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Cold Weather Cycling Headgear

It was 37° F last week one morning as I headed out for my 7am bike ride. That’s a bit cold! I have a friend who said he won’t ride when it drops below 40° F but I actually prefer the colder weather. In fact, I barely rode in June and July because it was just too hot for me. (To be fair, my “too hot” is anything above 70° F.)

So back in February I would ride with a long sleeve hooded shirt and just sort of put the hood up and then put my helmet on. It mostly worked to keep my ears warm while the cold wind rushed by me, but it wasn’t ideal. I know there are all sorts of little hats/beanies/whatever that can go under your helmet, but in our winter drawer at home I found this Bula balaclava and it’s perfect.

I honestly do not know where it came from. I think someone bought a two-pack and then gave me one of them. (Maybe my sister?) Whoever it was, thanks! It’s a tight fit (so no bunching up under the helmet) and it covers the ears well. I can also pull it up over my chin or even the lower half of my face if needed.

Yeah, I know… it looks super cool! (Kidding) But if it works, it works. I try not to just run out and buy cycling gear, and I try to just make things work and I’m okay with that.

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Rollo Label Printer

About a year ago I asked about label printer for shipping and people had some comments.

My requirements were a thermal printer that could print 4″ x 6″ sticky labels and connected via USB and didn’t require any special software. I didn’t want a mobile app, didn’t want Bluetooth, just a USB printer I could select like any other printer.

A few people suggested a Rollo, and they do have a USB model that seemed to fit the bill, though it was a bit pricey. I managed to save a little by getting a refurb unit.

Oh, I had originally looked at the iDPRT Thermal Label Printer but the company describes their printers as “Most Intellect Label Maker Machine” which did not instill much confidence in the company, so I went with the Rollo instead.

So when I got the Rollo up and running I had a few issues with it aligning the print properly. It seemed like the label would occasionally not feed correctly. I tried a bunch of tweaks in the printer setup to adjust the margins and nothing seemed to work. I assumed my refurb unit was garbage, and dug through the help docs and switched from Preview.app to Skim so I could save a print setting to print at 90% which fixed the issue, but…

It turns out all the software/print setting tweaking was for naught! All I had to do was get some Alcohol Prep Pads and clean the rubber feed roller! Since then it’s worked flawlessly. (And I do clean it regularly.)

It’s the classic case of hardware versus software and mechanical issues versus settings. So yeah, all good, very happy with the Rollo.

I use an old 2014 Mac mini to run my “shipping station” in my shop, and even though it’s running an older version of macOS it works just fine. The only other critical software on the machine is a web browser (Firefox) to work with Pirate Ship for the labels.

So now when I need a shipping label it’s a few clicks, hit print, out comes a label, and it get stuck on a box. Easy Peasy, as the kids say!

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Make It Your Own

The Sonic Titan

The Sonic Titan

Years ago when I was really active at the Milwaukee Makerspace a member there would ask me about the projects I made, and how I came up with ideas for them. Well, I’ve always been a weirdo who thinks about weird things, so I’d usually get some idea and try things and occasionally it would become a project. Sometimes they were neat, sometimes they were dumb, sometimes other people thought they were interesting, and sometimes I was the only one who cared about it!

So this Maker said to me “I had an idea for building something but I looked online and someone has already made one.” and they seemed genuinely defeated.

I think this Maker’s goal was to get recognition, maybe via Hackaday (which is a double-edged sword) or… I don’t know. But they seemed upset that someone else did something they wanted to do.

I had some advice, which I’ll share here:

“Just make the thing you want to make. Who cares if someone else has made their own version. Make your own. It will be yours, it might be different. You might made different choices, in fact, you can make different choices. I typically don’t bother looking to see if someone else already built the thing I am going to build, as mine will be unique because it was made by me.”

Look, people have been on this planet a long time, and have created a lot of things… some would say nothing truly “new” has been created in decades, or centuries, and everything at this point is just rehashing or reimagining what has come before.

So just make your own damn thing, and make it yours.

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Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer

Back in June 2024 I got a Bambu Lab A1 mini to add to the printers in the shop. The Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer is a tiny little thing! And it’s not my first mini printer. Back in 2021 I got a Prusa MINI+ and when I did I pretty much stopped using the old Monoprice Maker Select Plus except for larger prints because the quality was so good on the Prusa.

I liked the Bambu Lab P1S I got in October 2023 so much that I convinced Josh at Brown Dog Gadgets to replace our Ender-3 S1 printers with a few, so he got four of them.

And since I was having great success with the P1S it made the A1 mini look nice, and I saw it as a “replacement” for the Prusa MINI+… oh, and Bambu Lab was having a sale, and oh, I actually had a $50 gift card to apply to the purchase so I got it for $175 USD. Killer Deal!

I did not get the AMS unit. I’ve got one for the P1S and do any multi-color stuff on that machine. There are a few things that aren’t amazing about the A1 mini, like the camera and the light, and of course the smaller print area, but the print quality is extremely nice for a bed slinger. It appears to print higher quality prints than the Prusa MINI+ did, even when it was brand new. The A1 mini came ready to print… no assembly required.

The screen is a little small (though it’s much better than the old “car stereo” style screen on the P1S) and I use a stylus for pressing the buttons on the screen because my fingers are not tiny because I am a fully grown adult man.

I mostly use the A1 mini for printing printing plates (yes, plates!) or other small prints if the P1S is busy. Honestly if you want a small beginner printer the A1 mini fits the bill pretty well.

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Giant LED Cube

You know when you mean to do something and then forgot and a few years pass? Okay then… I wrote the post Designing a Giant LED Cube in 2018 and hey, it’s time for the next post!

Anyway, I built what was (jokingly) call the “World’s Largest LED Cube!” but eventually settled on “Giant LED Cube” and here are some photos and videos showing it off. And yes, since it uses “LED Bulbs” I consider it an LED Cube. It’s not technically a “cube” because it’s a bit taller in the Z direction but hey, close enough!

To connect all the PCV pipes together I got eight 3-Way Elbows, twelve 4-Way Tees, eight 5-Way Crosses… and 27 Elbows, 28 Tees and a ton of PVC pipe, obviously!

The LED Cube was shown at Maker Faire Milwaukee in 2018 and 2019, as well as the Fall Experiment in 2019, The Elkhorn Mini Maker Faire in 2019, and the Madison Mini Maker Faire in 2019. Sadly at the end of 2019 the department I worked for got shut down and I was left with just the control box, the electronics, and the PVC connectors, as I didn’t have space for all the PVC pipes, though I did get some (not all) of them later on and thought about building a smaller version of the cube but life stuff happened in 2020. Sigh…

While this was a large sculpture (the largest I ever worked on) it was fairly easy to put up and take down, and could fit in a reasonably sized vehicle like a van, small truck, or even a Honda Element. the 5 foot pieces of PVC pipe did take up some room but 5 feet isn’t too unwieldy to deal with. All the other stuff fit in a few bins.

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