Paperwhite Flowers (edit 1/13/2011)

This is going to be a short project. But hopefully it will be a productive one.

We recently bought a Paperwhite Narcissus kit. It comes with almost everything you need to grow flowers such as a pot, soil, and flower bulbs.

The kit comes with potting material. It is dehydrated so you gotta put it in water. We placed the dehydrated material in the provided pot and put some water in the pot. After a few seconds, we had a pot of potting material.

We took one of the flower bulbs and placed it in a separate container, filled it with the potting material and added a little bit of water to it.

The rest of the bulbs, we placed in the provided pot, covered it with the potting soil, added a little bit of water and placed it on our balcony. Hopefully we will have some flowers to post here in a few weeks!

12/19/2011 - Yay! It is growing!

1/13/2012 - A little late but a week or so after the previous update, we got full on flowers!

And these are about a week after that.

Pancake Cupcakes

I recently went to the supermarket and I saw pancakes sitting nearby the cupcake area. I immediately thought... "I wonder why no one makes pancake cupcakes?"

So I bought the pancake mix and brought it home.

I mixed the pancake batter according to the instructions on the box. I added about a cup of maple syrup to the mix and started making bacon.

I then fried the bacon up.

I added the bacon to the pancake batter.

Next, I put the batter into cupcake cups.

I baked the cupcakes for about 10 minutes at 400 degrees.

Here is the finished product. I was hoping it would look more like pancakes. The first bite I took wasn't "pancakey" enough so I put maple syrup over the top of the cupcake.

You can see the bacon at the bottom of the cupcake. It didn't taste enough like pancakes for me. I think next time, I am gonna make a thicker batter and add a bunch more syrup.

When I do this again, I am planning to add the bacon after about a minute of baking. (The bacon settled to the bottom of the cupcake.) Also, a little bit of maple syrup will be added at the same time as the bacon. Will let you know how the next incarnation of pancake cupcakes comes out.

Building my Droid Army

Not really a project, more of a, "what I do in my spare time..." type of thing.

I am trying to build a Droid army. Want to create a battle scene on my desk at work. I wish Lego would sell their Droids as a pack of 5 or so.

Maybe I should change it to a Clone army instead. I think Lego sells those as packs., but I have been lucky that my friend gave me some of his droids. Here is my Droid army.

This is the first set of Droids I had. A group this small would be no match for even a Padawan.

This group of Droids though, this might be able to hold back a Jedi... Especially the gangster droid in the front with his sideways blaster.

Gravy

This is a short one.

Step 1: Get something yummy.

Step 2: Add gravy.

Step 3: Enjoy!

JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT......

Step 1: Something yummy....

Step 2: Add gravy....

Step 3: Enjoy!!

Brake Drums On My 1970 Datsun 510

One of the last projects I did on my Datsun before sending it back to my brother was freshen up the drum brakes. I had recently got it running and when driving it around the block for a test run, I realized the brakes were really bad. It was pretty damn scary.

I would bleed the brakes, but when I started driving, the pedal kept losing pressure. I assumed it was a leak in the rear wheel cylinder(s).

This was the first time I ever did work on drum brakes and I had to ask a friend for a lot of help and tips. We also did not have those special drum brakes tools so it was a little more difficult than it could be.

Jacked up the car and placed it on jackstands. Made sure the car was solid and was not going to roll or fall when I was under it. Also, many people have told me that drum brakes should be done one side at a time. This was good advice as I could use the unfinished side as reference.

Very first thing I had problems with was removing the drums. They were on pretty tight. I had assumed that it would be easy to just pull off. It wasn't. There was a lot of pounding with a mallet but eventually, we got it off.

From visual inspection, we saw that the wheel cylinders were leaking.

There was a spring loaded rod holding the drums in. To remove it, I had to push the spring in and turn the rod until it aligned with the hole on the spring's cap.

After removing all of those springs, the brake shoes pretty much came right out. Along with the shoes were the springs that everyone complains about.

I think most people use a special tool for those springs. A tool that we did not have. This made things difficult when

trying to put the brakes back together.

The wheel cylinders were the next thing that needed removal. I tried to take a picture of the cylinder on my car. It is connected to the hard brake line.

I did not have a brake flare nut wrench so this was a scary part to remove. I took my time and tried really hard not to round off the nut.

The cylinders are held into place with metal clips. Kind of a pain to remove.

This is a photo of the wheel cylinder installed on the car.

After installing the wheel cylinder, I reinstalled the brake lines and the retaining springs. I resurfaced the brake drums and put it back on and bled the brakes.

Did a test run in and out of the garage but the brakes still did not feel really tight. Bled the brakes a few more times but it never really felt good.

Eventually, my friend called a more knowledgeable guy to come and look at the car. He said that the master cylinder needs to be bled really well on the Datsuns. He did it, and the brakes felt solid.

I am no longer afraid of working on drum brakes. It was a major pain getting the shoes back on the car without the proper tools but with some patience, it was done. We still had to call in someone to complete the job, but I learned about the master cylinder. So next time I could just do it myself.