Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Broken sprinkler line repair

That is a 1" expandable fitting with a collar on it to rejoin. 

And my Ryobi 'sawz-all', pretty handy.

For anyone that hasn't done this before, its a 2 stage application. 
You wipe the purple to prime the surface of all contact areas.

Get a screwdriver, you'll need it to get the dirt plugs out of the ends of the pipes.  At least 6" shank on it.


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Custom Made Purple Minion Puppet

13, 11:58 AM.jpgThis is a puppet that I made for a special gift. It was a very rewarding project due to the reason I made it and very fulfilling when I presented it to its recipient. Since there are no Purple Minions to buy in the store that resemble the original Yellow Minions I was asked to create this one for this special project. Parts needed: -Soft foam (JoAnn Fabrics) -1/2 yard of purple fleece (JoAnn Fabrics) -a ping pong ball sliced in half -2 2 1/2" gray plumbing bushings (Lowes) -Black foam board (any craft store) -Plexi Glass (Lowes) -Black Strap for goggles (Could use anything) -Black Boondoggle (any craft store) -Overalls (Build A Bear) -Black Doll Shoes (JoAnn Fabrics) -One old black winter glove -Sewing thread and sewing needle -Craft glue (any craft store) -Acrylic Paint -Black Felt and Pink Felt (JoAnn Fabrics)13, 11:58 AM.jpgSoft craft foam was used for the base of this puppet like I use in all of my puppets... I used the same pattern for this step that I used for the purple fleece in Step 3. First trace your pattern onto the foam with a Sharpie and then using scissors or an Xacto knife carefully cut out your body base shape. After the shape was cut out I brought the ends (sides) of the piece together to form a cylinder shape and ran a line of glue along the edge holding it together as I sewed it up along the seam using white thread. Next at the top of the Minions head I began bringing the triangular shaped pieces together, gluing and sewing them together all the way around to form the dome shape of the head. A few more stitches at the top of the heads center joined it all together and completed the dome shape. Two dots were drawn on with the Sharpie and also the mouth to mark their places for the face. Kind of looks like a Pac Man ghost right now... Haha

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Chicken (or whatever) Curry

You can find all the Indian cookbooks you want, but you'll never make curry at home as good as your favorite restaurant. It's like that with all restaurants. Either it's the ingredients they have access to, their cooking equipment that gets super hot or can grind anything into a super smooth sauce, or they just don't give a f@#$ and throw in four sticks of butter which we would never think of doing at home.

Disabuse yourself that you'll ever make any of your favorite restaurant dishes at home. The fun of cooking is in chasing those tastes down. You won't find them all, but you'll know more than when you started and probably find something that'll be in your recipe card file for life.

Indian food commonly uses what we in America might think of as pie spices. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom. The awakening American palate wouldn't have thought to put cinnamon on anything but buttered toast or in an apple pie fifteen years ago. Along with these you'll find those common equator spices: cumin, coriander (seed and leaf - cilantro), ginger, hot peppers, turmeric. And those versatile, ubiquitous alliums: onion and garlic.

Cinnamon
coriander
cumin
cilantro
nutmeg
cardamom
ginger
garlic
peppers
onions
turmeric

That's pretty much all you need for most any curry (not all at once, but you could run across a recipe that does use all of them). A few specialty spices will have you ready for any curry you might encounter.:

Fenugreek (seeds)
Fenugreek (leaves), they will probably be called kasuri methi or just methi leaves
Spice blends like garam masala, chaat masala, tandoori masala, etc.
asafoetida (hing)

If you have these things around you're halfway to becoming a curry head.


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How To Make Coconut Butter, Coconut Milk and Coconut Flour

BlogIMG_1280.jpgThose who know me well, know that I should have been born somewhere with coconut palms. Not only do I love coconuts, but I also love the tropical climate that coconut palms need to survive. Sadly, while I have moved a bit closer to the tropics than where I was when living in Michigan, I don't live in a climate that allows for coconut palm trees; nor do I live in a place where it is easy to find coconut butter or coconut flour. I can find coconut milk in a can, but it costs an overpriced three and a half euros, and is likely laced with BPA. Why deal with that when it is so easy to make your own for much cheaper?

Ingredients:
-Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
-Water 

You will also need a food processor and/or blender, a cheesecloth or food safe cloth for straining the coconut milk, and an oven for drying out the coconut flour

I have decided to group these together because they are so easy to do.  Plus, you need to make the coconut milk first to be able to make the coconut flour.  The coconut butter is made independently, but I decided to add it in the end anyway because it follows the same theme.

BlogIMG_1248.jpgTo make it, you only need two ingredients: one part shredded coconut and two parts water.
Decide how much coconut milk you want to make.  I was making some to invent myself a coconut flan recipe, but I made more than I needed for that so that I could use the leftovers for making kefir and smoothies.  (My son loves smoothies, and it's a great way to sneak him foods that he won't normally eat!)

So, to make around 4 cups of coconut milk, I took two cups of shredded, unsweetened coconut and soaked it in 4 cups of warm water for a couple of hours.  I let mine soak in my blender jar because I'll be using it in the next step anyway.


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Tardis Transformer: Pick your flavor!

Don't forget to vote for me for 3D Printing Month. =)

I originally only had Soundwave in mind when I was designing this. So all the small details are based around his robot design. But I was catching heck for making the Tardis into a Decepticon so I repainted him and added a second head option to make him Vector Prime. I still think Soundwave would make an awesome Tardis, but anyone making this has their option of which to build.

That being said, this turned out to be harder than I thought to make. But still so fun!
What started as a ball of clay and a random idea a few months ago lead to were it is now. Things still arn't finished, but all that remains are final tweaks and details. As well as redoing the backpack. The original hinge I had wasn't strong enough so I had to redesign it, but I don't like how low it sits.

Also, my printer started going loopy on his left leg for some reason. So in Tardis form he's a bit warped. But I need to reprint everything anyhow in the Mach2 design.

But if I keep making changes I'll end up never releasing it, so here we go!


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CyanogenMod 10.1 Stable Brings Jelly Bean to a Ton of Android Devices

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