Author: Doozer

  • Owned and Picked Locks

    Below is a table of the locks I own and, if I’ve picked them, a date when I first picked it. I started picking Christmas 2022 so you can see how long it takes to learn the skill. I’ve organised the list by belt colour based on the ranking found at the lockpicking sub on…

  • Jet JPT-260 Planer Thicknesser Chain Replacement

    For a while now I’ve been having a problem with the outfeed roller on my planer thicknesser. While thicknessing the machine will make a loud banging sound and the wood will fail to emerge from the machine. For a while I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong as everything visible seemed to be working…

  • Beginning Lock Picking

    I was recently given a set of lock picks and I’ve found it to be a surprisingly addictive pastime. The picks came with some acrylic learning locks which were far too easy, only the Euro lock cylinder even vaguely put up a fight. I then tried picking a Yale Y220/51 as that was the only…

  • Our Garden – May, June 2022

    End of April to Early May I’ve been a slack when it comes to updating the garden diary lately but it’s doing pretty well. All but the lettuce has been moved out in to the cold frame I built a couple of weeks ago. the tomatoes (right in the image) are doing well enough. I…

  • Triple Decker

    While sharing a Double Decker with my son the other day I mentioned to him that we could do better, we could make a Triple Decker. So we did, this is the recipe. Just make the nougat first and then layer on the caramel before topping it off with rice krispy cake. It takes ages…

  • Our Garden – Feb, Mar and Apr 2022

    I decided to skip the February article because, well, not much happened. The entire family came down with covid and us olds were hit pretty hard, certainly hard enough we couldn’t do anything other than watering. Right at the end of the month (22nd Feb) we planted out the radishes with the kids. In the…

  • Tomato – Gardeners Delight – 2022

    This page covers my experience of growing Gardeners Delight tomatoes during 2022. I’m far from an expert so I wouldn’t necessarily copy what you find here. I’ll be planting twelve plants in our small, south facing, vegetable patch. I’ve grown tomatoes before with varying degrees of success. A few years we’ve had so much fruit…

  • Our Garden – January 2022

    We’ve tried gardening on and off a fair few times over the years but we’ve never had the level of success that we really wanted. Possibly our best year was 2020 when we had all the time in the world due to the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown. We saw the lockdown coming rushed out…

  • Changing the Default Username and Password on Raspberry Pi

    The default install of a Raspberry Pi will create a user with the username “pi” and the password “raspberry”. If you are only accessing this machine via it’s hardware interfaces (e.g. you have a keyboard plugged in) then this isn’t terrible but as soon as the machine is available to be logged in remotely (even…

  • Changing a Raspberry Pi Hostname

    The default hostname for a Raspberry Pi is “raspberrypi” which is great if you’ve only got one Pi but as soon as you add a second to the network things start getting a bit confusing. This quick guide will show you how to change your Pi’s hostname. You can perform this change though graphical interface…

  • Disable the Raspberry Pi Desktop

    While the default Raspberry Pi desktop is fairly lightweight as far as desktops go it’s still quite a burden on a small device like a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. Something like the Zero often finds itself used in an environment where the desktop isn’t used, so called headless mode. In this situation it’s best to…

  • Chilli Growing 2022

    Back in 2020 with the pandemic just starting I decided to grow some chillies. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried, way back in my first home I grew a few chillies from seeds that I collected from supermarket chillies. I have no idea what they were and I don’t remember the plants giving any…

  • Project Bandsaw – Parts and Costs

    Below is a list of what I used and where I bought it from. Costing is always difficult; items that I know I’ll probably use in the future (nuts and bolts, etc) I’ll often buy more than I need and, of course, I have some items in the workshop already because of previous projects. I’ve…

  • Project Bandsaw – Suppliers

    I thought it would be useful to compile a quick list of potential suppliers for this project. I didn’t necessarily buy from any of these places they just sold things that looked like they might be useful in the build. My current aim is to keep a list of all the things I use and…

  • Project Bandsaw – Planning

    Why? There’s a bandsaw shaped hole in my workshop and it needs filling. Why Build Your Own? Why not? Buying a commercial bandsaw is certainly easier and by the time I’ve finished this project it would probably be cheaper as well but this is about having fun. As long as I get a machine out…