Year: 2014

Arcade Cabinet

One of the first projects I tacked with my new workbench is something that I've been promising Sean for a long time - a stand-up arcade machine. We had one in Texas, but had no room for it in the new house and I had to get rid of it. Now with a modern LCD TV (as opposed to giant old-school tube) and a Raspberry Pi inside (rather than a full tower PC) I was able to build one both inexpensively and a lot lighter and shallower than the original. All it needs now is the bezel glass over the screen to hide the last of the wood, and then it will be done. I don't think we're going to bring it up to his room until after the cookout, though - I want to give everyone a chance to enjoy it before it goes upstairs.

Tinkering Workbench

I needed another workbench that wasn't in the garage, that I could use for tinkering around with electronics projects. The problem is that the garage is too cold in the winter, and all the sawdust is bad for the type of stuff I'd like to work on. So I decided to build a workbench in the basement, and what you see below is the result.

Sriracha – Round Two

I went through the first batch of the homemade Sriracha pretty quickly, and decided that another batch was in order. I could find enough red Fresno peppers this time, and had to substitute some green Jalapenos for part of the recipe. Due to that substitution, the color wasn't as nice and red, and the sauce is a lot hotter than I was aiming for. Still good, but I like it a little milder in general. This time I made up some funny labels that the kids helped me out with.



Sean’s Painting

Sean brought this painting of a birch tree home from school a couple of weeks ago. Something about it really appealed to me - he really captured the likeness of the bark of a white birch. I think I'm going to find it a home somewhere in the house. Maybe I could make a frame for it - I've even got some birch lumber I harvested from a birch tree that I cut down when clearing a spot for the cabin. How appropriate!

Homemade Sriracha

I made a batch of homemade Sriracha sauce over the last week. It's pretty easy - basically you puree the peppers and some other ingredients, put it in a jar, then let it ferment at room temperature for a week. After that you just bring it to a boil with some vinegar, force it through a strainer, and bottle it. Looking forward to putting some on whatever we eat for dinner! If it ends up being pretty good I think I'm going to make a bigger batch sometime soon so I've got some to give away) and make up some fun labels to print for the bottles.

Rock Tumbler

I got Carter a rock tumbler for Christmas, and we've been running it non-stop since then. We finished our third batch of rocks today - each batch takes about a week at each grit, for a total of about four weeks per batch. This last batch was a bunch of agates and jaspers from Mexico. They came out really pretty, as you can see.

Leprechaun Trap

Carter built a leprechaun trap again this year for St. Patrick's Day. This time she said it was disguised as a "gold factory", complete with cooling tower - where they apparently manufacture gold. Still no luck with catching him this year, but he did leave behind some gold nugget bubblegum.

Sculpting with Clay

I got some polymer clay and tools to try and do some sculpting with the kids. We went with Super Scupley - it's soft when you work it, but you can bake it out in the oven to set it hard as a rock. We all sat down one night last week to give it a shot. They really seemed to enjoy it - we'll probably make some more stuff tonight. Last time I made the little one-wheeled robot on the left, and Carter made the Pikachu on the right. Sean made a Pikachu as well, but he hasn't painted it yet and he wanted me to wait before I took a picture of it.

Travel Uke #2

This was another travel ukulele I built recently. It sounds really good, but I've got mixed feelings about the lack of headstock and its replacement by the zither pins at the tail end. The zither pins are more of a pain to tune (although truthfully, not much) - but I think it's the lack of a headstock that I find the hardest to adjust to. I hadn't realized how much of my 'intuitive' sense of where I am on the fretboard (without looking, I mean) depends on the feel of the neck as it transitions from the end of the neck proper into the back of the headstock. With this travel uke my hand slides up the neck looking for this transition, and I just sort of almost slide right off the top end. Still, I prefer the look and sound of this one over the travel banjolele a couple of posts back.