The Ivories Will Be Tickled

And the ebonies will be pinched.

It's time for me to pick up a new hobby (or, more accurately, dredge up an old hobby from back when I was a kid), because I clearly don't have too many of those already.

Like most kids my age, I went through a phase where my parents tried to get me to learn to play the piano. This was likely due to some now-discredited educational theories promoted by now-disgraced educational scientists who were probably just trying to peddle a thinly disguised curriculum of white supremacy to grade school children. This happens more often than you would think.

But enough about that, the piano is a lovely instrument, and this is not a piano.

It's not even an electric piano or a keyboard synthesizer, but is in fact simply a midi keyboard with 61 full-size semi-weighted keys. Apparently the exact right number to precisely span the width of my dining room table. The main difference is that this doesn't make any sound on its own, but instead must be connected to some sort of audio-generating device that turns the midi commands into actual sounds, such as a rackmount synthesizer or, more commonly these days, a laptop computer.

It also has a number of knobs, sliders, drum pads and expression rockers, because let's face it, this is basically just a giant fidget cube for ADHD kids who like to make noise.

Of course the best part of getting any new piece of tech is...

Oh yeah, that's the good stuff.

On the other hand, the worst part of getting any new piece of tech is...

Mmm, yeah. That's the world we live in, alright.

Well, let's get that out of the way.

Now modern midi controllers like this usually don't come with a sustain pedal. They're a generic device though, so you can simply pick the model that best suits your preferences and budget and tack it on to your order. I decided to go with this well-reviewed model from M-Audio.

And let me tell you, it wasn't expensive but it feels good.

It's solid and well weighted and doesn't slip around even slightly, and it's so, so much better than the square pedal that came packed in with the Yamaha electric keyboard that our family had way back in the day, which I think is this exact unit that they still try to sell you for $20 today. For comparison, I spent a whole whopping $25 on this M-Audio pedal. Well worth the extra $5.

Well, anyway, I guess there's just one thing left to do.

This is gonna take a while.

The Way They Crumble

I'm only a few batches into my cookie adventure and I'm quite happy with the flavour. However, the texture and appearance has been a bit more of a challenge. The cookies were baking up with some pretty thin, feathery edges and while that added an interesting crunch, I did find that those edges were quite fragile and tended to drop a lot of crumbs.

So this time I tried adjusting how I was mixing the butter and sugar at the beginning, specifically by foregoing the hand whisk and beating the crap out of it with my electric mixer. What resulted was a surprisingly stiff and airy mixture that I was then able to add the egg to before folding in the flour and chocolate chips.

But of course how it looks and behaves during the cooking process isn't important, what's important is how they come out after they're baked.

And I have to say I'm pleased. The crispy feather edge is gone, and despite how tasty and caramelized it was I think I'm happy to see it go. The texture of the cookies has also changed fairly significantly, taking on a more airy texture rather than the more dense, chewy texture it previously had (and don't get me wrong, that was also pleasant in its own way). I also no longer get the somewhat unsightly ripples in the top of the cookie.

They do come out of the oven looking almost alarmingly puffy, which is amusing.

But thankfully they settle back down after cooling for a few minutes.

And of course, they're still as tasty as ever.

Baby Needs A

... new pair of shoes!

A cow-orker just happened to be selling an almost new pair of 2-bolt cycling shoes in euro-size 43, which just happens to be exactly the size and style I wear. And lucky for me he was selling them for half off, and clearly hadn't realized that he included both shoes in the box until well after the transaction had been finalized!

Anyway, this is quite convenient as my main road/gravel shoes have been on their last legs for a while.

I've put quite a few miles on them and, as you may remember from a previous blog post, I already had to repair the heel bolster on one of them when the original plastic crumbled. The bolster on the other was starting to crumble and I wasn't looking forward to doing shoe-surgery again.

But before we start putting miles on the new shoes, we need to deal with that little "2-bolt" qualification I mentioned earlier.

Those two bolts hold the cleat on the bottom of the shoe, and that cleat snaps into the pedal to hold your foot from slipping off and is released with a simple twist of your foot. So, I need those cleats on the new shoes.

I run the cleats all the way forward on my road/gravel shoes. This gives me a little bit less toe-verlap so I don't catch the front tire with the tip of my shoes. It also gives me a slightly taller position on the bike which tends to work out well for me on road-geometry bikes. On my mountain bikes I run the cleats all the way back to give my feet a more centered perch on the pedals and a bit of a lower position on the bike, which I find to be ideal for off-road riding.

Keeping these cleats from coming loose is very important, so using a torque wrench and loctite is good insurance against the bolts unexpectedly backing out. So far I've never had an issue with this, and with any luck (and appropriate precautions) I never will.

And just in case one of these cleats does give me trouble, I do have some back-up sets.

But thanks to the cleats being hardened steel, there's plenty of life left in them yet.

So the only thing left is to retire the old shoes to their final resting place in my shoe-tomb.

It can enjoy its final nap in the cozy company of my first pair of bike shoes.

Beep Beep, Coming Through

My van has a back-up beeper. Well, it used to have a back-up beeper, we'll get to that. Anyway it was the rather familiar type that made a high pitched intermittent tone, to warn any nearby pedestrians that they were about to get run over by someone who can't see them.

It's mounted in the rear of the vehicle, under the cargo area between the spare tire and the rear bumper.

Removing it only involves unscrewing one 10mm nut, cutting one zip-tie, and struggling with separating the electrical connector for a good 7 to 8 minutes or so.

Now, why would I want to remove it? Well, if you'll recall, this should be making a familiar beep-beep noise. Instead, it was sounding more like this.

Which is not exactly what it's supposed to sound like. It was clear that this beeper was not long for this world.

Rather than going with a classic beeper, though, I figured I'd get on the band wagon of the newer white noise beepers, which are designed so that the sound doesn't carry nearly as far, and isn't as intrusive, despite still being plainly audible up close.

Ironically it doesn't sound all that different from the one I just removed.

But the important difference is that this one is supposed to sound like this, and isn't just on its last, pitiful legs about to keel over and die.

Speaking of keeling over and dying, it's time to cut off the life support from the old beeper so I can reuse the connector. The new beeper uses terminal studs rather than integrated wires, so a set of ring terminals gets crimped on.

Then after applying a bit of appropriately coloured heat shrink, they get bolted into place.

And the whole assembly gets installed back under the van.

And assuming I tightened the nut down sufficiently, it hopefully won't just come loose and go tumbling down the road after I hit the first pothole. I guess we'll see.

Photogenic Pot Pies

The latest batch of pot pies turned out reasonably photogenic.

And tasty too.

I've been slowly evolving the recipe and technique, and one of the big upgrades I've made is to brown up the pork under the broiler. It results in some higher temperature browning on some bits, plus it's a lot less messy than doing it on the stovetop.

The Changing of the Seasons

As summer winds down, the spectre of rain here in the bay area raises its moist head again. The weather forecast had a slight chance of sky water pencilled in for this morning, so that meant it was time to get the fenders back on The Stig.

There's a few notable changes to the mounting this year. I installed a small spacer washer down at the bottom bracket to hold the rear fender a little bit away from the seat tube, as I'd noticed that some grit had been getting in between the fender and the frame resulting in a bit of an unfortunate scuff.

I also added some helicopter tape on that area to protect it.

Just in case.

The other change I made was less a change of how I mounted the fenders and more a manipulation of the fenders themselves. The front fenders aren't too overly constrained, but on the rear there's a few more mounting points and so the fender tends to get curved into a slightly different shape than it was when it left the factory.

This results in the edges of the fender having some slight buckles and pulls in them, which reduces the clearance between the fender and the tire a little more than I'd like. I had ignored it on previous years to no ill effect, but this time I decided to get out my heat gun and warm up the plastic so I could massage it into shape, and I have to say the results were quite impressive. The buckles and pulls are gone and the fender edges are very even all the way around now.

So, given that, I think I can recommend the technique. Just be careful not to completely melt the fenders.

More Things That Go Bump In The Night

So you might be interested to hear whether or not replacing the fridge water dispenser valve fixed my water hammer issues. The answer is... it improved the situation. There's a few other potential noise sources though, so let's deal with them too.

We'll start where we left off, at the fridge. The one component that sits between the water inlet and the valve is this here water filter.

The original filter cap was damaged long before I inherited this fridge from the previous homeowners, so I 3d printed a replacement, mainly aiming to make it reasonably easy to twist the filter the required 1/4 turn to install or remove it. The broken parts of the original were, however, still with the unit when I moved in.

The original part has a pair of extra tabs on it that fit into the filter housing, and I was suspecting that these might help support the outer end of the filter to keep it from potentially rattling around inside the housing.

I had initially, a few years back, tried to repair it using super glue, but as we all know attempting to repair a plastic part like this with super glue usually just leaves you with glue residue stuck to one side of the now twice-broken joint.

So instead we'll try a more robust fix, starting by cleaning and roughing up the mating surfaces.

And instead of super glue, this time I'll be using epoxy putty. You might remember this as being the same material I used recently to fix the top of my industrial sewing machine table.

I kneaded up a wad of it, rolled it into a snake, and formed it around the circumference of the parts, squishing them together and making sure that some of the material got keyed into the slots on the white plastic bit.

While we wait for that to cure, let's have a look at cleaning up the plumbing spaghetti under my bathroom sink.

The black item here is the bypass valve for my hot water recirculation pump. It's intended to be screwed into the wall, but the positioning of the valves and drain here, combined with the annoying orientation of the connections, makes this a lot more inconvenient than it ought to be, thus why I had left it hanging loose all this time.

However, with a bit of rearranging I managed to find an orientation where I could actually screw it to the wall.

It's not perfect, but none of the lines are kinked so I'm calling it good enough.

Meanwhile the epoxy has cured, so let's take off my 3d printed handle and put the original part back in place.

And then we can put the filter back in the fridge.

Did this solve the water hammer noise completely? No, of course not, but at least it's a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Shiny and Chrome

A little while ago, Tyler went dumpster diving and managed to surface with a haul of old chromeboxes. He kept a few of them for himself, assembling them into some sort of linux cluster with which he intends to calculate some kind of digital unholy sins, but set aside for me a pair of them that he didn't need.

More after the break.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

You might recall from a previous episode of "Nico's peculiarly random home maintenance adventures" that I did a little bit of replumbing on my sprinkler system, in part to repair a small leak, but also in part to install a water hammer arrestor. I had hoped to quiet some water hammer noise that had been disturbing my sleep in the wee hours of the morning when the sprinklers would cycle on and off.

Of course, the water hammer arrestor I installed did sweet fuck-all to quiet the noise, so it was clearly time to try to solve the problem from the other end, by eliminating the source of the noise rather than eliminating the water hammer.

After a little sleuthing, I determined that it was my fridge that was responsible for generating the noise rather than any plumbing in the walls. This was good news, since, on the one hand, it meant that the noise source wasn't buried in the walls somewhere; and on the other hand, because there are very few components in the fridge between the water inlet and the solenoid valve that could possibly be making any noise.

By which I mean that there are basically no components other than the solenoid valve that could possibly be making any noise.

Now you might wonder how a solenoid valve could make noise from water hammer, and the answer is a bit puzzling if you don't know how a solenoid valve works. Basically there's a (relatively) large diaphragm inside the valve with a small hole in the middle. That hole allows the water to fill the cavity behind the valve, pushing the diaphragm forward and against the valve seat, keeping the valve closed. Then there's a small bypass port, with a pin that's held down over it by a spring, which the solenoid can magnetically retract. By retracting that pin, water from behind the membrane is allowed to bypass the closed valve, which lowers the pressure behind the diaphragm, thus leading to the water pressure on the front of the diaphragm lifting it away from the valve seat, allowing the water to flow through the valve.

So given that the valve is largely driven by water pressure, it's perhaps not surprising that a sudden oscillation in the input water pressure might lead to the valve diaphragm lifting when it shouldn't, causing it to flutter and make a bunch of noise, particularly if the valve is a little bit old and crusty.

Anyway, with that tech talk out of the way, let's get this party started.

By vacuuming up all this dust again...

That's much better.

With a few screws removed, the cardboard cover panel back here swings open, revealing the valve inside.

The red valve controls the water that goes up to the ice maker, while the green valve controls the water that goes to the door dispenser.

Removing two more screws allows us to free up the inlet fitting and valve assembly.

Both the electrical connections and water ports are idiot-proofed luckily: the spades are a different size on the two connectors, and the water tubes are a different diameter. But all the same, it's helpful to take lots of photos as you go.

The water tubes are a simple push fitting. You remove them by pushing inwards slightly, holding the collar forwards, then pulling the tube out.

But this is where things get slightly less simple: the valve body is apparently staked together with the inlet fitting.

So it's a good thing I'm prepared for this sort of situation.

The staked pins are easily ground away.

And a little love tap with a cold chisel separates the two parts. There's no need to re-attach the new valve body since the two pieces are held onto the fridge by the same pair of screws.

Speaking of being held onto the fridge, let's get the new valve in place and hooked up.

And after checking for leaks, we can button up the cardboard cover.

And all that's left to do is push the fridge back into place, which I didn't take a photo of, because it looks exactly like the first picture in this blog post. Go scroll up to the top and look at it again if you can't stand the suspense.

I tried turning the kitchen faucet on and off a couple of times and it's almost eerie not hearing the subtle clunk from the fridge when the pressure wave ripples through the plumbing. Something tells me I'm going to have a good night's sleep tonight.