Clear ice just looks fancy especially in clear drinks, compared to normal cubes. There's fancy clear ice makers and machines but I just use a small 6-pack cooler to encourage directional freezing and then carve up the resulting slab.

Realized that my new compressor camp cooler fits my small cooler while testing some solar capacity this weekend. The applications were obvious.

One big game changer was learning how to coil cord so that it unfurls without tangling (usually). I wind in a figure-8 then wrap backwards to bundle. When it's time to deploy, the loose end typically just pulls free and pays out.

Clear evidence that ancient earth was visited by Kzinti.

Teardown-basically reverse of deploying but I try to make things as tidy as possible. Usually I'm breaking camp with at least a few damp pieces of gear so they need to dry. anyway. The farrimond friction hitch shows one huge advantage here, during teardown just pull the tail out and it comes apart

Adjustments - After everything is up, I get in the hammock to check how the lay angle feels and adjust, tighten any loose guy lines on the tarp etc. theultimatehang.com/2012/06/29/t... has a pretty good overview, laying diagonal in the hammock is a lot of t

Hanging the tarp: Depending on the tarp, there's a few different ways to do this. My current tarp is reinforced so that I can't hang my bug net so I need a separate ridgeline for that. I attach lines to the tarp with a bowline and use a farrimond friction hitch to tension the tarp and guy lines.

Hanging the hammock: (Assuming fair weather, otherwise I start with getting the tarp up first)Ideally I'm looking for trees a little over 10' apart (room for the tarp and a good hang angle) Broad straps protect the tree from damage and typical hanging straps have a few loops to easily adjust length.

To anyone following along on bsky, I'm cross-posting this to my mastodon server as well, sometimes with a bit longer posts than bsky allows.

My standard hammock loadout: -Hammock (get a 'double' size) -Hanging strap kit (usually included with the hammock) -Bug net (integrated into my hammock) -Underquilt (absolutely essential for cooler nights) -Sleeping bag or camp blanket -Parachute cord -Hammock tarp kit (tarp, cord, stakes)

I'm trying to keep a few more knots memorized, the alpine butterfly loop is great for making loops that are easy to remove and I highly recommend learning the marlinspike hitch and all variations this video covers. youtu.be/TfpzRE9sgRY?...

Before going out to the campsite with a hammock, knowing a few basic knots is really important, practice them so you can do them in the dark in the rain while getting your tarp up The two I find essential are the bowline and the farrimond friction hitch, guides at www.animatedknots.com

Still getting some visible thermal drift throughout the day on the TDS meter but plenty accurate to keep the levels where I want them, still spot checking with the handheld meter periodically, neat to see the graph spike when I add a scoop of fertilizer to the system

I think I've camped on the ground once since getting into hammock camping, I find I sleep much better and its really nice to wake up and not need to climb up off the ground. It's a bit more effort to rig and planning is needed to make sure trees at your site will work.

Progress update on the garden, we've had some great sunny warm weather these last 2 weeks and been getting some great growth. Needed to top up the fertilizer a couple times to keep the TDS up, not sure how much of the drop has been uptake into the plants vs drying on the growing media, etc.

Went to my first furry con in VR this past weekend, Furality: Somna, (furality.org) absolutely beat my expectations and first time I've had serious PCD in awhile, photos and video really can't capture the experience of being there so here's a photo attempting to do just that.

I run a dripper line similar to the buckets but with a couple right-angle fittings to hook over into a hole at one end of the trough, with a drain hose at the other end, this drains back into the nearest bucket and recirculates with the rest of the system.

2" Net pots, a hole saw of the same size and some scrap vinyl gutter downspout. Found some 3d printed end caps on amazon but decided to print myself in ASA for better UV resistance.

The nice thing about running a system with a circulator pump is I can test other systems. System is primarily a Beto/Dutch bucket system but we had some scrap gutter downspout so decided to also test doing a nutrient film technique section, (acronym widtheld for obvious reasons)

Pretty good growth progress on the garden, had to top up the nutrients a bit after a week, they're not very big so I suspect most of the nutrient loss is deposits on the growing media and other places out of reach to rinse out.

Still getting some deviation on the TDS meter throughout the day, tweaked a temperature compensation variable and seems to be much closer than the original settings, getting within about 50ppm so at least enough to see if something is really off and see changes as I add water or feed.

This year I'm testing monitoring my nutrient levels in real time, built a weather proof enclosure for a TDS meter that I can integrate with Home Assistant.

This year's system follows a beto/Dutch bucket system which moves to a main reservoir with a fountain pump that feeds each pot via a drip irrigation system. The pump runs every 30 minutes and ensures all plants get an even feeding. (The old system would dilute pots closer to my feed bucket)

Previous years I used a bucket aquaponics system. Each bucket had an air stone (plant roots need oxygen) and I linked the buckets to make it easier to top up fertilizer and water.

Garden is off and running, will be doing a few posts about this year's new hydroponics setup, hopefully it will be easier to manage and more effective at keeping the plants healthy.

I've built trackers with 3 different IMUs and had good luck with them all so far, with some caveats. BNO085 - Official Slimes use this, hard and expensive to source. ICM45686 - Cheaper, more CPU intensive, my go-to for single IMU trackers. LSM6DSV - Less CPU, using for extensions.

Oh no, I just realized a part of the Terminator future is coming true. Given furries are one of the more generally anti-AI groups, we're now using dogs to sniff out the machines.

Still a lot of active dev work going on with SlimeVR, especially given the challenges of getting parts, most stable builds use one IMU but that one is hard to get in breakout board form and is pretty pricey. I put sockets on both the IMU and control board slots for my dev rig.

Taking advantage of my printer's MMU to build in labeling for each tracker. Case design available at www.printables.com/model/991275...

Got one worse than "The Discord server is the documentation."

I wanted to design a case for these trackers that didn't require any screws and was fully snap-together, I'm pretty happy with how these came out versus the official FrozenSlime cases github.com/frosty6742/f...

Lately I've been building a few more sets of SlimeVR trackers for VRChat full body tracking for friends, started with the FrozenSlime board design and didn't like a few things about the stock build and case, such as this power switch. Swapped that for a push-on-push-off.

Hops are already topping the fence, off to a party good start this year despite something nibbling on the left plant a couple weeks ago

Finished up this year's batch of birdcoins and did a few side projects at the same time, still a little tricky dialing in a really smooth plating but still great results once tumbled. Also with a layer of copper down, I can plate nickel on top for a more durable surface.

Last year I spent a fair bit of time cleaning up the prints after plating, the finish was pretty dull and sometimes rough, this year I moved to tumbling in shot with dish soap and citric acid for about 4 hours. They come out of the plating bath with a bit of a dull salmon color.

Getting the plating dialed in took a bit after not doing it for almost a year, solution had lost some strength and needed to top up less with distilled water, also switched to using copper bars instead of the recycled electric cable I was using last year.

For this year's batch I did some tests with resin printing, messier but faster and much better detail. I also experimented with various ways to get around having to paint the prints before plating. Tumbling in graphite with some plastic pellets did an ok job to start but still needed brushing.

Had quite a few failures, solution needs to be filtered periodically , plating works better at certain temperatures, anodes break down, ratios between anode and print surface area matter, etc.

Took a fair bit of fiddling with current settings and mounting but I was able to get pretty good results, enough to actually complete the first batch using these techniques. Most of the work was gluing , sanding and painting to get them prepped for plating.

I used a homemade graphite conductive paint (mix of acrylic base and graphite powder) airbrushed on to get the print to conduct enough to plate.

I was able to get some okay results (metal was definitely applied to plastic) but switching to a commercial copper plating solution helped a lot. I was able to get pretty good results with the FDM printer by printing each face upright and gluing the halves together then sanding the edges.

Last year I decided to play around with electroplating 3d prints. First results were pretty crude but eventually got the hang of things

Trying to get in the habit of posting more, even if just a quick photo and update. On the way back home after a family visit with more dirtbike practice