As you probably know, we split our time between NYC and Brewster, an hour north of the city. Ten or more years ago I installed programmable thermostats in the Brewster house, and set them to automatically heat or cool the house according to our regular comings and goings. The problem, as you’d expect, is that we don’t always keep the same schedule, and sometimes are out of sync with the thermostats’ programming. When we leave for an extended period of time, we have to be sure to lock in a temperature setting that overrides the programming; but then when we return the house will invariably be stuck at the wrong temperature. This is merely uncomfortable in the summer, but when we get home late on a winter evening, we’ll all be shivering trying to fall asleep in a 50° house. The flip side, of course, is that if we leave the thermostats on their pre-set programs, but then don’t go home at the expected time, we’ll be heating or cooling an empty house.

The solution to this problem has always been an internet-connected thermostat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one that cost less than $350, required some kind of controller in addition to the thermostat itself, was wired, was butt-ugly, or had an interface that was so clunky I couldn’t possibly trust it…or all of the above. At about $250 for the Nest, I signed up on the wait list as soon as I verified that my wiring was compatible. What follows is a quick run-through of its installation in our home.

Once the thermostat is installed, it gets its power from the wires that it’s plugged into—a very nice touch (my old thermostat needed as AA battery). It then boots up and asks you for some simple and clearly-worded setup information. You select your answers on the screen by rotating the metal bezel, and choose your selection by pressing (clicking) it. Though not as responsive as an average smartphone, it’s pretty intuitive and shouldn’t be offputting to anyone technically adept enough to connect the Nest’s wiring.

In the setup process, it connects to your home WiFi network and downloads its firmware from the net. Finally, about 1/2 hour after the box was opened, you are able to set the temperature with the Nest. Simply rotate the bezel to select a temperature. Alternately, you can click the bezel to toggle the Home and Away modes to temperatures that you chose during the setup procedure or to change any of its settings.

The Nest also has a motion sensor; it dims its screen when not in use, but lights up when you approach it. This way, you can see the current temperature and the target temperature without touching the device. By far its coolest feature, however, is its internet connection. Through the nest.com website or with an app on your i-device, you can toggle the Home/Away state of the thermostat or override its current temperature setting as if you were physically adjusting the settings. For my use, this is a huge boon, and should save me considerable money in my heating bills this winter. (Probably not enough to offset the cost of the Nest, but that’s fine. I mostly bought it for the convenience).

Finally, I should also say that the web interface to the nest provides for access to your Nest’s scheduling and learning. Though these are highly-touted features of the Nest, I have yet to use them and can’t really comment on how well they do or do not work. But even without these features, I am already a happy customer.

For the most part, this hasn’t been a terrible inconvenience—Apple moved from PPC to Intel architectures five years ago, already, and most programs are now Intel-only or Universal binaries. Unfortunately, some developers never seemed to care about making the transition. At work, two important programs, Sirsi-Dynix Workflows and ARTstor’s Offline Image Viewer, despite being current and regularly-updated programs, are still PPC only. Fortunately, however, a little sniffing around turned up a simple way to fix them, as well as other similar programs.

As it turns out, these two programs are Java applications with a Mac OS wrapper. The only component of these apps that is compiled specifically for PPC is the “JavaApplicationStub” that they’re bundled with. This can easily be replaced with a newer, Intel-compatible version, thereby fixing the application in the following manner:

1. Right-Click (or Control-Click) on the application icon in question, and choose “Show Package Contents.”
2. Open the Contents/MacOS folder, and verify that there’s a “JavaApplicationStub” file there. If there isn’t, you’re out of luck.
3. Trash the JavaApplicationStub file.
4. Open a second Finder window to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Resources/MacOS.
5. Copy the JavaApplicationStub file from the System and paste it in place of the one that you trashed from the application.

So, in case you need a quick fix, here’s a link to a simple little project that I just built and wrote up on ih8mud: my homemade bike rack. Enjoy!

Enter the iPhone. This past fall, I finally sprung for an iPhone 4 (having grown sick of the nearly useless Blackberries provided to me by my employer). Since I figured that I’d be carrying it with me wherever I went, anyhow, it meant that I could travel without my execrable Canon Powershot SD1100, and try to use the iPhone as my primary point-and-shoot, instead. (Working, that is, on the principle that the best camera to have is the one that you have with you.) That worked fine, and the iPhone was, indeed, a better camera than my latest Canon. However, I was bugged by the inability to mount the phone to a tripod for those (admittedly rare) times that I needed a really steady shot. So I decided to build myself a simple little iPhone tripod mount. Feel free to use this design or modify it to suit your purposes.

Materials:

• A 4″ L-shaped corner  brace
• A small length of square stock
• A 1/4 x 20 nut
• A small bungie cord
• 2 #10 washers
• JB Weld
• Primer and spray paint
• Plasti Dip

The parts that I purchased for this project. Everything else was stuff that I had lying around the house.

Tools:

• Hack saw or cutoff wheel
• Dremel or metal file
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Cut off the excess length along what will become the bottom of the L-bracket, so the the remaining hole is centered in the middle of the base.
   

   Cut the L-bracket here.

2. Cut a section of square stock the same width as the L-bracket.
   

   Cut off a small section of square stock.

3. Glue the nut directly over the hole in what will become the base.
4. Glue the small piece of square stock so that it sits level, just above the lowermost hole on what will become the upright section of the L-bracket.
5. When the glue has fully cured, deburr any rough edges.
6. Etch, prime, and paint the bracket (being careful not to clog up the nut’s threads).
7. Coat the top of the bracket with Plasti Dip, to further protect your iPhone from scratches.
8. Cut the hook ends off the bungie cord.
   

   Snip the ends off the bungie cord, so it can slip through the washers.

9. Slip the bungie cord through the holes in the upright, and through the washers, and secure it with knots tied behind the washers. Make sure that the bungie cord is tied so that it will hold your iPhone securely, but isn’t too snug or it’ll be hard to slip the iPhone into the mount.
   

   The finished piece, screwed onto my tripod’s mounting plate.

Here you can see the finished bracket in action. Sorry for the poorly-exposed picture, but you get the idea.

The iPhone tripod mount, in use.

Lately, though, it’s really gone to seed. In large part, that’s because I’ve been up to my ears in my projects, and haven’t really felt like taking time from them to blog about them. But something about my projects over the last year has also changed, and I feel like there’s been less that I can comment on that would be potentially useful to anyone else. So I haven’t been quite as vocal about them as I’d like.

So, with that in mind, here’s an accounting of my major projects from this past summer. Read them if you like, but be prepared to learn absolutely nothing.

1. The Bantha
Always a source of projects, I spent a good chunk of time fixing up my beloved Land Cruiser. It keeps on getting better and better, but since it’s a quarter century old, it needs constant upkeep. This summer I replaced all its rusty and dangerous steering linkage with new (to me) pieces that I bought from another Mudder. Following that, I put add-a-leaf springs on all four corners. That particular project took a fair bit longer than I anticipated because of all the rust and because I had to have replacements made for two broken springs that I found in the left front and left rear spring packs. On the plus side, I got fairly friendly with the folks who run an automotive leaf spring business in Danbury. Once that was done, the truck looked pretty goofy sitting on its stock tires, so I combed the junkyards in my neighborhood for replacement all-terrain tires. Now it rides on 31″ BFG ATs, stands a few inches higher than before, looks better, and drives way better. I guess the old tires’ sidewalls weren’t really up to the task of supporting such a heavy rig. The new tires, though, are awesome.

2. XL250
“What the hell’s an XL250?” I’ll bet you’re wondering. It’s a model of Honda enduro motorcycle that basically defined the class when it was introduced in 1972. A real classic. And in a fit of midlife crisis, I picked up a very sad and tired one for cheap last June. Slowly, slowly, I’ve been taking the thing apart, and hope to have it running again in time for next summer. The two-part punchline to this joke is that a) I knew nothing about motorcycle maintenance when I started this project, and b) I don’t even know how to ride a motorcycle, either. Now, after having spent a few aggravating months with the machine, I know quite a bit about motorcycles and grok their mechanics, but owing to years of neglect and rust and breakage, I still don’t have mine working yet. It’s now in my basement, sure to give me hours of amusement and scraped knuckles as I work on it through the winter.

3. Mr. Mom
Yelena went to Syria for the last two weeks in June, and when she got back, she was bogged down with a lot of major projects. (I promise a post soon on one of them.) So that meant that I took most of my summer vacation in Brewster, taking care of the kids, and being Mr. Mom while she stayed in the city and worked. Overall, it went well. The kids and I all survived unscarred, but it did complicate my getting my projects done. Woe is me.

4. Camping
I used to be a pretty avid camper, and spent much of my summers as a child in the Boundary Waters. Yelena and I also used to camp with some frequency (mostly because we were grad students, and it was cheap accommodation when on road trips), but hadn’t done any since 2000, when she was pregnant with our first child. The bug bit me again, though, last Spring and I’ve been out three times this year. All three trips were just single night car camping stays—nothing like the multiple-week trips to the north woods that I used to do—but were way better than not camping. The first time I took both my kids, along with a co-worker and his two kids, to a state park near us. We roasted marshmallows on an awesome campfire, slept out, and hiked on the Appalachian Trail the next day. Good times! The next two trips were just my son and me going north a bit to hang out and go wheeling with the guys from my Land Cruiser club. As far as the camping is concerned, both times were great. Wheeling the first time (prior to the lift and new tires) was a bit problematic because I had such crappy ground clearance. The second time, though, was easy. This Saturday, I’ll probably take my family out again for one last overnighter, and I can’t wait.

5. Welding
In our beery discussion during the first camping trip, I lamented that I don’t know how to weld. How could it be, I wondered, that I, a guy who is perfectly comfortable with all types of tools and construction, got by for so long without learning how to weld? There was no good answer to that question, so I did the only sensible thing: buy a cheap welder and teach myself. Predictably, I weld for shit. However, I have already used it to weld some new exhaust hangers for the Bantha (oops, there’s a project that I forgot to mention above), as well as to attach a new bump stop (make that two projects that I forgot to mention). I’ve got to say that it’s growing on me. It’s making me think in new ways and consider steel, as a material, in ways that I’d never considered it before. I’ll probably have to flesh out my thoughts and write about them sometime soon.

6. The Canoe
Last year I bought an awesome canoe, an old Sawyer Special, for a song. This thing is brilliant and fast and barely drafts is sleek and silent and chock full of awesome awesomeness. It also was abused by its previous owner, who painted this beauty with roll-on house paint. So, in a fit of “hey, I don’t have enough projects on my plate,” I spent a few evenings stripping off the old paint, patching and smoothing the gelcoat, and repainting it. Not much to report here, and I still haven’t paddled it since it got its new finish, but it was a fun little side project, and my daughter helped me a lot with sanding and waxing it, which was very good of her. Some day, it’ll look great when I load it onto the Bantha to go camping with my family.

7. The Shed
My single big project this summer was supposed to be the building of a new shed. After years of dithering and drafting multiple designs, I found a Costco ad for an 8′x12′ shed kit for $1000, delivered. “To hell with my plans!” I figured. This is the bestest, fastest, way for me to finally build my shed. The kit was actually pretty good, but erecting it was a two-person job, and since I’m too cheap to hire anyone to help me, it took longer than it should have. Miraculously, though, I got it all together without any help and without injuring myself. And now that it’s completed, I have tons of new storage space and have cleared out my basement for the next project: a family room. Wish me luck.

8. Server Infrastructure
Just looking at the above list exhausts me. Prior to writing it all out, I felt like this was pretty much a lost summer, but now I guess that I was actually pretty busy. So though I had planned to tell you about our major infrastructure projects at work—including virtualizing almost all our server room onto VMware ESX—I’m too bushed to go on. Maybe I’ll get into it sometime in the future. But now I think I’ll just grab a beer and relax.

Returning to the truck twenty or so minutes later, I found two nearly dead baby mice under the front of the car. Aha! Of course! Why didn’t I think of it earlier: mice squeak.

So I made sure that the babies were dead—I didn’t want them to suffer slowly on that parking lot—and set a trap for the mama when I got home.

At this rate, I’m giving serious thought to making a mouse stencil and marking my kills on the side of the truck WWII fighter plane style.

The Bantha was out of commission for a few weeks this spring while I tackled a few wiring projects. Rather than post them here, though, I’ve posted them on IH8mud (where Land Cruiser junkies document their addiction), in hopes of helping others waste time and money on their projects.

In doing so, I came across two blogs that (I’m embarrassed to say) I previously didn’t know existed. Between them, they paint vivid and wildly divergent pictures of the country. But if you’re at all interested in Yemen, you owe it to yourself to look read them as a sort of antidote to the stupid stuff that you’ll find elsewhere.

• Nomad Out of Time (for the beauty)
• Waq al-Waq (for the mess)