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Budget folding rig

Dave Farquhar Hardware May 6, 2020May 4, 2020

After running Foldingathome for a few weeks and watching my friends pull away and leave my machines in their dust, I decided to throw a little money at it and see if I could build a budget folding rig that wouldn’t embarrass me. While you can spend thousands of dollars on one, you don’t have to. Let’s see what we can do for a more modest amount. Like $200.

You can build a folding rig that can pull in 300,000-400,000 points per day for around $250. The trick is finding a decent minitower with a PCIe slot and a used graphics card.

How to fix a sticky door knob

Dave Farquhar DIY May 5, 2020May 13, 2020

If you have a sticky doorknob, you don’t have to replace it. You can fix it in place relatively quickly, and with minimal effort. Here’s how to fix a sticky door knob.

Sticky door knobs are almost always due to dirt or improper lubrication. But if you use the right lubricant, you can clean and lube the door knob in one step.

Pretty print JSON in Python

Dave Farquhar security May 4, 2020May 13, 2022

I do a lot of work pulling data from systems via API, then doing things with parts of that data, whether it means feeding it to another system or creating a report. Some of these data structures are huge and unwieldy. Here’s how to pretty print JSON in Python so you can make sense of those data structures and get on with your code–without using an online pretty print website and potentially exposing sensitive data.

While json.loads is the key to getting your JSON data into a Python data structure, there’s a corresponding json.dumps to print it back out. It doesn’t sound like it would pretty print, but that’s what it does.

Technical difficulties

Dave Farquhar This weblog May 2, 2020May 2, 2020

In doing some routine maintenance today, one of my key plugins, Yoast SEO, started throwing error messages. Yoast issues can cause various other issues, such as new content not showing up on the front page, so this may be a problem.

Yoast’s knowledge base article isn’t helpful, just telling you to get a new web host. I’ve been hosting my own WordPress site for nearly 10 years (and another nine before that using other blogging tools) and this is the first time a plugin author has questioned my competence.

I’ve opened a ticket with Yoast. More than 50 other people have reported similar issues, so I’m thinking this one isn’t me. But at least I am able to publish new content, so I’m having fewer problems than some Yoast customers.

Louis Marx: The bygone toy king

Dave Farquhar Toy trains May 1, 2020April 25, 2020

Louis Marx was the founder of the toy company that bore his name. His larger toys became staples in Christmas catalogs for generations, while his smaller toys dominated the discount stores of their day.

Louis Marx was first and foremost a toy salesman, but he lived an interesting life. He counted President Dwight Eisenhower among his friends, and Daniel Ellsberg, known for the Pentagon Papers, married his daughter.

Can Gamestop survive?

Dave Farquhar Retail April 30, 2020January 14, 2026

Gamestop, the venerable video game retailer, announced in April 2020 it’s closing 300 stores. Rumors of Gamestop’s demise are rampant, and have been for a long time. Today it’s famous mostly for closing stores and becoming a meme stock. Can Gamestop survive?

Changes in the way people buy video games has made life more challenging for Gamestop. I believe the company could survive, but it will have to change its business model and improve its customer service a lot in order to do it.

Does undervolting damage your GPU?

Dave Farquhar Hardware April 29, 2020April 26, 2020

Some enthusiasts will undervolt their GPU to save heat, reduce power consumption, and make their system run quieter. But does undervolting damage your GPU?

Undervolting can lead to stability issues, but when you get it right, it can actually be good for your GPU. Running cooler generally leads to longer life expectancy for the GPU chip and the graphics card as a whole.

How to disassemble a Sharpie

Dave Farquhar model railroading April 28, 2020September 13, 2023

My wife and sons asked me how to disassemble a Sharpie. They were working on a craft project and wanted to recover the ink from some dried-out markers. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to do it, but with the right tools, it’s not difficult. Here’s how to take apart a Sharpie and recover the ink for use in crafts or hobbies.

Wire a Sakai O gauge switch

Dave Farquhar Toy trains April 24, 2020April 12, 2020

Sakai made a switch in the postwar era that looks a lot like a Lionel 1121 but acts like a Marx 1590. But if you use a Sakai control panel, it wires up differently from both of them. Here’s how to wire a Sakai O gauge switch.

The wiring diagram was on the back of the box, which you may not have anymore. I have a copy, as well as an explanation of how it works.

Statistical significance – why it matters

Dave Farquhar Writing April 23, 2020April 19, 2020

Statistical significance may be the most important concept you’ve never heard of. It takes more than knowing Mark Twain’s joke about statistics to know how to understand them. It’s easy to lie with statistics, after all. But it’s also not difficult to know when someone is lying with statistics.

Statistics work when you study a large enough segment of the population to be able to extrapolate with reasonable confidence of being accurate. Statistical significance is the key to measuring the quality of those statistics and the conclusions someone is making from them.