I built a radio clock transmitter that transmits a weak signal on the longwave band (60kHz or 77.5kHz) so I can set all the radio clocks and watches in my house to whatever time I want.
I did it because in some rooms the real signal, which comes from Cumbria in the north of England, is too weak and one of my clocks sometimes sets itself wrongly or doesn't adjust to the correct time and instead runs using its internal, less accurate, quartz movement.
By turning up the power of my transmitter, I could also set any radio clocks in nearby houses to the wrong time, but that would be unethical and illegal, so I won't do that.
I uploaded this pic to facebook already, I am going to hotlink the images. My own settings are public, if you have trouble viewing the images let me know and I will fix it.
ES and I got into legos a couple of weeks ago, and have been having a really fun time with it. I have been wanting a lego castle and I found one on Ebay. It's Nexo Castle Knighton. Nexo was a line of SpaceKnights from a few years ago I guess.
The castle came in 4 large bags that were not very sorted and it was missing a few pieces, but nothing major.
check out before I got started The set has over 1400 pieces. It is the biggest set that I have put together and it wasn't sorted.
The finished Knighton Castle all closed. the big turret in the middle up top is a rocket ship!!
It has seating for 4, so perfect for space trips about the quadrant.
The front door does open but each wing of the castle also swings open so you can play in the court yard. There is a Dwarvish Mech, a space car, and an evil siege engine with the set as well.
The king is have a drink, it's tough being a space king.
On the left side are quarters and an armory and a dining area and barracks are on the right side.
An oak dining table? Or a table covered with Lego?
hee hee I joke but the table is super special. My grandpa bought it at an antique store and gifted it to my mom when I was a wee babby, and she handed it down to me at some point. It's been my dining table my whole life.
It's 4 disparate pieces: the top, the base, and the 2 leaves. It's hilarious to watch people try to move it and then go "whoops!" when the top just lifts off
Political intrigue has been afoot at Castle Knighton.
Regime change has occurred. King McBeardly has been cast down, long reign Queen McQueen!!!
Her first order of business was getting custom headgear made for the DwarfMech.
In unrelated knews there have been reports of space smugglers in Lego World.
**editorial note: I decided to leave the knews typo because it's cute. This is knight news and we do know the news and I love stupid puns. I just wish this had been intentional.
An oak dining table? Or a table covered with Lego?
hee hee I joke but the table is super special. My grandpa bought it at an antique store and gifted it to my mom when I was a wee babby, and she handed it down to me at some point. It's been my dining table my whole life.
It's 4 disparate pieces: the top, the base, and the 2 leaves. It's hilarious to watch people try to move it and then go "whoops!" when the top just lifts off
YES. EXACTLY LIKE THAT.
The only difference is that I bought it at an antique store. Possibly before you were a wee babby.
Well, that and instead of lego it has chocolate on it.
We made Voltron last weekend. I didn’t post about it at the time because Ripley passed away the next morning.
While I’m sad and miss her, I also remember with a smile how she would hang out on one of her little beds close to the table while we worked.
She was with us the entire time we built Voltron.
She was really codependent
Voltron was a bunch of fun to make.
VOLTRON
DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE
Each lion was partially broken down, so step one was to finish breaking them down. The Red and Green lions are much simpler and I didn’t break them down to base bricks.
The Yellow and Blue lions are much larger as to be expected(my Voltron toy from my childhood was like that as well)
The Black Lion dwarfs the others which again was the case with the Voltron that my Aunt Cheryl bought new when I was a kid.
My home life was pretty nightmarish at times and Christmas presents weren’t always a priority for my alcoholic, narcissus mother. My Aunt Cheryl who didn’t have children of her own showered her nieces and nephews with love (and having grown up poor herself) and gifts. Cheryl bought me my Nintendo for example. Another Christmas, she got me a leather jacket that I wore for years. She bought me lots of toys over the years. He-man, GI Joe, Insectors, etc. one year though she bought me 1984’s large plastic Voltron. The lions were simple in movement, but could fit a GI Joe/Star Wars sized action figure. I think I also had a Prince Lothor figure, but I think GiJoes mostly drove the lions.
I had hours and hours of fun with that Voltron toy.
I suspect this lego creator (it’s a lego Ideas set, so designed by a fan) designer had the same or a very similar toy.
The Lego Voltron really captures the Voltron aesthetic. It is also appropriately gigantic for lego scale. Each lion can serve as a separate mount when not forming Voltron.
Then later in highschool I was trying to describe it to a friend and couldn't remember the name of it for the life of me. He knew what show I meant, but also couldn't remember the name. We racked our brains for days and could not come up with it. Then one day we were playing tennis, he hit the ball over to me and as I was about to hit it back he literally screamed "VOLTRON". I didn't even hit the ball, just yelled "YES!" and the relief washed over me.
As I've gotten to be the olds I've experienced this phenomenon many more times. But really, it shouldn't happen to teenagers.
As yall know ES and I have gotten into Legos during the sheltering in place.
This is our Lego Town.
ES put together most of the sets with varying amount of participation and help from me. Many of the sets are Lego Modular sets.
The buildings all have finished interiors with little lego stories.
The train is the Disney Lego Train, the station is the entrance to Disney world and Mickey is the conductor.
Here the train comes through Harley Quinn's and Poison Ivy's Castle of Insanity Parademon Hatchery which is a monstrosity of my own creation using a bat lego set and a bunch of Big Ugly Rock pieces to get me started. It also has floors that are removeable with Ivy having her own tower.
Closer view of just the Castle of Doom.
Here is a closeup of Clayface and Frank visiting the town. Clayface is from a batman set. Frank is ES and my creation based on Ivy's Audrey2esque henchman from the Harley cartoon.
Check out that corner garage as the train speeds past.
You can see the avenger's compound at against the wall.
The backside of our city. You can see the side of the Disney station but I didn't get a great shot of it.
That is Castle Knighton and Vader's Castle.
The backside of Castle of Doom showing Ivy's tower.
I posted this on facebook as well, I cite lest I plagiarize myself.
Ivy’s Isle.
Our Lego continuity is largely based on the Harley Quinn cartoon in a Lego multiverse like the Lego Movies so any piece of continuity that we want can be added.
When I "finished" Castle Pandemonium, this was what Ivy's tower looked like.
I don't have a good picture of it, but there are two rooms there and then more rock just stacked on top, the rooms were very small.
Here is Ivy's Isle
It's a lot bigger
My concept for this building was that Ivy made the building using her plant based powers.
It was just barren rock, and she just grew out everything, hollowing the rock and making the space that attracted the undead basement guardians in a symbiotic relationship. Much as pitcher plants attract bats in symbiosis.
To further that theme, I used a lot of green and lots of plant pieces integrated into the building. This gave a great look and the integration keeps them from flying off when you brush against them.
The Parademon hatchery atop Harley’s Castle Pandemonium is similarly green and yellow, but no plants grow on that twisted abomination of a place
Ivy does help genetically engineer Parademons, but plants don’t grow well in the portal energies.
I tried to put in features in each room. the bottom floor has a bar, glass windows with a plant display, door to outside(Castle Pandemonium) and stairs up to the next floor.
While the top floor sports a tiled floor pattern, chairs, a bed that sleeps two (many lego beds sleep 0) and the sliding glass door.
Here you can see the sliding glass door open and the decorative tiling.
This is the side of Ivy's Isle that the passengers on the train can see. The ominous skull rock signals to the unwary that the undead are about. There are also a couple of bird people roosting.
Here you can see into Cave Necrosis and see some of the horde. I love the undead elephant lich.
Much like modular builds, I made it where the top floor can come off so you can play with the bottom floor.
Deadshot is fixing himself a drink. You can see the plant display on the right, perhaps demonstrating how the roof works. One the left is the door to Castle Pandemonium and stairs up to Ivy's bedroom.
Here is a better shot of the bar. I am really happy with how it turned out.
There are drinks, a tv, a small sink, and of course fridge and wine storage.
Ivy's bedroom. The bed which sleeps 2, the floor and the back of the sliding glass door.
The roof open. I love the way it looks, it reminds me so much of a venus flytrap.
It all sits loose on the base plate, so you can take the floor off in order to set up the undead horde.
I might eventually finish the basement out as a sort of crypt or dungeon.
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Last edited by beyelzu; 08-03-2020 at 11:50 PM.
Reason: edited to make post, I upload the pics from my phone and then make the post on computer
Tinkerbell and Batman and Wonderwoman are up high on the castle.
Mickey and Minnie are out in front of the castle, Mickey is also the train conductor. I don't know if that's like a time loop copying thing or clones or what.
Close up of Batman and Wonderwoman and Tink.
Donald and Daisy are up in the ramparts.
Back of the castle follows, lots of details as Lego is want to do.
You can see the City Diner
View through the castle through the front doors. The tiled sub floor is gorgeous.
I continue to regress technologically. Yesterday, telephones. Today, galvonometers.
A digital meter smart enough to convert 0.5v - 4.5 into 0-100 costs a couple hundred bucks and needs its own power outlet. A needle-meter is self-powered and programmable with scotch tape.
I've been experimenting with Wyze. Wyze is a local business, has 2 factor auth, and generally sells devices fairly cheaply. Right now, I have three functions: First, a motion sensor, camera and plug in the family room downstairs. The motion detector turns on a lamp in the corner, and the camera records motion. Second, I have a contact sensor on the garage door. It sends me a notification if the garage door is left open for longer than an hour. Last, I set up my home office with more light. This is what I made something for....
The only window in my home office is in a niche and it only gets indirect sunlight. I have an overhead light, but I felt like I needed more. I recently got two Wyze bulbs for a different use, but I decided to install them in the lamps that are here. Up to this point in time, they were mostly decoration. They worked, but they weren't controlled by a switch and they are inconvenient because I need to turn them off for video conferences. I thought that a remotely controlled light might work better.
Now the only problem is, the default is to control these lights through the web page or an app. Well, I have an additional contact sensor, so I thought I'd tie this sensor to the lights, if it's open, the lights are on, closed, they're off.
That works fine, but that just means I have this sensor just sitting in two parts by the lamp. I thought it would be better to make a slider, so I could separate the two parts, this is my prototype:
This is Sou's entry for the week. She painted the inside of the cupboards with chalkboard paint so that we could have a list of what is currently in each cupboard.
Here is an easter basket I made for my mom. She's getting a small surgery in a couple weeks and I wanted to make her a care package for her recovery. She doesn't like plastic, and wicker baskets are hella expensive, so I was like I shall make one out of construction paper, like a kindiegartner.
It's probably the world's most expensive easter grass (especially when you factor in the labor of creasing each individual strip) but the paper was already torn into strips for the basket material so it was just going to be scrap otherwise.
Anyway, the whole enterprise took about half a day, and it was really fun and meditative to do it. Damn, should I take up actual basket-weaving in the future? Should I build a loom? We'll see.
Re: The Make Something Every Week Contest
The set has over 1400 pieces. It is the biggest set that I have put together and it wasn't sorted. 
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Linear Mode
