Ed

 

Upside Down

 

Amazon

 

I received this little basket thing from Amazon today. It was addressed to me, at my address. But I didn't order it, and I have no idea what it is If Amazon is going to send me things by mistake can't they send a laptop or something?

Stepup

When Harlan wants to step up, she will make it clear with her body language, or just say so. But sometimes she just wants to stand there and hold my finger.

Crows

Crows in the birdbath this morning... A pair of our local crows are really brave this spring about hanging out right in our front area. It's unusual because it's the sort of fairly closed in, low visibility area they typically avoid.

Harlan

Good bird! Keeping an eye on that crow...

Lunch

Miss Harlan will take her vegetables on the veranda this afternoon, thank you...

Grey

 

Good Bird

 

Someone wants a head rub. 

DIY Bike Rack

 

I have a cargo tray for the back of the bike but the hardware doesn't line up. I made a couple rails from some oak to act as an "adapter". May as well look nice...

Tulips

 

Wingnut Wings DFW C.V, Part 2

This is part two of my Wingnuts Wings DFW C.V, Mid Production project. Find part one here.

The decals look great when fully set down and sealed.

You can still see a bit of the interior detail. It will be harder to glimpse when the upper wing is on.

I was especially happy with the way the wing mounted compass looks. It's a nice detail.

The pale green strip around the outside of all the flight surfaces is a decal, or rather many sections of straight line decals. I spent a couple of weeks on this alone. It really should be painted. But they provided the decals, so I used them.

Upper wing and landing gear in place...  Next is some rigging.

I made simulated turnbuckles from brass tubing cut to 5mm lengths.

Tip... If you set the edge of a razor blade on a fine file and whack it with a watchmakers hammer, it turns into a serviceable saw that is good for things like brass tubing.

The cables and turnbuckles should be steel, but I like the detail so I'm leaving them black and brass.

Several layers of paint to get the laminated wood look on the prop... I hope to do better at this next time.

Rear gun...

I don't have an airbrush. I think people that use one get a better finish in many ways, but with layers of the different paints, in different colors, with high quality brushes, I also think a very realistic impression is possible.

 Complete!

Building the kit was a really enjoyable process over several weeks. It was quite challenging, but it completed with many fewer error than the last one I did. There are many techniques to refine, but it's better!

Ed

 

New Bike!

 

Harlan

 

Google Home

We have two Google Home devices in different parts of the house. These things are... fun, I guess. But they will remain little more than toys (good thing they don't cost much) until Google does a few basic things to improve them. In classic Google form, the Home device is something like 80% of what it should be. It seems Google usually development at that point with many products though.

1. "OK Google, set volume three on Home Two" works fine. "OK Google, set volume two on Home Two" results in "I'm sorry I don't understand."

2. "I sorry, the music stopped because your account is being used on another device". I hear this almost daily. It isn't true. On command, the music can be immediately restarted.

3. One of our Homes, Home One, is in a "group" we call "home group", with an audio cast device. The other home, Home Two, is not in a group. For some reason Home Two frequently lapses into casting to the home group by default, thus itself staying silent, even though Home Two has *never* been asked to play music "on home group", and the account/voice commanding it has *never* asked for anything "on home group".

4. Google's multi-voice recognition is awful. It frequently misidentify voices even when they are very different. And completely unknown voices are almost always identified as one of the just two we have set up. We know this is true because we set both of the two accounts to use different, and non-default, assistant voices, deliberately, so we could tell what account it was accessing.

5. Google Home can not play YouTube playlists (don't get me started on the chaos that is Google's subscription media strategy. It rivals their messaging software strategy).

6. While music is playing you can say "OK Google, like this" and it will say "OK I noted that you like this". I assume that this gives the track a thumbs up in Google Music.

If you say "OK Google, do not like this", or variations there of, you get either "I don't understand" or some meaningless response. Google implemented one of the commands, then got bored or distracted and stopped.

7. There is no way to control media playback volume separately from that of the assistant voice.

8. There is no way to disable selected Google ecosystem functions. I would like to disable the setting of alarms and reminders, and limit the volume to a certain level either per Home device or on an account basis (either would work).

9. Home includes a list functionality which can be handy for grocery lists. Google implemented this list from the ground up, from scratch apparently. It's not stored in Keep, nor Docs. And good luck finding the list in the Home app, they buried it deep.

10. Even the Home list functionality is half-baked. For example, it never removes anything from the list, it only checks them off as done/completed. When you add the same item again, it creates a new item and the list grows. When I finally found our grocery list (not easy), it was extremely long. Many identical items were on there, checked off, 20 or 30 times.

11. Google claims you can play your Google Music playlists through Google Home. This just flat out doesn't work. It always picks some "close" sounding track or album to play no matter how specific your list name is. I even tried scheduling the playback in the Home app so that I could type in the playlist name - no ambiguity - doesn't work.

12. I have sent "feedback" to Google on the Google Home. Turns out the only way to do this is through the app, or by voice. There is no way to send feedback by email, or otherwise use a computer. I am expected to type things like this post into my phone with my thumbs. Well, I did send some feedback at least. I got no response.