Apparently somebody reads my blog

Just a quick update to my last post. The author of idphoto4you.com sent me an e-mail asking why I hadn’t used his site instead of ePassportPhoto.com. Well, I simply hadn’t tried it.

Now I have! I was going to mention it here and state all the reasons why I preferred ePassportPhoto.com instead … But I think I actually like idphoto4you.com more. A lot more.

  • In addition to cropping for you, idphoto4you.com will let you rotate the photo, too. Especially for an infant photo, this can be invaluable.  I don’t mean just 90-degree rotations, but if the baby’s head is drooping a bit to the left, you can fix that.
  • A major problem with ePassportPhoto is that once you’ve guessed at how big your crop will need to be, then you move that crop and position it over the face, and you can not change the size of the crop without starting over. With idphoto4you.com, you can move, resize crop, rotate, resize, move again, etc., in any order, allowing you to get things just right very quickly.
  • This is a minor detail, but the face guide that idphoto4you.com uses is easier to understand at a glance.

Some things are a bit better on ePassportPhoto, however.

  • ePassportPhoto has default templates for over sixty countries. Though most of these all have fairly common rules, it’s nice that you don’t have to look them up for yourself.
  • Passport photos are printed in a landscape aspect rather than portrait, so you get an extra picture. (Not that this makes any real difference, but it’s nice not to have wasted space. The extra photo can always be used in a project for grandparents.)
  • Links are included to have the pictures printed and mailed for you.

There are other minor differences that someone might have a preference for, such as idphoto4you.com allowing you to print bigger sheets with more photos, if you’d like. The bottom line for me, though, is that it took me about 10 seconds to get things just right with idphoto4you.com compared to about a minute with ePassportPhoto.

On a side note, how hilarious is it that somebody read this site and cared what was on it?

Welcome to Good Idea at the Time!

This is a pretty good day for my first post, because it’s a good “projects” example day.

First of all, how cool is this domain name?  Completely shocked when I saw it was still available.  I’ve been thinking for a while to start two blogs, one for geek projects (name never determined) and one for my bad parenting (called worseparenting.com).  I have no idea what badparenting.com used to host, but it’s a domain squatter now.  When I found this domain available, I realized it could be used equally well for both blog ideas.  Feel free to take worseparenting.com and make me look like the amateur I am at being a bad parent.

My project for today (and yesterday, and now tomorrow) was supposed to be a Beetle Bot.  This should be a one-evening project.

The lesson learned the hard way last night was: Do not use Bondo to hold your beetle robot together.  Feel free to rebuild a Volkswagen Beetle with it, instead.

Tonight, I couldn’t even get to the project until much later than expected. As I was closing and locking the door of my car, the door’s lock fell inside the door.  (Yeah, I A) have manual locks and B) have to lock the car door from the outside using the key, by manufacturer design to ensure I don’t lock it in there.)

On the bright side, I’ve always wondered how hard it is to get inside a car door, with how entryless (not a word) their construction seems.  Now I know.  I also know that it’s not getting into the door that’s the hard part.

A while ago, I had one broken bolt in that car cost in the neighborhood of $600.  It appears to have happened again, but this time it cost me around $1.50.  (I don’t remember how much, but I know I used a credit card to pay for it. So I can find out exactly how much later. See how I totally paid for a $1.50 item with a credit card on purpose and not because my brain gets easily fried?)

Anyway, that set my robot building back an hour and a half.  I’d picked up the epoxy and this time I got the robot entirely built … But discovered I should have done more testing first.

See, the smallest motors that allelectronics.com sells are 1.5 Vdc mini, mini, mini motors.  Which is great, since the Beetle Bot Instructions calls for 1.5 Vdc motors.  Except that they’re ACTUALLY 1.5 Vdc, and most AA and AAA batteries these days are closer to 1.3 V than 1.5.  So I could power one motor, or the other, but not both.

Solution?  Like so much else in the world, the dollar store. They had little hand-held personal fans that have the proper 1.5 Vdc motors that will (hopefully) work with slightly underpowered batteries.  Also?  They have cool little mini-frisbees in three or four packs (depending on which comic book character you want on them) which are perfect for the top shell to these Beetle Bots.  So much great stuff there to break to pieces and abuse.

So in one night, my project count is:

  1. Unexpected car project
  2. Failed robot project
  3. Domain purchased, blog created, and premiere post put up!

Even though it’s taking me past midnight to get all this done, at least I get to end on a success.  Looks like the Beetle Bot and the Bristle Bot will have to end up being weekend projects.