JacobCoffinWrites
@JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net
I write science fiction, draw, paint, photobash, do woodworking, and dabble in 2d videogames design. Big fan of reducing waste, and of building community
https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com
@jacobcoffin@writing.exchange
- Comment on Ideation - What to Run? 1 day ago:
Just wanted to say I really like this idea, especially as mixed with local mesh networks. I agree with the point about storage, and mostly I’m just really looking forward to reading about some of these services, and seeing what this could look like in the future.
Good luck!
- Comment on Quick Shed Door Repair 1 week ago:
Thanks!
- Comment on Quick Shed Door Repair 2 weeks ago:
I look forward to seeing it!
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 4 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on Big swinging doors 1 month ago:
One more resource you might want to check is your local Buy Nothing or Everything is Free page. Half the houses in my current town were built before the depression by a small handful of contractors, and all of them use the same weird nonstandard doors. Whenever someone remodels people try to get the old doors because they’re as good as gold around here. Point is, if you ask around on there, you may find that someone has a stack of wooden doors you can have for free just taking up space in a garage or shed. And if they do, and you want advice on refinishing them, 100% hit me up
- Comment on Big swinging doors 1 month ago:
100% use solid doors - I’ve never tried to cut a hollow color veneer door, but I broke one once and I have a hard time picturing it doing anything other than splintering when the skillsaw’s blade hits it. Best case, if the cut goes through fine, I’d still want to cut a strip of wood to glue into the now-open end of the door for structural integrity.
If you go with solid doors, ideally actual wood, it should be as simple as cutting any other wood sheet. If the doors are plain, I’d cut the full amount from the bottom, if they have panels, windows, or other landmarks, you might want to remove material from the top and bottom so it doesn’t look disproportionate.
(I’d start with the longer door -absolute worst case, you can cut it down to use for the smaller doorway)
I’d get some stain that matches the color of the door, and make sure I have some sandpaper/sanding disks too.
Measure from the top, mark the line, measure it again, stand it up by the doorway and check it’ll fit and have enough clearance to move freely. Use a skillsaw to cut it to length (err on the side of too long - you can always remove more later), check the fit, if the cut is wavy, sand down any high points. Use the sandpaper to remove any splintery bits, and use the wood stain to color the fresh cut wood and any scratches/damage near the edge. If it ends up too short you can always cut a strip of wood, stain it to match, and screw it to the shortened end (predrill your holes to reduce the chance you split the wood). Or add a strip to the doorway.
For hanging the doors, I have a few questions: have your builders already put up full door frames, like with casings and jams?
If so, you could take those off and see if there’s any additional space to work with (and check how square and level everything is).
I’ve hung doors but just old seconhand ones in a camp, and ones we made on a workshop and shed. We usually attached the hinges to the door, set it down on a wood shim so it sat where it was supposed to once it was mounted, checked it was level and plum, then marked the hinge side jam, cut space for the hinges, and attached it to the frame. For what it’s worth there’s much better advice for this part online.
The good news is that these doors aren’t terribly high-stakes. They’re interior doors, so you’re probably not worried about weatherproofing, or making them form a good seal when they’re closed or about water or anything like that. You just need them to work and not bother you. I didn’t ask about your overall comfort with diy tasks, but I think this is fairly approachable with a couple YouTube tutorials and the right tools.
My last bit of advice is on making sure the door is real wood rather than particleboard with wood veneer. Wood doors will show endgrain somewhere, usually top and bottom, even if it’s made from different sections and panels. If every side is similar grain and there’s a bit of a seam at the edges, I can’t vouch for what’s actually inside the door.
- Comment on Big swinging doors 1 month ago:
Sorry I’m seeing this so late, if you’re still looking for suggestions, I might be able to help. I’m not a professional carpenter but I used to help relatives who were on small job sites and I build stuff for myself fairly often. If the walls they built are just partitions, not load bearing, then changing the frames should be doable, how easily depends a bit on how the walls are made.
Usually we’d build a frame out of 2"x4"s, rough in the doorways, then clad the walls with sheetrock or shiplap or something, then box in the correct final dimensions of the door frame with 1"x4" boards or trim.
Changing the doorway to make it standard might mean disassembling the doorframe and some of the surrounding wall to get at the framing underneath. If it’s wood panels or similar that cab be pried up and put back, that might be a quick job. If it’s sheetrock, fixing it might be more work.
Cutting the doors will be easier, but sort of locks you in on the nonstandard door sizes. If you’re anticipating changing them again that might not be worth it, otherwise I’d probably just cut the doors.
- Submitted 1 month ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 1 comment
- Submitted 1 month ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on A huge battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant 3 months ago:
That’s great information, thank you for taking the time to write it up!
- Comment on A huge battery has replaced Hawaii's last coal plant 3 months ago:
I’m kind of amazed they’re not all-in on geothermal already. Abundant free energy seems like the only real benefit of cohabitating with volcanos.
- Comment on what do y'all actually host? 4 months ago:
On an old raspberry pi 3b, a copy of a blog by one of my favorite writers (the original is long gone and was never archived, I happened to grab a copy with wget when it came back up briefly) so I can read it when I’m on my home network. And a pi hole dns adblocker.
I’m hoping to set up some kind of media system for streaming eventually, but we currently use a PS4 as our media center and it doesn’t look like our options for compatibe apps are great.
I’d definitely like to get a local Mealie instance going in the next year
- Comment on Dieselgate, but for trains – some heavyweight hardware hacking 4 months ago:
This is great - I love that they open sourced the fix to help train operators in other countries.
- Comment on Followup to the One Button Sound Recorder - Transcription with spchcat 5 months ago:
Very cool! I’ll admit I did much less research than usual when I picked spchcat, and I wouldn’t be against trying a different STT tool. spchat works quite easily, but it seems to be cutting off early, though I’m not sure if that’s a product of the software or the limitations of the Pi3B, or some configuration I missed.
- Comment on Followup to the One Button Sound Recorder - Transcription with spchcat 5 months ago:
- Submitted 5 months ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 3 comments
- Comment on I fixed my toothbrush (fuck you, Philips Sonicare!) 5 months ago:
Congrats! Sounds like a tricky fix and I’m glad you could get it to work!
- Comment on weekly - er, monthly? - What's Up? 5 months ago:
I finished the sound recorder build for now, might return to it in another week. Got a midcentury desk, a park bench, and two old bar stools I’m restoring to give away. I need to fabricate replacement curved boards for the back of the bench, and I don’t have any oak in the right dimensions, so this week’s project will probably be the desk. I just need to get the top on it, predrill all the holes, and get in touch with the people who’ll be taking it. For the bench, I need to get in touch with some relatives, pick through their wood piles. For the barstools, I need to sand the rest of the finish off and figure out what I’m going to replace the seats (currently torn orange vinyl and the cheapest plywood I’ve ever seen) with. Maybe big slices of tree, or just some carved seats.
- Comment on Is there any use of an end-of-life LED lightbulb? 5 months ago:
Is that LED? It kind of looks like a fluorescent bulb from the photo. I’m not sure if there’s much you can do with fluorescent lamps other than use them up, or how safe trying to disassemble them is. I think the stuff inside them isn’t great.
If it is LED, or you can disassemble it safely, the base might be useful for components, or perhaps so you can run another device off a light fixture if you need to. (Looks like a European connector of some kind? I don’t know if the lights and appliances get the same power where you are, so your mileage may vary there too). I have a few old adaptors I bought at street fairs and junk stores with a light bulb screw on one end and a outlet socket on the other. Sometimes useful when you’re working on old houses with few outlets.
Sorry if that’s not helpful, hopefully someone else will have some ideas.
- Comment on One Button Sound Recorder made from spare parts 5 months ago:
Thank you! For a few years now, while trying to help her with her diminishing vision, I’ve been amazed at how hard it is to find electronics that work well for older folks with poor vision. Whether it’s an extra-loud, large-button phone with 15 extra buttons for her to get mixed up with, a supposedly-made-for-old-people answering machine with several menu buttons that interrupt its function, or a coffee maker that requires you to hit one button, load the coffee pod, then hit three more buttons, all in the correct order, unless water is low, in which case you refill it then do them in a different order. Easy for most people to get used to, but hard when you received it after going blind.
I feel like all this stuff needs like, two interfaces. The one she uses which needs to be simple and tactile, and the one designed for a tech-savvy relative or neighbor to configure for them. But it’s all built on basic consumer products with tons of modes and settings, and they don’t want to remove features, and they can’t count on that relative existing, so they split the difference. And they don’t think about how easy it is to accidentally brush the tiny volume slider all the way down and not hear your phone for days.
As for this thing, if I lived with her and could tend to it, I’d say it should be exactly what she wanted. Unfortunately it’ll have to fend for itself for weeks at a time, and any error or crash could erode her confidence in it. I tried to make it resilient and to think about all the ways it could get messed up short of someone dumping tea over the top of it, but we’ll find out how well I did over the next few days. Once I add the next step from the spy device, the transcription (which I ran out of time to add) I’ll try to have it fail in stages - ideally it records, transcribes, and emails out the audio file and the transcription. If transcription fails, it’ll still send out the audio file. If email fails, it still records to the device.
- Comment on One Button Sound Recorder made from spare parts 5 months ago:
It’s just set up with Raspberry Pi OS Lite - when I was working on it in my apartment, I was SSH-ing into it, but I never set up anything to control it at her place. That would definitely be a great next step, but I genuinely hadn’t thought about it until now.
- Comment on One Button Sound Recorder made from spare parts 5 months ago:
Thank you! I really appreciate it
- Comment on One Button Sound Recorder made from spare parts 5 months ago:
Thank you!! Once she felt the case and found the button, and I explained that it was the only one and how to use it, she was very happy. Surprised it could send emails and all with just one button press, but happy.
The code is very hacked together so I’m praying it holds up while running constantly for the next couple weeks. I just realized yesterday morning that I didn’t set any kind of limit on how long it’ll try to record. But I can always make improvements as we go.
- Submitted 5 months ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 10 comments
- Submitted 6 months ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on Vermont Utility Plans to End Outages by Giving Customers Batteries 6 months ago:
Ah, I’d had this impression from other conversations that batteries were half the cost of getting into solar, but perhaps that was for going off grid altogether (in which case I’d imagine the power company would want their battery back)
- Comment on Vermont Utility Plans to End Outages by Giving Customers Batteries 6 months ago:
This seems like it would remove one of the barriers for entry from installing solar panels
- Comment on Weekly What's Up? 6 months ago:
I finished the poured concrete 45° blocks for my neighbor’s raised bed. I’ll post pictures soon, though it isn’t terribly nice looking since the local rabbits got to the new flowers before I could get a picture (they’re perennials so they’ll be back next year).
About an hour ago I ‘fixed’ our washing machine - the lid switch failed yesterday, which prevented it from draining. Great design btw. I disconnected it, and added a jumper made from lampwire so it thinks the lid is always closed. That let us finish the laundry and skip hiring a repair company. I could get a replacement switch online but I don’t really see the need, it’ll just break again someday and I don’t feel like the marginal safety benefit is worth it. Just leave the lid closed while it’s running.
- Comment on Reviving An Old Lime-E Beta Rideshare E-Bicycle 7 months ago:
This is very cool! Love the process of making a locked-down corporate device usable. I hope the rest of the bikes become available to people.
