Loft Ladder

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Brian Gallimore

I built a ladder out of 2×4 and 1×4 lumber. It has 9 rungs spaced 12-3/4″ apart and is set to be used at a 70ยบ angle and have 9′-1″ of elevation.

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How-To Get Clean Dishes with a Modern Dishwasher

Posted on February 7, 2020 by Brian Gallimore

If your modern high-efficiency* dishwasher is anything like mine, then it is a source of constant frustration. Even with pre-washing the dishes don’t come out very clean.  I think I solved the problem, here is what we do:

  • wash out the filter every time a load is run
  • run it with soap for a normal cycle, which takes several hours (can cancel it during the dry cycle if caught in time) (don’t use too much soap — filling the cups full is usually not necessary)
  • pour a gallon of clean water into the base, then press the drain/cancel button
  • repeat with another galon of clean water, then draining
  • run it again but without soap on the 1-hour cycle

The extra steps are necessary to wash away all the soap.  There are 2 things you are fighting**: 1) the soaps no longer have the ingredient in them that allow for easy rinsing, and 2) a typical cycle only uses 3 gallons of water, instead of the traditional 15 gallons.

*water usage efficiency, not time efficiency
**both of the changes are due to US law

 

 

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2018 Scouting Memories

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Brian Gallimore
  • Bryson at Court of Honor Ceremony
  • Flag Ceremony on first day of school
  • Aiden fishing at Trevor Rees-Jones Scout Camp
  • Aiden at Bobcat ceremony
  • Veterans day parade
  • Bryson at CTX event at Texas Motor Speedway
  • Me and Bryson at Climbing Tower at Winter Camp
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Aiden Ding Dong Ditcher

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Brian Gallimore

I sent Aiden outside today because he was being too loud. This is what he did.

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Canonball Speed Sensors

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Brian Gallimore

A customer wanted to use industrial photo eye sensors with a piece of lab equipment to measure the speed of a projectile shot out of a air cannon.  I assembled a small box with the parts needed to power it and adjust the voltage levels. 

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Batch Resize Pictures Using Linux Convert Utility

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Brian Gallimore

A quick and simple way to resize a folder full of pictures is to issue the following command on a Linux computer:

$ for file in *.jpg; do convert $file -resize 25% rz-$file; done
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Dasher the Dog 2003-2018

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Brian Gallimore

Dasher as a puppy, playing with a plastic bottle.
Dasher at 1 years old
Dasher was the feature of our Christmas cards one year!
Dasher loved to be in your lap.
Dasher’s grave in our backyard. Our neighbor gave us the windchimes to remind us of him.

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WeatherCam online

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Brian Gallimore

I hooked up an old analog camera I had laying around (one of the 15!) to an Axis 2400+ video server I bought off of ebay for $40.  A little script that runs every minute and copies a picture from zoneminder to my webhost account.  I added the picture as a widget to this website in the sidebar under the weather station doohickey.   Once I verify the picture quality in the daylight, I’ll add it the weather cams at wunderground.com.

Continue reading →

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Kodi, Sling, Plex, MythTV Entertainment Options

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Brian Gallimore

In a more-complicated-than-need-be step to canceling our satellite TV service, I installed MythTV backend and Plex server on an old computer that was sitting around.  I started by installing mythbuntu because I’m already comfortable with using Ubuntu.  MythTV uses the inexpensive HDHomeRun tuner as a source for local TV channels from the antenna, and it also has all kinds of capabilities to get content and information from the Internet and your local video libraries.  Plex is service that not only finds and matches cover art and artist information to your existing content, but it has the magical ability to transcode your content on the fly when the client needs a different format.

 The piece of this project that really made the biggest difference was that Kodi, which can be a front end for MythTV (and much more) can be installed on an Amazon Fire Stick.  

Continue reading →

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Gardening and Permaculture posts at GalliStead.com

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Brian Gallimore

I created a new website GalliStead.com where I’ll make all future posts about gardening, permaculture, and aquaponics related projects and updates at our house. I hope to get fencing put in and have a few sheep or goats too. So subscribe to updates on that site if you want to see what’s going on with my gardening efforts.

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