Now this doesn’t eliminate the need to clean the shower, and I should be honest here – when it does need cleaning I manage to neatly avoid doing the dirty work, but I can say that the Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner seems to lengthen the time between shower cleanings.

The only bummer is that the bottles are not refillable.  We stretch ours out by only using it every 2nd day or so (instead of every day as is recommended).  It still would be nice to be able to refill with a concentrate and dilute with water.  The catch is – the caps do not screw off, so you can’t open the bottles.

Let’s take a look at how the cap works:

So on the left you can see a close-up of the threaded part of the bottle. Very sneaky, they’ve put a pair of small ‘ratchet’ nubs – there is another pair on the other side as well.  Looking at the cap, you can see the corresponding teeth.  Once tightened down, the cap is very solidly locked onto the bottle.

To hack this – you’ll need two of the scrubbing bubbles empty containers.  From one you will recover a cap, from the other the bottle.  To remove (destroy) the cap, I used a pair of wire cutters and a pair of needle nose pliers.  I started a cut up the side of the cap, then grabbed the edge of the cut with the pliers and peeled it back.  I used 2 or three cuts until I managed to free the cap from the bottle.  Removing (destroying) the bottle to recover a cap was easier, but I used the same basic approach: a small cut, followed by the pliers to twist the material away.  Go slow (and carefully with sharp tools!) since you want to avoid any damage to the part you are trying to keep.

The bottle must be modified to removing the nubs.  The plastic is a hard plastic which seemed to respond nicely to a coarse file I had in my workshop.  A few minutes of work and I had smoothed over the two pairs of nubs – the cap now opens and closes easily.  Now we’ve got a refillable container.

The LifeHacker article inspired me, but clearly not enough to quickly leap on the idea and deal with my mess of cables.  They actually have a whole category dedicated to cable management which is worth a browse if you are looking for ideas.  The original concept came from a site which seems to be gone now, but can still be seen via the Way Back Machine.

So pictured above is my version of the peg board cable organizer.  I’ve got a 2′ x 4′ peg board mounted on the back of the desk (between the desk and the wall).  There are only 2 screws holding the board to the desk (upper left and right corners).  I’ve used a couple of washers between the peg board and the desk to give it a bit of room for the cable ties.  Everything is zip-tied to the board, power bar included.  Since I’ve only got 2 screws at the top, I can bend the board (gently) away from the desk to get easy access to the back side to help route the zip ties.

The view from the front of the desk is what makes this worth doing.  No clutter on the floor (ok, an errant ethernet cable and the USB to the printer).  Even for my desk (pictured is Jenn’s) – where I need to plug and unplug things like my laptop regularly, this setup works well.  I simply mounted the powerbar near the top of the peg board and that places the outlets near enough to the top of the back edge of the desk that its not a problem.

This project only took a couple of hours, it is very functional – and tidy too.  What are you waiting for?

One solution would have been to simply buy a new tire.  I thought that being like a car tire, I could probably take it by a local garage and have them do it for me.  However, I had a nagging feeling there was some way to DIY so I finally got to searching for a solution.

It was very easy to find some good advice on the net (this is as you know, not always true).  So the value of this post is probably limited, but I learned something today so I thought I’d share.

Tools you need: rope, air pump, long screwdriver or sturdy stick, soapy water.

1. Use the soapy water (1/2 water, 1/2 dish soap) to coat the beads of the tire (both sides) and the rim where it will mate up.
2. Tie the rope snugly around the circumference of the tire.
3. Stick the screwdriver through the rope and twist, causing the rope to tighten.  This should help you get the bead onto the rim on both sides [in my case, it was not quite there - but close enough to seal the gaps]
4. Pump the tire.  This should cause the bead to set onto the rim.  Slowly release the twist while you pump.

That’s it – easy to fix with stuff you should be able to find around the workshop.

Of course, since my MythBox is using a capture card to grab video from my sattellite receiver it has no idea what channel has which show.  When I started with MythTV, there was a free service offered by Zap2It.com that offered up listing information in an easy to consume format.  The listings provide MythTV with guide information so it knows what is on, and when.  Today there is SchedulesDirect which is well run and inexpensive at $20 USD a year.

Over time, channels change and this is reflected by changes in the listing data.  MythTV detects these changes, and will add new channels automatically – it won’t remove channels that we listing information is no longer being delivered for.  I’m on an older version (0.20) but suspect there is a design decision here.

Using the UI to remove channels is pretty clunky.  The MythTV site has instructions on accomplishing this via the command line, and while I’m comfortable with the command line – it is a multi-step process which I dreaded doing.  So over a few months, more and more bogus channels that I didn’t actually have would get added.  For example – a new pay per view (PPV) channel would appear, new guide data would become available and I’d start seeing it as an available channel… grr

Of course, you still need to connect to SchedulesDirect and remove the unwanted channels from your subscription otherwise MythTV will just keep adding the ‘new’ channels back.  Tonight I wrote up a quick Perl script to automate the multi-step process – this makes removing unwanted channels quick and easy.

Usage: remove_channel.pl <channel number>


#!/usr/bin/perl

while (@results = $execute->fetchrow()) {
print "chanid ".$results[0]."\n";
$connect->query($delchannel.$results[0]);
$connect->query($delprogram.$results[0]);
}

The printer I bought was the Samsung ML-2010.  It was known to be easy to refill, and considering that a new toner cartridge was nearly $100 at the time – I knew I’d be going the DIY route when the time came.  A full 3 years later we still use this printer and it has been mostly trouble free.  The toner had finally gotten low enough that we needed to do something (taking the cartridge out and shaking it wasn’t helping much anymore).

I figured I’d be getting one of the toner refill kits from eBay, but which one?  I turned to redflagdeals.com and found this thread that pointed me at TonerKits.  While the thread was started back in 2004, but its still going strong at 47 pages with recent positive reports.  I purchased from TonerKits via eBay simply selected the right kit for my printer.  I paid $11.99 USD (7.99 + 4 shipping), but looking today – the same kit is $9.99 with free shipping.  The eBay transaction was quick, and smooth.

Refill Kit Includes:
1 – 100g black toner refill
1 – pouring spout w/cap
1 – set illustrated instructions

(there are cheaper kits with less toner, 100g will fill to ~75% level twice)

Pictured above is my toner cartridge and the 3 items I received from TonerKits.  The refill process was very simple.(...)
Read the rest of Samsung ML-2010 Toner Refill (254 words)

The other weekend Jenn suggested that I build a picnic table for our daughter Alison.  It seemed like a neat father/daughter project.  Jenn dug up some plans from the internet and we built one.

Other than an electric drill, you can do this all with hand tools.  If you’re hard core – you can use a manual drill (I’ve actually got one!) and do without power tools.  Of course, as we’re cutting wood here you can get into power saws etc, but as I wanted to let my 3 year old participate it seemed like the fewer power tools involved the better.

Total cost was about $40.  I used white cedar from Lanark Cedar and weatherproof deck screws that I got at the local hardware store.  It took a couple of hours, but if your more organized and need fewer juice breaks you can probably get it built pretty quick.

I originally thought that the 1×3 and 1×6 wood called for by the plans would be pretty skimpy, but as a whole the table is pretty solid.  The table top is about 19″ off the ground, making it impractical for an adult to sit at it.  Thus, if you’re the right size to sit at the table – it will hold your weight.  We actually made the table / seats about 6 inches longer than the plans called for.  Overall it was a very satisfying weekend project.