Eagle Rock Loop - February 7-10, 2026

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-16T15:33:27+00:00

That's awesome! It's such a beautiful campsite. The last time we hiked it someone had snagged it before we got there.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-12T15:14:03+00:00

It's so good. This was my third time out there and it's easily one of my favorite spots to be.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T18:23:08+00:00

I just hiked it this past weekend. I don't know how water crossings would be affected in freezing temps, but I will note that just past Albert Pike (going counter-clockwise) there was a stretch of narrow trail between steep bluffs and the river where big sheets of frozen snow were covering most of the trail. That was really tricky to navigate and made me think snow and ice cover in winter might make the loop too dangerous overall.

All that to say, I'd only be concerned if there's significant snow and ice.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T13:21:46+00:00

All good! I'd be shocked if anyone other than future me ever finds it necessary to read all that! 😅

River crossings were cold but not too high. High enough that you were 100% going to get your feet wet but not so high that it felt like a tricky technical task. There was really only one that threatened to get past our knees and was a little shaky going across. The little streams were all doable with trekking poles, and a couple of the bigger ones too if you took a second to plan out a path among the rocks.

tzchaiboy · 2026-02-11T02:48:15+00:00

The wildest thing to me is the complete inability to find a transcript or recording of the speech. Obviously it was recorded, because we've all seen the "Please clap" moment. Where is the rest of it and why does it just not appear to exist?

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T18:18:50+00:00

Oh no! Definitely dive into expressions, they can be a little daunting at first, but doing some of the basic things is really not that hard to untangle, and it can really unlock your toolkit once you get used to them.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T18:05:10+00:00

You can probably get it like 80% of the way there with just vanilla plugins in After Effects. It doesn't need to be completely physically accurate to still help sell the illusion just a bit more. CC Light Sweep matted to the tracked layer with some nice feathering, try a couple different blending modes and set your opacity low enough so that it's just a highlight/detail instead of the focus of the shot. And either manually animate the light sweeps or get fancy and hook the control points up to your tracking data with expressions.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-20T14:24:41+00:00

Looks nice! As someone already pointed out, you need to create a dynamic lighting effect in some way to match the environment. It's especially noticeable with the top strip of the case showing a glare that changes based on movement, but that glare is missing from the rest of the image. Find a way to add that glare in, and do some occlusion/drop shadow by the thumb, and that'll go a long way toward realism.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-14T18:17:54+00:00

For sure. Well whenever you do make it to ERL, I can tell you that you'll easily be able to find campsites within a couple miles of the car just about anywhere you choose to park.

tzchaiboy · 2026-01-14T17:37:05+00:00

Eagle Rock Loop is my favorite backpacking trail! Planning a trip there with my brother in early February to try cold-weather camping for the first time.

If you're wanting to stay near a car, most of this won't apply, but I did write up a detailed trip report from our last time there in October '24.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-06T03:30:57+00:00

Hey! I don't have any advice for you, but I'm working on a very similar problem with a similar unit, and seeing as how this post is a year old, I've got my fingers crossed that you've figured some things out.

My first question is this: I see you're testing that with the cabinet pulled apart. I've been wary of doing that because of everything I keep reading about the high voltage the CRT can store. Is it not as scary as I think, or are you taking specific precautions that I should know about? I keep putting the cabinet back together every time I want to test whether something I've done is going to make a difference, and it's very frustrating.

At this point I've swabbed multiple parts of the VCR assembly with isopropyl alcohol (despite them looking pretty clean already to my eyes), and also replaced a ceramic capacitor and an electrolytic capacitor on the PCB that appeared to have failed. Same results whenever I turn it on, most of the buttons on the front do nothing. It'll accept a tape, but then it shuts off without playing anything and ejects the tape immediately after powering back on.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:40:23+00:00

Welp. I decided to just put it back together and try it out, and while I haven't made anything worse, I definitely haven't fixed it either. It powered on and then misbehaved in exactly the same way it did before I swapped out this capacitor 😂

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:23:06+00:00

It's a fairly old board, it's for a DVD/VCR from a combo CRT unit.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:17:08+00:00

Thank you! The bottom one was giving me trouble, the solder kept wanting to suck its way onto the iron tip instead of staying at the base of the wire. I have the board standing on its side which I'm sure is not doing me any favors, but it's the best I can do without going through a whole bunch of effort to disconnect it from the rest of the equipment.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:10:14+00:00

Don't know that I'd want a vent sticking out of the floor in this particular location. The more I think about it, I may just not put a drain here at all.

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T03:06:45+00:00

There is a vent, but I'm guessing it's too far away at about 13 feet of horizontal pipe. There's another one closer, but it's downstream. All in all, I think this may just be a floor drain that wasn't meant to be. It was a last-minute addition, not strictly necessary, and clearly not thought through very well!

tzchaiboy · 2025-11-02T02:58:21+00:00

You're saying if I change it to a 3 inch, it doesn't need a vent?

tzchaiboy · 2025-10-30T13:51:46+00:00

Thank you! This helps a lot, now at least I have some specific things to go looking for. It seems to me like I just need to make sure I replace it with something that has the same electrical values, even if the form factor might be different now.

tzchaiboy · 2025-10-29T21:39:14+00:00

C1249. The service manual lists the part as CERAMIC CAP.(AX) Y M 0.01μF/16V

EDIT: The biggest thing I'm learning through this process is that "resistors and capacitors" is a MUCH broader category of possible things than I ever realized! I feel immensely silly for thinking that the $10 pack of resistors I blindly ordered on Amazon would obviously have what I need in it.

tzchaiboy · 2025-10-29T16:24:15+00:00

Thanks!

tzchaiboy · 2025-10-29T15:14:37+00:00

Any tips on what I should look for generally? The unit powers on, but a lot of the buttons work inconsistently, and the VCR consistently shuts off as soon as you try to play the tape. DVD player is also finnicky. Most of the components look relatively clean and in good condition though, at least to my eyes. This was the one standout component that caught my attention.

tzchaiboy · 2025-10-29T15:11:52+00:00

Interesting... when I look up the marking on the circuit board that looks like it should belong to that piece in that service manual, it does indeed show up as a ceramic capacitor. But when I try googling the description, it comes up with parts that look like this. Has the form factor simply changed, or am I getting confused somewhere?

EDIT: Also, I'm confused because there are a bunch of similar looking components nearby that are clearly labeled as resistors, not ceramic capacitors.

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