Hama Charts

The present collection and categorization of Hama beads. Also a Photoshop exercise for me. The complete set of available colors on the manufacturer's web site.

Painting the Wardrobe

"Before". Very shabby MDF board.

White latex paint, 2.7 l bucket was just enough for two layers on the surfaces of the double closet - that surface was very absorbent. The closet had a convenient height for this project...

All done, including new suspension for the clothes rack.

Medicine Cabinet

Small not-too-clean medicine cabinet, found on a junk market in Tel Aviv.

Signage

A sign made from Hama beads, plastic tube-shaped things placed on a peg board and ironed, melting and fusing the beads. The sign says "ei mainoksia kiitos", that is, "no advertisements please" in Finnish. I stuck the sign to our front door (below the mail slot) with Blu-Tack, which, amazingly, has worked well so far. Note how the background pattern matches the wood grain on the door. Colors: 31 Turquoise, 21 Light brown, 20 Reddish brown, and 01 White.

Small Army

Plastic plates from Tel Aviv.

The CueCat barcode scanner

I wanted a barcode reader, mainly for paying bills. I found this device, the CueCat. I bought two Cats from librarything. I have been happy with them, even if it took me a while to master the scanning procedure. This is the cheapest scanner I could find, but it comes with an interesting "feature": the barcode data sent to the computer is encrypted and additionally contains the serial number of the Cat. All of this was part of the business model of the company that made the scanner, they tracked the behavior of individual users for advertisement purposes. Now the company is dead, and a huge stock of CueCats remains. Wikipedia describes the history of this device.

The scanner connects to the USB port, and behaves like a keyboard. When a barcode is scanned, the cat just types the letters and numbers of the code.

Fortunately it is easy to get rid of the scrambling and serial number. The USB version can be "declawed" by simply cutting one pin on one of the microchips inside it (pin 5 on the chip marked HMS91C7316). I heated the pin with a soldering iron and lifted it from the board with a needle. Others recommend cutting it with a small pair of scissors. This probably works just as well, I just thougth desoldering would be more reversible. The librarything wiki also contains declawing instructions. Another nice page with instructions (in Finnish).

Stash

The collection, aligned on grids according to color and size. Note the SINGLE gray two-by-four on the right.

Vehicles

Testing the Meccano set.

First off: a street cleaning truck. Then a motorcycle.

Some extra wheels on the motorcycle for balance. It's really quite fast with just the 3V battery pack, now we just need a bigger apartment.

Beading

Made some beads from Fimo polymer clay. Some translucent green ones of various shapes, with some "gold" leaf mixed in. The green is a mix of 1 part green, 2 parts orange, 4 parts yellow and 4 parts white, all translucent. I was perhaps hoping for a more subdued mustardy shade to go with the gold, but apparently that green pigment is quite strong. I sanded and polished them, and added varnish, which was a pain.

The pink in the stars is 2 parts "raspberry" and 1 part "lavender", I think it works quite well with the black.

Used the black stars for a bracelet, together with two sizes of black wooden beads.

Architecture