Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

1 March 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Hubris

The other day I read Psalm 130, sometimes referred to by the Latin of the first couple of words, “de profundis” (out of the depths). I have always found vv. 3-4 particularly resonant: “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.” It doesn’t use the word ‘mercy’ but it captures the mercy of God. If you aren’t merciful, you not only fail to reflect what God is like but you stand in opposition to him.

I was disgusted to see how Trump and Vance treated their guest, Zelenskyy, on his visit to the White House yesterday. I know Trump has had a career as a negotiator and, possibly, the way he spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart is something which could have been said in private. To speak in public like that to man who was fairly elected and afterwards thrown into a war that was not of his choosing was utterly disgraceful. There is no mercy with Trump but a relentless desire to steal from others for his own betterment.

Those who stand around Trump as ‘Christian advisors’ need to speak to him. Self-aggrandising golden statues are the mark of a person who is likely to be humbled and who will burn in the presence of the holy, wise and merciful God. As I publish this, may I, too, be aware of my own failings. From an earlier Psalm (19:12) “But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.”

28 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Mild Bee

Mild Bee is my latest homebrew, based on Graham Wheeler’s recipe for Boddingtons Mild. The brewery has a long association with Manchester and, as was impressed on me on a visit there a couple of years ago, the city has adopted the symbol of the bee as an indicator of its industriousness, so Mild Bee wasn’t too big a jump to make in the naming.

Normally I start my brewing process by getting the main volume of water (the ‘mash liquor’) up to 70°C before adding the bag of grain. This cools it down a few degrees but a little application of stovetop heat brings it back to my regular 66°C mash temperature. For this batch I decided to try something different which could be called progressive hydration. I have a variable temperature electric kettle so I heated a litre of water at a time and poured it on the grain. My thought was that, by progressively hydrating the ‘porridge’ of grain, it might improve the efficiency of the mashing process and cover the fact I was only planning to keep it going for 30 minutes once all the initial water was in.

There might be something in that theory as I hit an initial gravity of 1.034 rather than the 1.032 target. The numbers don’t mean much on their own but if, in two or three months, the brew turns out to be a good one, it could be a useful technique for helping make brew days as quick and efficient as possible.

27 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Drawer Organisation

One of the 3D printed systems I was keen to experiment with was Gridfinity. It was designed by Zack Freedman and released under a MIT licence, to encourage sharing and further development. The underlying idea is very simple. You print a number of grid pieces and then storage units can be slotted into them. The key to the system is that each square of the grid measures 42x42mm and each unit grows upwards in multiples of 7mm. Combined with a little bit of consistent shaping, that means the system is entirely modular, allowing it to grow outwards and to stack upwards.

One use case for the system is making messy drawers more organised. Earlier this month I printed a series of grid pieces for one of the drawers in our kitchen / dining room area and I also designed a tape roll holder to organise all the rolls of insulation tape and similar items that were part of the clutter.

Today I have been putting my printer to work to run off a series of models by other people which follow the Gridfinity specifications and hold various sizes of battery. As well as getting my collection of spare batteries in order, it also helps tie the underlying grid system together. On my small printer, I have a maximum print area of 185x185mm so I the largest grid I could print is a 4×4 one. That is less than the 7×10 grid I would need to cover the drawer but I covered it with 4×2 and 3×2 blocks and, as I print more storage units, it gradually gets held together.

Not everything has an existing model so this evening’s project is working out a design in OpenSCAD that will let me hold a small Really Useful Storage Box in a Gridfinity mount. I’m presently at the stage of printing off a second thin mask for the base (under 2g of filament) as I refine the measurements. Once I get that dialled in, I will be able to combine it with a model for the underlying base and the box, which I’ve been using for a few years to hold spent batteries for recycling, can also be integrated with the underlying grid.

26 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Brown Dog Stout – First Tasting

When I do my bottling, using my current technique, I am still typically left with a bottle that doesn’t quite get filled up and which gets a certain amount of sediment in the bottom. I try to make sure that I put an extra mark on that one to make it stand out and, aware that bottles with more sediment seem to have a higher chance of going off, I normally use it as a sample not too far into the conditioning process.

I did that with the marked bottle of Brown Dog Stout tonight. It was reasonably well carbonated and poured pretty clear. That can be tricky with a dark beer but I made sure to do it under good light so I could stop before the sediment got poured out. I also used another trick I’ve tended to adopt recently – pouring into a measuring jug first so that I can do a second pour into the glass thinking more about speed and angle to promote head formation and not having to worry about the sediment.

The taste was promising although there is certainly room for it to improve. The beer is very dark, full-bodied and reasonably sweet. The next step will be to make some labels for the rest of the batch and then to leave it bottle conditioning until at least the end of March. Meanwhile it is about time I got my next batch underway.

25 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Check All the Vital Dimensions

I recently bought some spools of printing filament from Sunlu but they have larger holes than the Bambulabs ones I have been using. I decided to print an adapter but, having found a simple model online, it turned out to be a bit larger than I needed. I thought I was being clever by figuring out how to import the STL file into OpenSCAD and then use the resize() command I discovered last week to adjust the dimensions.

Unfortunately it was only after printing it that I realized that, as well as resizing the outer radius to create a perfect fit, I had shrunk down the inner radius so that it wouldn’t fit on on the spindle. The lesson from that one is that I need to consider what all the vital dimensions to a project are and ensure that all of them finish up suitable when I get to adjusting things.

I probably will have another go at the spool adapter but I think, in this case, I’ll generate a new one from scratch with inner and outer dimensions both based on my measurements. The shape is pretty simple so can be thrown together from a few simple elements. I might even think about adapting ideas from some other designs, such as bits of plastic that hold the fit under a low amount of tension, although I don’t want to get too carried away!

24 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Exhilarating Times

Jane and I have been singing with the Loughborough University choir for a little while now and, compared to other musical projects I’ve been a part of, there are a lot of relatively complex time signatures to cope with. It isn’t so much the time signatures themselves as the way they are put together. For example, a good part of tonight’s rehearsal was spent on a piece that spends a lot of time alternating two bars of 6/8 with single bars of 2/4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 ….

It is hard work but also quite exhilarating. Your mind can’t drop into a simple rut but has to keep making adjustments. On the other hand, particularly when the larger patterns are consistent, you start to grasp it but, because the individual beats go by too fast (when you are also trying to sing the right notes in the right places with the right words), you have to rely on your instincts. I’m sure it sets a level of adrenalin coursing round the body.

23 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Too much printing?

This afternoon, I had lots of problems trying to send a print job to my A1 Mini. It would slowly begin downloading on the machine and then stall and fail after 10-15 minutes. I even tried moving the device to a different network, which had a much stronger signal, but that didn’t make much difference. Advice online suggested looking at whether the computer clock was properly synchronised with online time servers but that didn’t help either.

I ended up firing up my laptop (with an SD card reader) and transferring the file onto it. While doing that, I noticed that there was a ‘cache’ folder with lots of files related to things I have previously printed. I wondered if there was an issue with the number of files, even though the card reported having plenty of spare room. I decided to delete them anyway and then successfully printed what I was after direct from the card.

Afterwards, I sent another print job across the network and that one worked perfectly. Could the file deletion have been an issue? If it happens again, that will probably be the thing I try first. There are plenty more things I want to print so it probably won’t be too long if it is the case.

22 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Sing Around Songs – 22 February 2025

I just brought a couple of songs to this afternoon’s sing around (as well as the double bass).

To kick off, I tried In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson. The original was released in 1972 and had vocals by Rod Stewart. My version didn’t do quite so well on the vocals – I thought I’d got the key sorted at the home but the difference between practising in a small room and a large room caught me again even though I’d been working on it at quite a high volume at home in the morning. Still, I made it through in a soulful fashion, even if I had to wrestle with one or two of the notes.

For my second song, I went for a traditional drinking song, Ye Mariners All (or A Drop of This). Well warmed up by this point, I concentrated on carrying the tune and let the bass part flow freely in support of that. I also did a short Ogden Nash poem at the very end of the session to help close things off: “A cow is of the bovine ilk / One end moo, the other milk.”

21 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Moving the Czar

Today I managed to move our plum tree from its original spot, behind the polytunnel, to a new location, at the end of the existing lawn. Ideally I would have done that a few days ago, while the weather was still cold, but we have only had a day or so of temperatures in the low double figures so the sap probably hasn’t risen too much. Hopefully, as it stirs out of winter dormancy, it will manage to grab enough nutrients to both heal the roots and reach further up and out at the top. I will also be cutting back the rest of the turf between that and the bed although I can allow a bit more time to plan that.

It will be a more visible and sunnier location for the tree and possibly a bit less damp. Although it probably won’t be particularly fruitful this year, it should be better set for fruit in future. Meanwhile, with that and the blackcurrant bushes gone from behind the polytunnel (the latter did get moved earlier in the week), we can get on with preparations for putting a second shed in that space.

20 February 2025
by wpAdmin
0 comments

Warmer, in Theory

Apparently it has been about 5-6°C warmer today than the average daytime temperatures we had earlier this week… but it hasn’t felt very much like that. I suppose I didn’t feel the need to do my coat up for the walk home but I think the damp grey atmosphere made it feel less spring-like than some of the crisp, bright days we have had recently. That is why we rely on instruments to measure things; our ability to gauge things like temperature depends on a lot more than the temperature alone.