Member postings for Russell Eberhardt

The smart plug needs a good wifi signal. If the signal in the garage is poor you could try a wifi booster.

Russell

It does depend on the operating system on your phone. I'm not familiar with iPhones but phones with Android 8 or later keep the microphone on while the lock screen is showing by default. You can turn it off in Settings but how many people do, and anyway anyone who can hack into your phone can turn the microphone on again and listen to it.

When my phone is plugged into the car the microphone is on all the time and Google is listening so that if I say, "Hey Google, navigate to <certain address>" the GPS will take me there. It also gives me hands free telephone via the car speakers. Of course Google knows exactly where I have been but they are welcome to that information.

Russell

A few months ago I got fed up with my 25 year old alarm radio's poor FM reception and looked at buying a new DAB radio for the bedroom. However it then occurred to me that the local radio I listen to as an alarm doesn't broadcast DAB. So I bought a Google Nest Mini to experiment with.

I found that I could set it up to play my local radio station (France Blue Rousillon) as a daily alarm to listen to the local news. It can also play all BBC radio, nice to listen in english sometimes. The conversational ability is remarkable and it can also act as a translator if required, useful for checking my French pronunciation!

The sound quality is much better than I expected but if I want HiFi quality I can tell it to play music to the television which is connected to my HiFi setup.

I now have one unit in the living room as well and as my car has Android Auto I can now message my wife hands free to tell her when I am on my way home.

If the CIA or MI5 can use it to spy on me they are welcome. They will get very bored! Remember, if you have a mobile phone it also has a microphone which could be turned on remotely.

Russell

Personally I wouldn't use fishing line as it's not intended for a continuous load. 1.4 mm longcase clock synthetic gut is rated for 39 lb safe working load and the breaking strain is about five times that. If it breaks with the weight near the top the weight can do a lot of damage.

Meadows and Passmoor used to sell it, don't know if they still do.

Russell

Agreed. Governments are afraid to mention it. The Chinese tried it some years back by restricting couples to only one offspring but they gave up on it.

Russell

Draftsight was provided by Dassault Systems not Siemens. I was one of the many upset by it's withdrawal.

Russell

The problems of rising sea levels seem to be taking a back seat at COP26.

I have just been reading a science fiction book written in the 1950s that explores the possible consequences of the melting of the polar ice caps. Even though he uses aliens do do the deed rather than humans it is food for thought!

The book is The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. Well worth a read.

Russell

Small cost compared with destroying the planet by burning coal!

Russell

One of the main problems with audio on flat screen TVs is that, apart from the speakers being too small, they are in the back rather than the front! I bought a £10 digital to analog converter from Amazon and connected it between the SPDIF output from the TV to a pair of spare inputs on my 30 odd years old hifi. The sound now comes from a pair of Rogers speakers and I can now understand (most of) the dialog.

Russell

No apology needed Brian. We have drifted a bit!

I currently have Windows 10 on two computers and XP on another and have no intention to convert to W 11. When or if W 10 stops working I will just stick to my favourite operating system and look for alternatives to the few Windows apps I currently use.

Bon chance with W 11!

Russell

I would disagree that Linux distros come and go quickly. I started using Red Hat in the mid 1990s and it is still in existence and regularly updated. It is however a commercial paid version but the earliest distro was Debian which still figures in the top ten of dstros and like most distros is free. I currently use Mint and have done for about 10 years.

As far as uncertainty and risk is concerned I am running two of my computers as dual boot machines with both Windows 10 and Linux Mint available. I have had far more crashes and bad updates with Windows than Linux. When problems with Linux do occur I can pose a question on the Mint forum and usually get a solution within the hour, that is if Google search doesn't find it.

Russell

The coating on glasses doesn't seem to adhere so well on modern plastic lenses. Mine have just become unwearable after only two years.

Russell

Well school metalwork was in the early 1960s so I have been doing it for quite a while. What I don't do though is work full time in a workshop. I guess doing it full time may be more of a problem but I have never suffered from dermatitus other than having to do all the washing up when my wife was ill.

Russell

When I was doing metalwork at school we were taught to put two drops of machine oil on our hands and rub it in as soon as we entered the workshop. I still do that and never put any oil to protect the metal except on moving parts. Never have any rust problem.

Russell

As a child I was given an old "boy's book of chemistry" by a lab technician at Oxford University. One of the many dangerous experiments in it was to etch glass. The instructions were to ask your dentist for some old teeth, grind them up and place in a evaporating dish with some strong acid (was probably nitric), place the glass with wax resist on top of the dish and heat to produce hydroflouric acid fumes! It also described how to make and explode picric acid! I avoided the most dangerous experiments but did make some nitrogen tri-iodide. Those were the days!

Russell

Yes, my ZX-15 has two four step pulleys. Now much better with inverter drive.

Russell

Edited By Russell Eberhardt on 25/10/2021 19:38:36

Splinters can get under the skin and can be absorbed by the body. Nasty stuff, we had strict rules for handling it when I worked with it at a research lab in the 70s.

Russell

I've just been looking through my old files and have found a PDF file of the Grizzly manual which gives all the information on belt set ups and much more. If you send me a PM with your email address I can send you a copy.

Russell

That lathe has a big following in the US. It is usually referred to as the 9x20 lathe. Try a Google image search for 9x20lathe and you will find hundreds of pictures. There was a 9x20lathe group on Yahoo (I was a member when I had one) but it has now been moved, I think to groups.io you could try there.

Russell

Hi Iain,

My first clock was John Parslow's design for a 15 day skeleton clock, published in ME about 10 years ago. I started a thread on the clock here. The build articles will be available in the ME archive.

Some pictures of my build are to be found in my album. Feel free to PM me if I can help.

Russell