Myriad Projects

“Adult colouring in” is a real thing now, and my wife loves it. I decided to make her a bag to keep all her colouring stuff in. Here’s how I did it. The first step in any project like this is planning. I needed to work out how I was going to put it together and what material I needed. The plan showed me how much I would need (the plan has to have measurements) and also what order I’d need to sew…

Remember that time I built a massive deck in the back yard? Well, I just realised that even though I had the pictures, I didn’t actually upload the final photos! So here they are…. I think it turned out alright. :) It’s been a few years since we sold the place with this deck and we still kind of miss it. I wonder what the current owners have done with the back yard? Hopefully it still looks the…

Cupboard under the stairs

In the house we renovated there was a large cavity under the staircase that I filled with a storage cupboard. The space wouldn’t be used because it was narrow and deep, so I drew up some plans and built a giant cupboard into the space under the stairs. It had two rear facing doors with tall cupboards and three large doors that opened out to reveal shelves. The end cupboard was great for ironing…

Raspberry Pi out of the box

I finally bought a Raspberry Pi (2) – this is how I set it up from out of the box. First of all I guess I should explain what a Raspberry Pi is. In short, its basically a computer that is the size of a credit card. It was primarily invented to help people learn about computers and electronics. And the price? About $60. Not bad for a computer, right? The reason I bought one was primarily to use as…

Roll Pack a Suit and Shirt

For work, I need to travel a fair bit domestically. And I need to wear a suit when I’m at work. I hate having to take check-in luggage because it costs extra a lot of the time, it can get lost and it’s great to be able to get out of the airport quickly (not having to wait to pick up luggage). I also hate the inconvenience of trying to manage a suit bag. I’ve done some research and done some…

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted any of my sketching that I try to do regularly. These pieces are not works of art, but practice – I attend a life drawing session once a week to get practice in. It’s certainly starting to come together now.

Here are a few of my latest sketches.

Painting with Red Wine

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking – what a waste of good wine.

I am involved in a weekly life drawing group and each session does involve wine. Last week I decided to take along a watercolour brush and see what would happen if I used red wine in the same way that I would use watercolour paints.

I think it turned out alright.

I’m not the best artist in the world, and I’ve only recently…

Fixing a broken USB stick

Okay, this post is really exciting! Maybe not for you, dear reader, by I got excited anyway. Those of you that follow my blog know that not everything I do actually works out, so it was great that this one did – even though I didn’t expect it to.

The problem was that a USB stick had be pulled out of the computer, leaving the USB part behind! It meant that it was impossible to use the stick, with…

Building a planter for tomatoes

It’s been a while, but I wanted to post about the planter I have just built to grow tomatoes in.

I designed and built this myself and hoped to be able to save a lot of money, but be able to get fresh produce at the end of all this. The total cost of everything that I spent money on is $61.60 (AUD). Here’s a bit of a break down…

Timber – $18.57 – 3 x 3.6m lengths of 150x25mm treated pine @$6.19…

Intercooler install – Removing the bumper

This is an photo journey of my installation of a new intercooler in my Saab 9-3 (1999, RHD). The standard one makes the air flow back and forth in the intercooler, but I’m installing a bigger cross flow intercooler to cool the intake air and to increase the flow of air to the engine.

To install the new intercooler, the old intercooler needs to be removed and for that to happen, the bumper needs…

Disillusioned with the lack of progress so far, I went back and made sure I had done everything perfectly.

Turns out I hadn’t.

I’ve made the edit to my post – Part III – and realised the error of my ways.

I had made “browseable=yes” commented out in the…

The next step in trying to fix this is now back to the terminal window and trying to get this thing connecting.

From the ubuntu boards, Morbius1 has suggested:

[4] Then I want to create a “Samba” directory away from your home directory.

sudo mkdir -p…

The next instalment is possible due to more help on the ubuntu forum. Again Morbius1.

[1] Post your entire smb.conf since I really don’t know where you are any more. You can do that by issuing this command and posting it’s output to the forum:

cat…

So, after the last tutorial and battle with ubuntu, I’m no further along towards my objective, but more experienced.

I have turned to the ubuntu forums to seek advice and help. Turns out there are some awesome people there who are willing to help.…

I’m putting this here almost for my own reference, but hopefully to help others.

I’ve installed ubuntu on an old net book that was too slow. All I want to do is set it up as a file server on my wireless network. This is proving most challenging, but I’m…

Terrace Plant Thursday - Issue 4

Last week we looked at growing an onion in a two litre coke bottle.

Exactly one week after planting…

Okay, today’s post is going to sound a little weird, but I wanted to take a break from normal to talk about an idea that I had and I’m enjoying doing.

It’s not a new idea and I’m sure there are websites dedicated to it. The idea was a solution to a…