I haven’t posted since May. I’ve had a lot of side distractions since then.
In mid May we took a vacation. We were supposed to try a river cruise back in 2020 for our 35th anniversary. Well, we finally got to take that trip in May. We flew into Prague where we stayed for a couple of days before bussing to our riverboat – the Viking Aegir. We boarded in and toured Passau, Austria. The next day in Linz, Krems, and Vienna Austria. Then Bratislava, Slovakia and finally Budapest, Hungary. We particularly enjoyed the vibe in Prague.
The beer we good everywhere, but it was especially good in Prague. We stopped into a pub and I told the waiter I thought I would order a beer. I figured he would bring me a menu. Instead he brought me a fresh Pilsner Urquell. This was NOTHING like the green bottle I had in the states. This was perhaps the best beer I ever drank. What a difference bottling makes. The night before I had a Budvar which was also beyond my expectations for anything volume beer. I really couldn’t find any of the Untappd entries for what I had in Europe.
After returning I did some stonework repair which would have made a good writeup if I’d thought about it. A previous repair I had done in October while the ground was dry helped cause a failure when the ground added moisture. As the ground expanded the sidewalk moved closer to the patio. I had filled in the previous cracks with Mortar so the stones had no place to go but up! Basically I just picked up the stones and re-grouted them in. The interesting part was replacing a stone that had decomposed. I had to cut out the old bed and re-lay it.
I also spent a full day on lawn-mower repair. I changed the bearings and belt guards on my riding mower. This may or may not have been worth a write up.
Finally I spent significant time helping my Mother-in-law move and building her Ikea and closet storage shelves as well as just hoisting boxes for her.
I started getting back to my other projects.
I returned to the Fluorescent Mineral display. More of that on a separate write-up. I had ordered some LED chips and heatsinks from China while we were in Europe so I needed to try them out.
I started printing with UV resistant “ASA” filament with my 3D printer which required higher temperatures and a new set of quirks to learn.
I brewed a beer with my BeerMKR. I tried to trick the software by doing the trick with unplugging the Peltier to get the upper heaters to turn on for the mash. That part was successful. Unfortunately there wasn’t any fooling it on the cooling side since at my Seebeck voltage it though the chip didn’t need cooling. I hotwired the fan up to 12v continuous for the duration of the brew… except for when I went an played with it. I unplugged the power to check on something else and forgot to plug in the fan again. The next morning I smelled hot metal (the chip). The BeerMKR software said I was up to 113F. For a beer I was going to try to go cool and slow with that didn’t quite work. Surprising when I bottled it the beer seemed drinkable. I will give a bottle a try in about a week. I was hoping for a more Estery (think banana) flavor and I probably got a more phenolic flavor (think rye).
During a gap in my 3D printing I went back to finishing my board replacement schematic and made a very early start on a circuit board. The current density at the power connection is going to be pretty high so I’m going to have to take care with what I make the board from and how I arrange things.
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