Making, Crafting, Creating... aka Whatcha workin' on?

All done:

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“Quarantine Quadrupel” all bottled. Two months to get to this point. Will be ready for 4th of July.

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Busy day fiddling about.

I replaced the doorknobs on the bedrooms (the old ones had locks but no key, so it was just a matter of time before I locked myself out). Then I built a new set of shelves in the garden shed, then realised that they were too big, then hauled them back up to the workshop, unloaded one of the old sets of shelves, moved that to the garden shed and reconstructed the new shelves in their place.

Yesterday I grabbed a new ladder from Bunnings:

As well as a new Stanley plane:

…to replace my unusably shit Craftright one.

Grabbed a few bits of timber as well; I might make some boxes or something.

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Bored at work again, so I thought I’d do a little more mapping – only this time, without a GIS.

Who knew you could coax Excel into creating such abominations? :man_shrugging:t3:

My dataset is the centroids of all* US counties and county equivalents. My apologies to non-USA readers; this set was handy to me because of my work with US census data.

*Except Aleutians West Census Area, which I initially excluded because its centroid is actually in the eastern hemisphere and was messing up the maps. On later maps, I cheated and moved the point ~2° east so it falls within the western hemisphere.

In increasing order of weirdness:


Here’s the entrance to the rabbit hole: A simple Excel scatter plot of the centroids of all US counties and county equivalents. Some interesting patterns are visible here already. Georgia is notable for its many small, compact counties. In the great plains, especially the Texas panhandle, you can see the ranks and files of mostly square counties. See this county map for reference.


Same as above, but with markers removed and smoothed lines added. (Some pedant on Facebook pointed out to me that this is really just a line graph.) Random colors are pretty! I love how Alaska and Hawaii are rendered.


As above, but this time I made four data series in an attempt to do a 4-color map. But due to the vertical scribbling, some states were obscured. Solution: Use more colors.


Much better! I’ve also re-added Aleutians West Census Area (by cheating). It required seven different colors.


Same as above, just using brighter colors. Georgia really pops out with its dense scribble.


Amazingly, you can still see the shapes of the states.

Now things got really bizarre:


Same data, now plotted on a “radar” chart. Latitude is radial, with the equator represented by the single center point marked “0”. The north pole is a ring, but outside the edges of the chart. The X axis of a radar chart is categorical, not linear, so all the points are spread out around the full circle. I’ve highlighted a few points of interest.


A couple of changes here. First, latitudes were subtracted from 90° to make the map “right side up”. So now the north pole is in the center (actually 70°N, shown as “20”). Then, in order to fake 360° of longitude, I created “dummy” counties, spaced every 0.1° around the equator. You can see two arcs of the equatorial counties on the left. I also rounded all longitudes to 0.1°.

This is by far the weirdest “map” I’ve ever made. I’d like to try these techniques with the whole world, although Excel would probably choke on it.

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Garden update, 24 June: Third batch of purple long beans just picked. About 500gm of lovely, long, purple beans varying from 40 - 50cm. Very tasty just right off the vine, or quickly stir-fried in a little sesame oil and garlic!


“Long beans are long.”

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Luvs me a good homebrew!
Question, tho. Wouldn’t a quadrupel be more an Octoberfest beer? July 4th calls for a simple blonde ale or light hefe, IMHO.
Not sayin’ I wouldn’t quaff some of these while trying not to singe my eyebrows or blow my fingers off lighting miniature explosives!
PSA: Take care with fireworks, boys and girls!

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I have a hefeweizen already made, not much left, and just brewed an IPA which will be ready for the 4th of July. I brewed a quadrupel because I like Belgians!

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Outside his house in R’lyeh, dead Cthulu waits… for the locksmith to finally arrive.

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“Nothing on 1, 2 is binding…”

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Working on a benchtop box joint router jig, based on this:

Using cheapy MDF instead of plywood, so I’m doubling up the thickness on the support legs.

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Finally done. Doing miter joints without a power miter saw or even a work bench is pretty untenable :face_with_raised_eyebrow: i had to recut several times and finally opted for the decorative squares up top. But the giant magnet board for the kid is done. And she is pleased even though all i can see is every flaw.


Wall paneling particle board stuff for backing, galvanized zinc-plated steel panels, wood trim, construction glue, and way more white paint than I anticipated.

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Edit: oops, wrong thread.

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Boo, wrong thread. I think this belongs in “fuck today.” :rage:

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Question. Do you deliver???

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To paraphrase Mark Twain: “It is better to stand aside and be thought a bunch of violent thugs than to open a can of tear gas and remove all doubt.”

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Gah, oops. Meant for the uprising thread.

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My shed now has Light and Power!

First job for the lathe will be a rasp that needs a new handle.

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I have shed envy.

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I immediately thought of this one:

@Wander “Two Sheds” found

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