Category: Uncategorised

One of the seams in my everyday handbag ripped open after many years. Shoving my laptop into my bag on that side is probably what made the seam finally wear out.

The process is nice and simple. Open up an edge seam, clean up the worn out seam, and pin it together.

Finally, stitch in a three layer seam this time.

Close up the edge seam, and this should be done for another few years.

I wanted some more space between my bed and shelf wall. Eventually I settled on shortening my bed by 20cm. My mattress is not normal at all, and will fit the container it is in.

To start the two uprights near where I need to cut get moved past the cut line, with enough space to get a hacksaw in there. Everything attached to the end part of the bed needed to move for the process.

It was a sweaty time trimming the top four boards.

After the trim I tacked the end board back on while trimming the platform.

half way cut.

rest of the way cut.

put the end back on

line the verticals up with the end of the platform, make sure they are plumb, and secure them.

using ropes, and a big clamp, force the top board into the right place, lined up, and tight against each other, and finally secure it in place.

fix up the rest of the top boards.

and the extras go back up.

finally, I put a lip on the edge to help keep the contents of the bed from falling off the end as easily.

I just moved my little cloud server to a new and more spacious virtual private server. I’m always surprised how fast files can be copied between cloud providers.

I spent the last few months shopping around looking for a good inexpensive hosting option billed in CAD and located in Canada, eventually settling on ServaRica in Montreal. It took me two weekends to get everything moved over. This is a personal server so there is nobody to complain if a service is down for a bit.

Why move? A few reasons,

I want to be billed in CAD, this option is not available on Linode.

I want a place to try running a NetBird server. (requires 2 GB RAM)

I may also put up an OnlyOffice collaborative editing server. (requires 4 GB RAM)

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The new Virtual Private Server:

• ServaRica: V2 KVM Slim Slice 2 – https://servarica.com/plan/611/ (sold out)
• $9.00 CAD + tax per month ($10.68 CAD per month)
• 8 GB RAM
• 2 CPU Cores
• 250 GB SSD
• Unlimited bandwidth @ 250 Mbps + 1 Mbps/day up to 1 Gbps
• Montreal, Canada

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Moving from:

• Linode: Nanode 1 GB – https://www.akamai.com/cloud/pricing/north-america#container-5f6592f923
• $5.00 USD per month (currently $8.29 CAD per month)
• 1 GB RAM
• 1 CPU Core
• 25 GB SSD
• 1 TB bandwidth @ 1 Gbps (I never came anywhere near this limit)
• Toronto, Canada

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The major steps:

• connectivity
• firewall
• docker
• email
• containers
• web sites
• backup old server filesystem
• delete old server
• fix up any remaining configurations.

The booster pack in my van wasn’t charging while driving. Moving the plug around helped sometimes depending on which way I pushed it, so it needed fixing. Also the barrel connectors I have on hand do not fit in the dc plug of the booster pack, so the one that it came with needed to be fixed.

When I started investigating the connector, the barrel connector came out of the boot.

So I cleaned up the ends and reconnected them.

and the other.

and finally, protection from the world.

All good to go for the next while, I’m glad it was easy to fix.

The washer at home was having a lot of trouble getting through the spin cycle, the error code was “dc” and the basket hit the sides of the washer a lot.

After some investigation I found the appropriate part, and ordered it.

Today the new shocks arrived, and I installed them right away. The old ones were very dirty but not hard to remove. The new ones were quite easy to install.

Now the washer should get through the spin cycle easier again.

My everyday handbag got some fixing up over the weekend.

The inner liner developed a hole at a previous repair.

The previous repair was many years ago before I had opened the top edge of the bag. This time I sewed it on the inside the bag, making it less visible too.

While I had the edge of the bag open , I took the opportunity to clean up another repair attempt.

The green ribbon is of the style where the edge falls apart readily, oops, most of the Dollarama ribbons are super strong, but this one was from somewhere else. I know the double layer floss stitching is strong from how much work it took to rip out the old stitching on the ribbon.

The red ribbon is plenty strong, this should hold the structure of the bag quite well.

The bag also got cleaned out good, including some of the original foam liner that falls apart easily and does not help the structure of the bag. The bag may actually be slightly lighter than before.

I keep wearing out the elbows of my clothes, over the weekend I patched the accumulated holes and made the sleeves longer on one of my hoodies I wear a lot in the winter.

The patch material in flannel, and is probably going to drop threads for a while.

The Velcro square that holds my umbrella closed has been getting unreliable, so I changed it to a button.

My bluetooth headband stopped making sound in one ear, for the second time, so I replaced the second speaker wire.

Soldering so close to the batter terminals makes me nervous, but I did anyways.

The original wire break.

Putting the control module back together. The other end of the wire still needs to be finished.

The wires get soldered to the pads where the old wires were, the wires get a spot of hot glue to stay in place.

The original fabric tape on the back of the speaker didn’t survive pealing it off, so I put a piece of hockey tape over the area to protect everything.

All the guts batch together again.

It all works again.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/394490027454 – Where this headband came from.

I am well aware that the effort to do the repair is more than the original purchase price. But, I do not need to wait the weeks for delivery, and I get practice.