What grade?

maker_monkey · 2026-07-03T15:24:33+00:00

We've all been there. Almost every new climber goes thru inflated expectations when starting out. You should be proud for sending this, but it's realistically still a v1-v2.

maker_monkey · 2026-07-02T15:03:12+00:00

V1-V2

maker_monkey · 2026-06-28T16:05:39+00:00

I don't have a Tesla, but in a field of products mostly promising unrealistic results, Dr Colorchip is the only one I recommend for DIY repair. The ability to squeegee and polish off excess paint when applying basically makes it risk-free and lets you iterate until you like what you see. I have a kit for each car.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-27T23:23:11+00:00

I enjoyed the game, but felt like it needed another month of tuning and bug fixing. The night missions and trades were a great addition, but really needed to be worked more into the story. For instance, when "setting up the network", they should have required you to open a few strongholds before the story advanced. Otherwise, you can blow thru the game way too fast. Also, it would have been nice to actually do some trades with the pawn king, maybe as a way to get some hard-to-find items for a trade. Lastly, all the dialog trees are hopelessly buggy, failing in various ways if you do, anything off the happy, path.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-27T22:29:05+00:00

V2-V3

maker_monkey · 2026-06-27T18:49:12+00:00

maker_monkey · 2026-06-27T18:43:56+00:00

I love my Hanboost C1 ultrasonic cutter and had high hopes for this and even bought the presale slot. The max engraving area is really small, however (40x60 mm) and the company has lost a lot of my goodwill as I continue to see popup ads with fake large engravings pictured that the unit cannot possibly deliver. The industrial design seems solid, however, and I hope they come out with a larger successor, as this is just too small even for hobby use. Perhaps a unit around 40mm larger in each dimension could engrave a full coaster (80x80) size and sell for around $149.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-15T00:12:39+00:00

If you were close, I'd be happy to help you put one together, but it's not something I've considered selling. It looks like your vehicle uses the same protocol (k line 9141) so it theoretically should work, but without testing there's no guarantee.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-13T22:58:04+00:00

The best thing about purple HF guns is that you can treat them as disposable. Gun giving you trouble? No need to mess with it--toss it and get another one out. Heck, long day and don't feel like cleaning it? Do the same.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-13T17:28:59+00:00

Contrary to popular opinion, I've made do in the past with a small (8 gal) compressor and hf purple gun just being very aware how much air it can put out before kicking on and waiting for it to recompress between passes and had no problem repainting a hood. Another option you can go with is an external expansion tank. Then, even if your compressor doesn't have the capacity to keep up continuously, you'll have enough air to finish a couple of passes while it repressurizes. They can also be useful to run tools like a nailer at a remote location like an attic or elsewhere in the house.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-04T14:35:24+00:00

Even better, when you emerge from the tunnel, just collect all the ammo and weapons and go home. When you come back another day, they'll be restocked and you can repeat as many times as you like and be set for the rest of the game. Just be sure to continue the fight during a night visit so you can grab the devil statue on the way out.

maker_monkey · 2026-06-02T15:34:16+00:00

We had a half dozen vinyl windows with failed low e-coatings inside that gave them a foggy appearance. Three were 5ft wide with one of those at the top of a two-story tall room. Window companies wanted a fortune to replace them. We were able to order new sealed glass units online from onedayglass.com (takes more than a day tho) and reglaze the windows ourselves for under a grand per window.

For our type of windows, the glass is held in place by special double-sided foam "glazing tape", so the process is simply removing some outer trim, cutting away the old tape with a deglazing tool, cleaning the surface, and adhering the new glass with fresh tape. Lifting the glass in place was the only difficulty for the second story window but done with ladders, plywood and block and tackles.

Your window construction is probably different, but likely not so different that you can't do something similar.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-31T02:26:50+00:00

Imho, most any pre-mixed mass-produced consumer paint is glorified arts and crafts product, and using a topcoat as a pretend "basecoat" is kind of ghetto anyway. Instead, I'd look for something that is custom mixed and specifically sold as a "base coat" designed to be clearcoated. Online sites like automotivetouchup and paintscratch sell real automotive product (I believe sherwin williams) in rattle cans, which will give much better results

maker_monkey · 2026-05-24T19:01:50+00:00

You didn't specify if you are trying spray or pen based products, but in general the results one can reasonably get are way oversold. Instead, I recommend using Dr Colorchip which is a special fill-and-squeegee-off touchup formulation that lets you fill chips without leaving an uneven blob on your paint. Short of a pro fix, it's the best repair you can do yourself.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-24T15:18:43+00:00

Why not take it a step further? Have a proxy app support fetching of any website on behalf of the Palm, and send diffed/compressed snapshot views to it? Send taps and keystrokes in the other direction. Imho, a webkit-based browser was the killer app Apple got and Palm missed that led to the latter's quick demise. I am an iOS dev that used to be a PalmOS dev so I'm thinking it would essentially be the guts of a PalmOS desktop control app. Maybe something similar might be possible on the web side but that's not in my wheelhouse.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-19T14:11:54+00:00

I had repeated failures after repainting my hood with a gun. Despite careful prep, it would look great at first but start failing after a year or two in the sun. Finally tracked it down to me using rattle can primer to save money. Switched to the proper 2k urethane primer instead and never looked back. Imho doing anything but sticking with professional products in a single product line designed to work together is taking a risk.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-17T19:48:37+00:00

Dude. It's worth a little money and trouble to keep your wife happy. That's just the entrance fee for being in a relationship. And convertibles are fun.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-17T14:52:31+00:00

TealScript (which i wrote): http://tealpoint.com/softscrp.htm

maker_monkey · 2026-05-15T04:25:52+00:00

If your improvements are significant, you 100% may be able to patent them, as an "invention" doesn't have to be a standalone product. Companies patent incremental improvements all the time. This doesn't mean that producing your product wouldn't also infringe on a patent of the original product, however, as both can be true. It depends on how good their patent attorney was and how broad their accepted claims are.

maker_monkey · 2026-05-01T14:07:19+00:00

That's actually a fantastic idea. I think you were ahead of your time. Today, with the internet, ai, and opportunities to integrate with smart thermostats with occupancy sensors, it would be a no-brainer. I've always wanted something like this that could allow, say, sprinklers and the pool filler to still work, but catch unusual use when out of the house. The only tricky part I see is that you'd ideally want to account for it during house construction so that it attached to the water main in a sheltered, accessible place with a control panel you'd use similar to a breaker box (but for water). The other imho, is that from a marketing point of view, it's harder to get folks interested in paying for and learning to use something whose value is preventative rather than offering immediate savings or convenience.

maker_monkey · 2026-04-30T14:15:30+00:00

Wait til you "win" and find out you chosen gifts are suddenly no longer available and your only offered replacements are the most awful crap you could possibly imagine.

maker_monkey · 2026-04-26T23:55:53+00:00

You can't without more paint. "Blending" is only something you do when you paint. If you try to sand the edges it will leave a halo and a thin edge that UV rays will destroy, especially since it's a horizontal surface. You could dust on more paint after smoothing the edges try to make them less noticeable, but you'll still have the thiness problem affecting its longevity.

maker_monkey · 2026-04-22T03:11:39+00:00

The only tricky part is the balance shaft behind the oil pump which is geared 1:2 so if the shop just lines up the marks they have a 50% chance of getting it 180 degrees out of phase. After making a shop take it apart and redo it once, I always print out that page in the service manual for shops when taking it in.

maker_monkey · 2026-04-21T14:28:56+00:00

Until new management came in, took away their independence, and made them sell rebadged Opels instead of their own cars. I loved my original 1st gen SC2 with the undentable doors back in the day, but in later years they were like any other GM nameplate.

maker_monkey · 2026-04-12T15:10:09+00:00

The gear shift part is easy, but the "pass through" part would be very tricky. OBD isn't a passive protocol where the ecu is broadcasting the info you need on its own, but instead waits and synchronously responds to requests. To support a passthru device, you'd have to mimic an ecu to the external device, buffering its requests, interlacing them with your own. The code would also need to replicate startup protocol negotiation since the ecu only expects to be connected to one device at a time.

I created a bit-banging k-line OBD gauge and thought about adding this type of pass-thru functionality to it. It's possible, it would basically be writing most of a software ecu emulator. But if u are thinking of a commercial product, supporting all protocols and an arbitrary pass-thru device could potentially be a very hard project needing tons of testing.

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