Most Useful Thing

Thingiverse has a clunky and unreliable indexing system and search engine, to the point that it can be hard to find the same thing twice. So here’s a link to a quick, useful tool: Angle taker for tight spaces.

A while back I made a stab at designing a removable drip tray for the water/ice dispenser on my Samsung fridge, which was inexplicably designed with an oddly-shaped depression that will inevitably become etched by the residue of evaporation. I basically had to take rubbings to get measurements, and my first try got the angled sides wrong.

This little tool captured the angle precisely so I could transfer it to a protractor and correct my OpenSCAD code.

Other Useful Things

Bag Clips

While I generally frown on the idea of spending hours 3d-printing something that can be purchased for pennies at any local store, 2020 and Benito Newsom have made the shopping experience so cumbersome that I’m willing to make a few exceptions. I generally have at least three opened bags of something or other that need to be resealed cleanly, and this set of 3 clips works nicely. There are quite a few remixes and redesigns, but they don’t solve the only problem I’ve had with them a few times, which is the ends lifting off the bed slightly during printing.

It doesn’t hurt them functionally, and it can be avoided by keeping the infill percentage and number of walls down, to reduce shrinkage-induced stress. And we should all reduce shrinkage-induced stress.

2x MicroSD in SD case

When there are once again places to go and things to see, I will take pictures with my cameras. My pocket-sized travel camera fits nicely in this padded pouch, with only the security strap sticking out. The pouch has just enough room for an extra battery and some thin card storage.

Unfortunately, most of the printable MicroSD holders overcompensate for their tinyness by adding substantial bulk. This very simple design is the notable exception, just fitting two of them into a standard SD snap case, of which I have a lifetime supply.

Not a tool…

Apple’s iCloud service crumbled under load on Christmas day, and took 36 hours to recover. The richest company in the world is still struggling to build an online service that can scale.

Remember the days when you could unbox a gift on Christmas morning and it would actually work? Clearly no one at Apple does.

Unrelated

Got Black Ships? Japan has banned foreigners again. Well, at least until the end of January.

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