A handy tool for finding your home circuits, a 3D printing disaster, and a cool cutting tool
Plus, science says drink more coffee, web scraping, a mystery tech device, why we have fewer friends, and a great explainer on filament types
I’m David Gewirtz. Welcome to this week’s Advanced Geekery newsletter. It’s been an exciting week. Let’s dive in.
My latest video
Yeah, so this happened.
My articles
Here’s a quick recap of the articles I published in the last week on ZDNET.
How a 5-minute circuit scan saved me hundreds (and exposed a serious wiring surprise): I nearly shelled out for new circuits - until this Klein tool proved I already had power right where I needed it. If you recall, I spotlighted this tool some months ago here in the newsletter.
This proxy provider I tested is the best for web scraping - and it's not IPRoyal or MarsProxies: Skip the coding headaches and blocked IPs. This article breaks down how Oxylabs makes enterprise web scraping a breeze, with clear docs, AI parsing, and a massive proxy network.
Can you ID this?
How good are you at identifying tech? In this new segment, the idea is to see if you can identify what the picture shows. I’ll give you a few hints, but it’s up to you to figure it out. Feel free to leave a comment below.
Hint: It looks like an Xbox controller. It has the button layout of an Xbox controller. Not only is it not an Xbox controller, it’s not compatible with Xbox. What is it?
Stay tuned. The answer will be in next week’s issue.
Must-watch YouTube
Moving on, let’s queue up some interesting YouTube videos for your entertainment and edification.
This guy is taking a tour of a shop that makes robots, specifically for the wood and wood working industry. They’re specialized, vertical, and cool.
Dude talks about the great friendship collapse and calls this the anti-social century. Are we more anti-social? Comment below, or don’t.
This woman provides a nice, clear, basic overview of the different filament types and how to choose among them.
Tool of the week
This is the ultrasonic cutting tool I spotlighted in the video above. It’s not cheap, but it did help make removing supports a lot less problematic. Before this, all I could do was crush them with clippers or yank them with pliers. But this slices through them fairly easily.
As I said, it is pretty pricey. It also has an annoyance that may cause me to return it and look for something else. The button is located right where my finger naturally sits, so I kept turning it off accidentally. But I do like it, and were it not for that, I would definitely keep it.
I may still decide to keep it, but I am going to look at other tools and see if I like anything better. If so, I’ll report back. In the meantime, this definitely does the job.
Note: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Interesting reads
And now, some good stuff from around the Internet, well worth checking out.
This article has a particularly click-bait title, but it does describe how many couples (including my wife and I) work from home together: Love, Money, and Yarn Balls: the Rise of Etsy Husbands.
What do the old show Gilligan’s Island, a boat, and an FCC commissioner have in common? A subtle little Hollywood inside joke.
Science says that if you’re over 60, it might be good to drink more coffee. See your doctor to see if this is true for you.
Send in your projects
I’d like to regularly spotlight a reader project or two here. Your project doesn’t have to be a big Kickstarter launch. If you’ve built something cool, it has some pretty pictures, and you’re proud of it, I might be able to share it here.
If you have a photogenic reader project, send an email to me at david@zatz.com with the subject “READER PROJECT,” a few pictures, and a short one-paragraph description. If you have a social media link or a link to the project, include that, too.
Both my EPs are now streaming
Available on all your favorite streaming services.
More clicky
I’ve got a lot happening all over the web. Here are links to my various stuff:
House of the Head: home for my published music
ZATZ Labs: where I host my published software projects
Feel free to dig around, visit, and say hey!
Leave some comments
Substack supports comments, so feel free to leave some. I promise to read them. Just, please, let’s keep our personal politics out of any discussion.
That should do it for this week. This newsletter is really starting to pick up subscribers. Please help it out by sharing links on all your socials.
Have a great week!
The circuit finder is awesome. I bought one last year to track down an issue I was having with an outlet on my front porch. I have since used it to also do a definitive mapping of my breaker box. My house is over 40 years old and the wiring/circuit configurations are interesting.
Agreed. Although if you've seen my panel, that's a lot of circuits, and a lot of servers I'd be crashing. Sigh. But yeah, that's how I've done it all those years before finding this toy.