Category: Miscellaneous

The Year In Postcards

December 9, 2018

I traveled a lot this year and sent many postcards. Happily I received many as well, from all over the world!

As you know I have a particularly love of strange postcards, and happily sent and received many of them as well:

These are just a sample of course. I always send KLS/myself lots of cards when I travel, and between them and the ones you sent me I reckon there must have been nearly 100 arriving this year! ?

That’s a wooden card, which made it intact from Australia when I was there in January. Interestingly it only cost the same as a normal card to mail.

Speaking of stamps:

You may have not noticed, but I put a lot of effort into the stamps I put on cards. Specifically I try not to repeat stamps where possible. Watch for this the next you get cards from me. This past year it meant a massive variety of stamps and as usual Australia didn’t disappoint with their pretty and varied selection.

Of course in the name of fun I’ll sometimes repeat stamps:

This year I also took my postcard art to a new level, especially during the days in Hawaii where the hurricane shut everything down:

Many of you received original art this year as well. I hope you treasure it 🙂

Of course some of you reciprocated demonstrating talent that frankly shames mine:

Or created ‘modern art’ using other means:

No summary of 2018 in postcards could be complete without mentioning the dozen or so different Nessie’s I painted on cards sent from Scotland. It took ages but I was very happy with what I achieved…

In a few weeks I’ll be in Oz again, and then very shortly thereafter in Japan. In other words next years cards aren’t too far away. Look forward to them 🙂

Crafting Again

November 24, 2018

I made another craft kit, the biggest I’ve done so far:

What a massive box!!! Here’s what’s inside:

Styrofoam, wood, bits of plastic and this mysterious bag of metal fasteners:

The wooden pieces were heavy and made every step of assembly somewhat difficult. But as a modern flat-packed kit the pieces went together with the usual innovative fasteners:

First the sides were prepared, including attaching metal rails. The screws used here were short and flat-faced, and required a lot of force to drive in, but I was happy to see the rails attached well and (importantly) parallel:

Next the sides were attached with nailed and screwed backplates. Not a trivial step, this one:

The cabinet was completed with a long piece attached using double hinges, of all things. This was a tricky step since it was challenging to get it correctly aligned:

The overhang there is for the piece to tilt slightly backwards whilst standing. This is no doubt for safety reasons.

I took few photos of the assembly of the drawers, but it was time consuming and precise:

After about 3 hours my crafting was complete, and our new chest of drawers was ready for use:

It’s very sturdy, quite lovely, and although exhausting to assemble is good value for $99 (or $80 if you buy online).

As a bonus I immediately made a second craft kit, which was even bigger! But it only took about twenty minutes before our new storage unit was complete as well:

The Rilakkoomba

November 11, 2018

Since I’ll be in Japan again soonish, it’s probably about time to open this:

Yes indeed, it’s a Rilakkuma ‘Roomba’, which is to say a ‘robotic’ floor cleaner. I won this after only a couple of attempts in a UFO catcher in Japan last year and since then went back and forth about whether to keep it or gift it! As a result it remained sealed all this time.

So what’s inside?

It’s a jolly looking device, simple and plastic but reasonably well built. As you can see there’s no vacuum device (unsurprising for something that ‘cost’ me about $2!) and instead the bottom is covered in Velcro.

It came with a stack of these static cleaning pads, obviously to attract and hold dust as it moves along the floor. Yoss – who has been known to eat dryer sheets – was quite interested!

A quick glance at the instructions…

And I finished assembly…

And put it to work:

As you can see it’s slow. But it works, and doesn’t get stuck, and even senses obstacles! While our floors aren’t particularly dirty, it probably can also be said to do a decent job picking up dust:

So… I give it thumbs up! For $2 it’s the best robot I’ve ever bought, and while it will now live in my attic never again to be seen by human eyes, I think it was a prize worth winning 🙂

Robot Claw