos.

    The rack

    It started when I was biking home with groceries from Meijer and encountered a big pile of buckthorn by the side of the road, culled from Greenview Nature Area and awaiting pickup for composting. The biggest trunk was a decent sized log. The bike was already heavily laden but fortunately, a log is a different shape than grocery bags so I found a spot for it:

    a log on a bike
    This was surprisingly easy to haul

    For a while I’d been interested in woodworking with found wood, especially buckthorn. I take pleasure in removing it and would enjoy that even more if I could turn it into things. I asked my friend and de facto woodworking coach Chris how I should go about processing logs. Buy a bandsaw? Build one of those circular-saw-converted-to-chainsaw DIY mills I saw on YouTube? Both seemed excessive.

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  • 3D-Printed Piece Saves My Cuisinart Food Processor
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    3D-Printed Piece Saves My Cuisinart Food Processor

    The utopian vision of 3-D printing and communal knowledge sharing came true this week, in one small instance. For years I’ve loved the idea of 3-D printing a replacement component when some plastic bit snaps in a machine I’m using. Especially when the manufacturer doesn’t sell that widget and intends for you to junk and replace the whole thing. But in practice, I’ve not found myself in a situation where that would be viable…

    Until this week. Last year my mother upgraded her food processor and handed me down her previous model, a Cuisinart DFP-14 (DFP-14BCN to be precise). The machine had seen years of hard work and at last, the little plastic interlock piece at the nexus of the complicated safety mechanism broke.

    I spent maybe 90 minutes last weekend trying to fix it. This involved cutting a reinforcement plate out of scrap plastic, epoxying it on, and mounting it with a machine screw (part of the plastic housing had shattered, too). I had tried my best but it was not going to last. Here’s the kludge fix at the point where I called it quits:

    The black plastic layer is my addition. This won’t hold up for long.
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