Posts
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Topton DIY NAS Motherboard Rundown!
Over twelve years ago, I built my very first DIY NAS. At the time, I had a very specific and unconventional idea in mind for my DIY NAS to be: small, with a passively cooled CPU, room for about 6 SATA drives, without breaking the bank. A bit surprisingly, I stumbled on a discounted motherboard that met this criteria, the ASUS E35M1-I Fusion. The motherboard met my criteria and it wound up being incredibly inexpensive, so naturally I bought it!
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Mighty Mini PCs Are Awesome For Your Homelab And Around The House
I have been doing a bad job. I have been neglecting the Butter, What?! blog. I haven’t posted anything here since I bought my Bambu A1 Mini in December. The good news is that everything I said about the Bambu A1 Mini in December is still true today, so I suppose I at least did a good job there, but I need to get back to posting here.
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The Bambu A1 Mini - The Best Choice for Your First 3D Printer
The title may almost be a lie! I feel that all of Bambu’s printers are a good value, and the Bambu P1P, P1S, and X1C are also fantastic printers for both beginners and veterans. If you have the budget, and you need the bigger printer, you should definitely invest in one of those. If your needs are smaller, and your budget is smaller, it is tough to go wrong with the Bambu A1 Mini.
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My Accidental Quest to Make My Gaming Computer Quieter
I didn’t think I would be upgrading my CPU cooler last week. I moved all three desks and the 3D printer stand in my office to different locations in my office last week, and since doing so, I can definitely hear my case fans sounding louder. My workstation used to be tucked in between the wall and the desk, which muffled some of the noise. It is more out in the open now, and the fan noise is probably bouncing off of different surfaces than before. I figured this was a problem for future me to worry about.
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The Topton N1 NAS: Brian's thoughts on a Toaster!
I have been selling the Topton N5105 NAS Motherboard on eBay for quite a few months now. The manufacturer of the motherboard has sent me a couple product catalogs full of all sort of interesting products based around this (or similar) small form factor motherboards.
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Does The Butter, What?! Community Need A Mastodon Or Lemmy Server?
I kind of miss social media, but I am simultaneously pleased to no longer be consuming or posting on both Twitter and Instagram. There was a time when I frequently shared my thoughts on Twitter, but my activity decreased notably after Musk’s acquisition of the platform. When the layoffs started, I stopped tweeting and removed the Twitter app from my phone.
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What Should I Do If I Can't Fill My New NAS Server Full Of Disks?
Someone building their first NAS joined our Discord server recently, and they are in an extremely common conundrum. They are planning to run TrueNAS, but they don’t have enough room in their budget to fill their server with giant hard disks. He isn’t the first person to encounter this conundrum.
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My Sovol SV06 -- Two Months Later
I have been printing with my refurbished Sovol SV06 for almost two months now. It is tough to complain about a 3D printer at this price point, whether you are talking about the $169 I paid for my refurbished unit, or the $250 you have to pay for a brand new printer. The worst things I can say about it relate to how loud the fans on this printer can be.
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AMD P-State EPP Driver Improved Gaming Performance On My Ryzen 5700X
The new
amd_pstateCPU frequency driver landed in version 6.3 of the Linux kernel. I saw Phoronix’s power utilization benchmarks, and the results didn’t look terribly exciting. There might be a couple of watts to be saved on a laptop, but I sure wasn’t expecting to notice a difference on my recently upgrade Ryzen 5700X gaming machine. I was proven wrong immediately! -
Should You Upgrade Your B350 Motherboard to a Ryzen 5600 or Ryzen 5700X?
You don’t have to read this entire post to find my answer. Yes. Absolutely. If you need 70% more CPU horsepower, then do it now. Do it soon. Upgrading my overclocked Ryzen 1600 to a normally clocked Ryzen 5700X was a fantastic value. If you are even contemplating the upgrade, then you should update your BIOS and order a new processor right now.
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The Topton N6005/N5105 and Brian Moses's DIY NAS Build for 2023
I am never surprised by the DIY NAS builds Brian Moses publishes each year. I am usually on the other end of a chat helping him choose parts. I have been excited about the motherboard and case for this year’s DIY NAS build and giveaway for so many months, but Brian always asks me to keep my mouth mostly shut.
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What I Would Do If I Won A NAS?
Everybody loves free cool stuff. You love free cool stuff. I love free cool stuff. It’s not really that complicated. If it’s free and cool, then we would be happy to have it. Well, it turns out that someone is giving away free stuff! Brian Moses has a blog where he posts about his interests, and for several years now he has been writing about NAS server builds. Even better, he is giving them away every so often, and he is hosting one of his giveaways right now!
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Are Two Case Fans Costing Me $6.00 Every Year?
Maybe. I don’t know that I have enough data to know for sure. I stuck a Cloudfree smart plug running Tasmota onto my homelab server a few months ago. That got me messing around with maximum clock speeds and CPU governors. Switching and tuning governors brought my ancient FX-8350 server down from 2.2 kWh per day to 1.97 kWh per day while still allowing the server to crank up to 4 GHz when necessary.
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Tailscale and Zerotier Supported In the Latest Beta Firmware from GL.iNet
I was checking the GL.iNet site to see if there were any firmware updates available for the GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 travel router. There was a new beta firmware available, and the changelog mentioned Tailscale, Zerotier, and some other new VPN-related features.
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Did I Do a Good Job In 2022?
Which question should I be asking? Did I do a good job, or did we do a good job? I’m not sure which I should be focusing on here in this blog. I figured that as long as I am taking an inventory of what I’ve worked on over the course of 2022 that I may as well write things down here for everyone to see.
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Tailscale Funnel Is Going to Come in Handy!
Tailscale Funnel went into alpha a few days ago. It is a pretty nifty new feature for Tailscale. It lets you tunnel TLS connections from the Internet into your private Tailscale network. Isn’t that fun?
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Severed Steel is My New Favorite First-Person Shooter
I don’t know what made me pick up a copy of Severed Steel. I remember seeing it on sale somewhere, saying it looked really neat, and adding it to my Steam wishlist. I probably figured it would show up in Humble Choice at some point. When I saw Severed Steel go on sale for $4.99 on Fanatical.com, I just had to grab a copy, and I am so glad that I did!
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What I Look For in a USB-C PD Charger
We were debating the merits of a tiny but somewhat expensive 40-watt USB-C charger over in the #deals channel earlier today. I thought it was a pretty nifty charger, because it really is ridiculously tiny, but we couldn’t learn much about it other than its size.
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Volutz USB-C Charging Cables Are Quite Good!
I had a conundrum. I recently purchased a new laptop. It was a good value, but it is just barely old enough that it does not use USB-C PD for charging. I wanted to pick up a spare charger to keep in my laptop bag, but I certainly didn’t want to buy a charger that I could only use with my laptop. I wound up snagging a $6 USB-C PD to barrel jack adapter and a 3-port USB-C PD 65-watt charger.
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The Original Prusa XL
When the Prusa MINI was announced, I was super excited. So excited that I almost immediately sat down and wrote a post about it.
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The New Shapeoko HDM Looks Amazing
Winston Moy was teasing us on Instagram and Twitter last night. I didn’t know what to expect today, but with hindsight on my side, I can see the ball screws in the teaser photo.
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Am I Excited About Valve's Steam Deck?
The short answer is yes. I do believe I am excited. I won’t be buying one, but I think the Steam Deck is an awesome idea, and I really hope it succeeds!
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What Are Pat and Brian Doing With Tailscale?
Brian and I have both been using Tailscale for quite a while now. Maybe eight or nine months? We chatted about what we’ve been doing with Tailscale last month on The Butter, What?! Show. I figured that might be a good reason to write about how things have been going for us so far, and what Tailscale is doing for us.
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Using Tailscale and FreeNAS (or TrueNAS CORE) Together
Tailscale has been a recent fascination of mine and Pat’s recently. Tailscale is a secure, zero-configuration mesh network that just works. I’ve gushed enough about Tailscale in previous blogs that I’m going to work to avoid it here in this blog, but if you’d like–here are a few links where you can read more about what Pat and I have each done with Tailscale:
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The Pi-KVM Project and the Delta 5 Race Timer for FPV Drone Racing
Brian and Pat talk about two interesting RaspberryPi/Arduino projects that they tinkered with recently. An inexpensive KVM-over-IP project called Pi-KVM and the Delta 5 Race Timer for FPV Quadcopter racing.
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Tool Trays, Octolapse, Cable Holders, and Monorail 3D Printers
Pat and Brian talk through a few different 3D-printing/CNC topics; a neat and simple little tool tray for your CNC router bits, an awesome Orbiting camera arm for 3D-printing time-lapse photography, Brian’s quest for his own awesome time-lapse recordings of 3D prints, a clever cable organizer clip, a monorail 3D-printer, and a free Mastering OpenSCAD book in HTML.
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The New Butter, What?! Podcast
To tell you the truth, we are not exactly sure what we’re doing, but we are quite excited about it! Brian Moses and I are going to be recording the first episode of the Butter, What?! podcast tomorrow night! That’s April 20, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. Central.
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Whats Pat Been Up To? March 2021
I didn’t think I accomplished all that much since my update last month. We did a podcast, I published at least one blog post, and I did a handful of things that definitely warrant two or three paragraphs each.
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Should I Be Jealous Of The Shapeoko 4 And Shapeoko Pro?
I am a little jealous of the folks that will be buying a Shapeoko 4 or Shapeoko Pro instead of a Shapeoko 3 like I already own. There are some significant upgrades on the Shapeoko 4 that I would really like to have, and Carbide 3D has somehow managed to keep the prices quite reasonable!
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James Hoffmann Shows Us How To Drink Krispy Kreme Donuts in Coffee
In 2007, James Hoffmann began a quest to turn a fresh glazed donut from Krispy Kreme into his signature coffee drink. When he made his drink at the World Barista Championship, he used a centrifuge running at -22° Celsius to separate the fats from his concoction. In this video, he’ll show you how to do the same less dramatically in your kitchen at home without the centrifuge.
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Brian Finally Does Something With the 3D-printed DIY NAS case, the MK735
Right about two years ago, I’d recently published the DIY NAS: 2019 Edition when somebody reached out on social media and asked what I thought about the possibility of 3D-printing my own DIY NAS case. That person, Toby K., happened to have accomplished this feat by 3D-designing and 3D-printing his own DIY NAS enclosure. Toby was curious if I was interested in reviewing his creation.
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What's Pat Been Up To? February 2021
This is my first update of the year, and it is a month late! December was a busy month in the patshead.com household. Things were getting back on track during January, and I actually feel like I managed to get a lot done since then!
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Using MeshCAM For Your First 3018 CNC Project
Hello! Before we jump in, I’d like you to know that my name is Alex. I somehow got Pat and Brian into drones, and later electric vehicles. I’ve slowly persuaded them to get Prusa 3D printers (It worked!) and now Pat has passed the CNC bug onto me. I hope you enjoy this article, as it will be the first of many that I write for Butter, What?!.
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I Ordered 40-Gigabit Infiniband Cards
UPDATE: I goofed. The HP cards are FlexibleLOM cards. Not PCIe. I’m assuming that I looked at so many cards that I just wound up not paying close enough attention to the photos of the ones I actually chose. This is a bummer, because the 56-gigabit FlexibleLOM cards were $13 each. Comparable 56-gigabit PCIe cards are $70 or more! I wound up ordering 40-gigabit Infiniband cards for about $30 each. They won’t do 40-gigabit Ethernet, but they are the same line of PCIe 3.0 ConnectX-3 cards as the $13 HP cards, so in my own use case, I won’t notice the difference.
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Your Home NAS Is Not a Backup
I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this. It has been a long month, and I haven’t accomplished much. I sat down and said to myself that I need to write a blog post, but I’m not working on anything new.
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What's Pat Been Up To? December 2020
This is my last update for the year. It was Christmas Eve when I started writing this. I’m sure it will be a few days before I finish. I hope you had a merry Christmas, and I hope you have a happy New Year. It has to be better than 2020, right?!
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The Humble Quebec Indies Bundle
I saw this bundle show up in my inbox this morning, and I was intrigued. I enjoy the idea of a bundle of games from a particular region. Then I looked at the games, and I saw Knight Squad in the list, and my interest was piqued. This bundle looks like a good value. It has some games that look like fun, and it has one game that I’ve had a ton of fun playing, so I think you should check it out.
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Potato Jet Reviews a Wide Angle Lens for the Sony ZV-1 Vlogging Camera
I love my Sony ZV-1. It fits in my pocket. Its autofocus is lightning fast and extremely accurate. Its HDMI output is fantastic for live streaming. It has a reasonable built-in microphone. Did I mention that it fits in my pocket?
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What's Pat Been Up To? November 2020
I try to write these update blog posts around the middle of the month. That gives me plenty of time to make sure I don’t forget to write one of these every single month. I’m doing a bad job. We’re beginning the final week of November, and I completely forgot that I’m supposed to do this!
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I'm Excited About the DJI Mini 2 Drone
I already said it in the title, but I’m going to say it again: I’m excited about the new DJI Mini 2!
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Should I Upgrade to 40-Gigabit Infiniband?
I’m watching my friend Brian work hard today. Not in person. I’m watching him post photos of his progress on Instagram and Twitter. What is Brian working on?
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Everything About Grain Bins
Yes. This is an older video. I was working on one of my FPV miniquads with one of Destin’s other videos playing in the background, then this video of his from last summer queued up.
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What's Pat Been Up To? October 2020
I usually write a paragraph or two talking about stuff. Everything else is already written, so I think I’m going to skip that this month. Is that OK?!
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Did the X-Carve Just Leapfrog the Shapeoko CNC?
I was excited last week when I saw the announcement for the Shapeoko Pro. Yesterday, I saw the preview of the upcoming X-Carve Pro from Inventables, and I was blown away.
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I am Excited About Folding Displays
First we saw the Samsung Galaxy Fold. It is expensive and looks fragile, but I was and still am quite excited about it. I used to love my 8.3” Android tablet. It was great for reading ebooks, surfing the web, keeping up with social media, and playing games like Pocket City. Sure, I can do some of these things on my phone. That’s what I do now. The experience just isn’t as pleasant.
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The New Nomad 3 and Shapeoko Pro from Carbide 3D
I saw some exciting news on Twitter and Instagram this week. Carbide 3D is releasing updates to both their Nomad desktop CNC and their larger Shapeoko CNC router!
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What's Pat Been Up To? September 2020
I started working on this blog post on September 6. I’ve completely forgotten to write these posts or been late several times this year. I wanted to make sure I did a good job this month.
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World's Most Powerful Bat, World's Longest Home Run, and an Energy Drink Gun with an Aimbot
I was out flying with some friends yesterday. At one point, we were all talking about similar but different YouTube videos, and some of us thought it was possible we were talking about the same video. Each of us thought this for different reasons, though!
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My New Travel Router: The GL.iNet Mango N300
I didn’t expect to be buying a new travel router this week. I posted about my project to design a nice case for my network engineer’s toolkit, and all sorts of tool suggestions started popping up. One of them reminded me of my outdated RavPower FileHub Plus.
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Designing a Network Engineer's Toolkit
I don’t know that this is still a good name for what I’m designing. When I worked for a giant insurance company, everyone had the word “analyst” in their job title. At all the telecom companies I worked for, everyone with a technical job was an engineer. My father worked on the railroad, but he was a totally different kind of engineer.
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What's Pat Been Up To? August 2020
Hey everyone! I’m doing a bad job!
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Can a Drone Chase a Flying Arrow?
I’m a fan a Rotor Riot and FPV freestyle. When I heard that Rotor Riot did an episode where they were attempting to chase an arrow in mid flight, I was excited about it!
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Have You Ever Seen a Rickrolling Toilet?
I’d like to tell you that I have, but it isn’t true. My friend Malfunction54 lives nearby. I know where he lives. I know how to get there. Many years ago, he told me about the Rickrolling toilet in person, yet I have never actually seen this infamous toilet!
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An Inexpensive HDMI to USB Capture Device That Works With Linux
My friend Andy pointed me at this $15 HDMI capture device. I don’t have an immediate need for something like this, but it is so inexpensive, and I figured it might come in handy, so I had to try it out!
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Wrong Way! Reviews the Gotway MTen3 Electric Unicycle
I am an electric unicycle (EUC) enthusiast. I bought [a little InMotion V5F][v5f] in February. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, but then many of my friends all bought personal electric vehicles (PEV) with more range and top speed than my little $400 unicycle, so I had to upgrade.
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Raspberry Pi All-In-One Test Suite
I thought this build was cool. Our friend and Butter, What?! contributor Jeremy Cook is at it again. This time, he built a contraption to attach a Raspberry Pi and a Digilent USB oscilloscope to the back of an old monitor.
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The UMMA85 is a 150-Gram Cinematic Drone
I fly FPV freestyle miniquads. The hobby is constantly pushing the limits. For flippy, energetic freestyle, most of us are now flying pretty similar setups: 5” propellers, 2207 or 2306 motors, and a GoPro. These builds tend to come in at 650 to 750 grams while in the air, and this seems to be a sweet spot for freestyle. You have plenty of weight to help fight air resistance and wind while being light enough to be efficient and smooth.
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James Hoffmann Reviews the 9Barista Espresso Machine
I’m subscribed to James Hoffmann on YouTube. Some of his advice has helped improve my daily coffee routine, and he reviews a lot of neat stuff that I can’t afford. When I saw the 9Barista review in my feed, I was intrigued!
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Kuji Rolls Reviews the Veteran Sherman Electric Unicycle
I’ve been waiting to see Kuji review the Veteran Sherman. Not because I want to buy or ride one, but because the specs on this thing are absolutely crazy, and I’ve just been wanting to see what this thing can do!
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LongMill Benchtop CNC Router from Sienci Labs
I do my best to keep an eye on CNC routers that are comparable to my Shapeoko XXL. Last night, I watched this overview of the LongMill CNC router from Sienci Labs. I have to say, I am intrigued.
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What's Pat Been Up To? June 2020
I try to remember to write these monthly updates somewhere near the middle of each month. I nearly missed June, and I’ve had a surprising amount of stuff going on!
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Deal: Xaiomi Wowstick Electric Screwdriver for $16 (expired)
NOTE: In my rush to get this post out before the sale on the Wowstick 1P+ was over, I didn’t notice that the Wowstick TRY is also on sale for $15.59 until June 30. As far as I can tell, the Wowstick TRY is exactly the same as the Wowstick 1P+ that I use. It just doesn’t come with the magnetic case.
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3dSen PC: An Interesting 3D Voxel NES Emulator is Now On Steam
It has been a while since I saw video snippets of Nintendo Entertainment System games running on 3dSen PC. I saw a post on Reddit today saying that 3dSen PC and 3dSen VR are now available on Steam, so I figured I should check it out again!
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Potato Jet's Review of the Zhiyun Smooth X Gimbal
I just finished watching Potato’s review of Zhiyun’s new $60 2-axis phone gimbal. I think it is neat, and it looks like it manages to fill an interesting niche. I don’t own this gimbal, but I do have two 3-axis phone gimbals and an Osmo Pocket. You should watch Potato Jet’s video, then I’ll tell you why I think this new gimbal is interesting.
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A Coffee Hack from James Hoffmann
James Hoffmann has been YouTubing for a long time, but I only discovered him fairly recently. If you’re a coffee fanatic, and you want to up your game, you should definitely check him out on YouTube.
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The Saros by Hathaway Knives
I am not a knife guy. The only things I carry every day are my phone and wallet. I don’t get into a lot of situations where I need a knife.
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Cities Skylines For a Dollar? (expired)
Humble Bundle is currently offering a Cities Skylines bundle, and the base game is included at the $1 tier. This is a great deal on a game I enjoy, so I figured I had better tell you about it! I might have to pick this bundle up myself, because the higher priced tiers include a whole bunch of DLC that I don’t have yet!
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Abraham Lincoln's Impossible Dovetail Mallet
I haven’t posted any videos to Butter, What?! in a long, long time. I can’t recall why I stopped. I imagine I missed a week or two, and then who knows what happened!
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What's Pat Been Up To? May 2020
I know we are in the middle of a pandemic, and we tend to be repeating the same boring days over and over again, but somehow it feels like only last week that I was writing one of these monthly update blogs! How can this be?!
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We Bought a Real Electric Bike: Aventon Pace 350
We bought a real electric bike for my wife. It is already here. I just finished assembling it and taking it for a test drive down the street. I have no idea if this Pace Aventon 350 will meet our expectations, but I’d like to tell you about the motivation behind our purchase, and how we zeroed in on this particular model.
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My First Day With My Gotway Tesla v2 Electric Unicycle
UPDATE: I’ve had my Gotway Tesla for about six months now, and I just posted my 500 miles on the Gotway Tesla V2 update blog post! You should check it out, but I’ll spoil it for you here. I’m extremely happy with the Tesla. I can’t imagine that I could have gotten a better wheel for $1,350 six months ago.
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What's Pat Been Up To? April 2020
Hey everybody! This is my monthly blog post where I scroll through my Twitter and Instagram feeds and write a few paragraphs about the things I’m doing, working on, or failing at over the last three or four weeks.
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Play Games Together While In Social Isolation?! Heck Yeah! (expired)
I don’t usually post Humble Bundles. They’re usually good deals, but my view of most bundles is probably skewed by the fact that I have nearly 1,800 games in my Steam library. When a new Humble Bundle comes out, I usually already own most of the games. Being a Humble Choice subscriber certainly doesn’t help me with that problem, either!
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Step Into FPV with the TinyHawk II
When Mr. Head, AKA, Pat, and Brian asked me to contribute to Butter, What? I was both flattered and intrigued, but was extremely busy with other projects, plus I didn’t quite know what to write about here. Now that these same two finally convinced me to buy a TinyHawk 2 (TH2) drone kit, and I have a tiny bit of extra time, I finally decided to contribute.
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My Favorite Top-Down Twin-Stick Shooters From 10tons Are On Sale On The Nintendo Switch!
As you might know, I finally bought a Nintendo Switch last month. I immediately purchased a stack of Mario games and Dead Cells. There are quite a few other games in Nintendo’s store that I would like to play. I already own many of these games on other platforms, so I figured I would wait until something I wanted went on sale before expanding my library with games I already own elsewhere.
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Pat Was a Guest on a Podcast Again!
Early this year, I was interview by The Create/Invent Podcast. I had a fun time being interviewed, and last week when I saw Jeremy complaining about being so isolated by COVID-19, I asked where the special quarantine episode of the podcast was coming out.
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Never Pay For Seltzer Again!
My friend Alex is awesome. He introduced Brian and I to the world of drones and FPV miniquads. His OneWheel adventures were a strong influence on my own decision to learn how to ride an electric unicycle. He’s also helped me make some important video and audio equipment decisions for my own vlogs.
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Riding My Electric Unicycle is Getting Really Easy
I have learned how to ride an electric unicycle (EUC), and I’m confident that you can too!
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What's Pat Been Up To? March 2020
I’m trying to write one of these posts every month, but I’ve accidentally skipped these posts a few times. As I’m writing this paragraph, it is only March 5. I don’t plan to finish this post up and publish until the middle of the month, but I figure that getting a head start will help me fail to skip this month!
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I Can't Decide How I Feel About These Counterfeit Airpods!
I don’t own an iPhone, iPad, or any other Apple products. When I was a kid, we had Apple 2 computer hardware in the house, but those weren’t genuine, either. We had a Franklin Ace 1000 then a Laser 128.
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What's Pat Been Up To? February 2020
I accidentally skipped my January update! Either I wasn’t doing much that was exciting, or I was doing too much stuff, and the month just blew right by. You’d think I’d do a better job remembering to write these monthly posts after I yelled at myself for skipping November.
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DUCT OUT Behind the Scenes, Machined Wooden Pokeball, and You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid!
This looked like so much fun. I always tell people that I have no interest in being a professional drone pilot. I don’t want to hunt for gigs, negotiate contracts, or fly my quads on demand.
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Everyone Enjoys My Electric Bike and Nobody Can Ride My Electric Unicycle
I’ve had my new self-balancing electric unicycle in my possession for three days so far, but I’ve only had a chance to take it out to practice with it once. I’ve already learned some very important lessons, and in hindsight, this was mostly quite obvious!
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I Ordered a Self-Balancing Unicycle!
Am I crazy? Is this a stupid idea? I figured there’s only one way to find out!
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Can a Racing Drone Outrun a Flamethrower, My First Flight Edit In Forever, and Brian's Sunday at the Golf Course
Who would have thought that miniquads and flamethrowers would complement each other just as well as peanut butter and jelly?!
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Amazing Single-Take Drone Video, Epoxy Locking Miter Joints, and the World's Longest Home Run
Fincky is awesome. I already posted his amazing skateboard-chase video. This cinewhoop video is a bit different. The whole video takes place in one room, and as miraculous as it may seem, this video was shot in a single take!
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Machining a Stormtrooper, Chasing Brian's Electric Skateboard, Making Gourmet Totino's Pizza Rolls
What is this?! A helmet for ants?! Winston Moy has been playing with graphite. This time, he decided to machine a small storm trooper helmet out of a chunk of the stuff.
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What's Pat Been Up To? December 2019
What happened?! I planned on doing one of these update blogs every month, but it sure looks like I completely forgot about doing this in November! Does that mean this update is going to be huge? Let’s find out!
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Building a Rapid Strike, Why do Klaxons Sound Like That, and Zoroe's First Cinewhoop Job
I found Alice’s Rapid Strike build video by way of Winston Moy’s YouTube channel. Winston CNCed the beautiful aluminum flywheel cage for this build. You should check that out, too, but it seems like I’m constantly featuring Winston’s videos here. Let’s check out this project from Alice’s angle.
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Pat's NAS Building Tips and Rules of Thumb
My old friend Brian Moses usually publishes one or two DIY NAS builds each year. If you’re looking to build your own storage server for your home office, and you’re interested in having a shopping list that will just work, you should check out Brian’s builds. He usually alternates between an economical DIY NAS build and an insane, top-dollar NAS build.
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DIY EconoNAS 2019 Giveaway, Nurk's Cinewhoop Masterclass, and the Dremel Drone
Brian Moses is at it again. He’s put together an excellent write-up about his EconoNAS build for 2019. This year, the heart of his build is an AMD Ryzen CPU. I’m excited about this, because there’s such a wide range of Ryzen processors, and most motherboards can accept anything from a power-sipping dual-core chip all the way up to 12-core and 16-core monster CPUs.
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Deal: The Steam Controller 90% Off
It says that only a limited quantity is remaining. Is Valve discontinuing the Steam Controller? Is a new revision on its way? I have no idea, and Valve tends to be pretty secretive.
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Pat's Holiday Gift Ideas for Geeks for 2019
I started writing these little Christmas gift idea blogs back in 2013 with the intention of publishing one every year. I did a pretty good job maintaining my tradition right up until 2015, then I completely forgot about the idea. I think it was a good idea, so I’m going to restart this yearly habit!
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Roasting Gesha Coffee Beans at Home
I was running low on green coffee beans, so I started perusing the offerings at Sweet Maria’s. One of my favorite beans I’ve roasted so far is their Ethiopia Guji Shakiso. So I did exactly what you’d expect, and I put a giant 5-pound bag of that stuff into my cart.
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Pat's Thoughts on the Ryzen 9 3900X and 3950X
Everyone is excited about the new Ryzen 3950X. They say the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X beats Intel’s 18-core i9-9980XE in both single-core and multi-core performance while costing $1,250 less. That is something to be excited about, but it isn’t what I find interesting.
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Making a Moka Pot, Shop Air Cleaner Testing, and Making Chicago-Style Pizza
I used a Moka Express pot for a long time. It is a rather heavy-handed way to make a strong cup of coffee. Not quite as strong as espresso, but it is as close as you’re going to get for $30 or so. I would never go back to using a Moka pot for my daily cup, but I would think about bringing it out to quickly make a big batch of extremely sugary and milky iced coffee in the blender.
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Machining Steel on a Shapeoko 3, Power Loop the Whole Damn Building, and the Marvels of Injection Molding
I usually rifle through my liked videos on YouTube over the weekend to pick out three fun videos to post on Monday. I usually have the post written on Sunday and queued up to post the next morning. It is Monday right now. I haven’t even picked any videos yet! I’ve had a bit of a cold or something all week, and I feel like it has been putting me behind on everything by at least a day.
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Deal: Cheapest Mechanical Keyboard!
I thought we had a good deal in August when I saw a mechanical keyboard with blue mechanical switches for $18.81, but this keyboard is priced even lower!
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Gourmet Ruffles Potato Chips, Recycled Raspberry Pi NAS Case, Flying Eight FPV Drones at Once
I enjoy almost every single one of Claire’s Gourmet Makes videos, but I’m not sure how I feel about the Ruffles episode. It didn’t feel like she was trying to make a gourmet version of one of my favorite snacks. It seemed like she was trying to create and almost exact replica.
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What's Pat Been Up To? October 2019
It has been a fun month. Chris decided to head out of town for two weeks. She’s cruising to Puerto Rico, then spending a week with her family in Georgia. That means I have to fend for myself. I had to do the grocery shopping, and I had to remember to take the trash and recyclables out on the correct day. So far, I’m doing a good job. I hope.
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The Gun Detector, Pastry Chef Makes Gourmet Sour Patch Kids, and How a Film Camera Puts a Date On Photos
I don’t know what your thoughts are on guns or gun violence. My own views probably don’t belong here on Butter, What?!, but I think Destin’s video about his friend’s gun detector does belong here, because it is really cool.
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The Original Prusa MINI
When I saw the headline, I was expecting to be disappointed. Could Josef Prusa manage to make a smaller, more budget-friendly 3D printer that is worth owning? When 3D printers start getting too much smaller than the original Prusa i3, they quickly lose their usability. And where can you save money? You’re still going to need stepper motors, stepper drivers, a heated bed, and a micro controller. The non-moving parts are cheap, no matter how big they are.
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Engineering with Origami, Worlds Largest Lens, and Flanders Hot Cocoa
This week is science heavy with a touch of hot chocolate!
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Deal Royal Kludge RK61 RGB Mechanical Keyboard
This is an interesting deal. Banggood has the Royal Kludge RK61 keyboard with your choice of blue, brown, or red switch at a 33% discount. They have free shipping on orders over $50, but the shipping on this keyboard is only $1.70 for me.
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Pastry Chef Makes Gourmet Hot Pockets, Can a 1kg Racing Drone Do Freestyle, and an Epoxy Sandwich Headphone Stand
I enjoy almost every one of Claire’s attempts to create gourmet versions of our favorite foods, snacks, and candies. I am not a fan of Hot Pockets, but I was intrigued by one particular part of her gourmet Hot Pocket. The crust looked amazing.
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Deal: 64 GB USB 3 Flash Drive 2-Pack for $9.99
UPDATE: This deal has expired. When I last checked, they were up to $12.99 with Prime shipping for a 2-pack. That’s still cheaper than most USB 3 flash drives of this size, often quite a bit cheaper, but those drives are probably faster!
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Deal: More Compact Mechanical Keyboard Deals!
UPDATE: The deal on the Z-88 keyboard is expired. That’s the keyboard I’m typing this update on. It is back up to $42.99. The Redragon K552 is still prices at $27.99.
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The Slammer Update to Prison Architect
One of the things I want to start doing here on Butter, What?! is to throw up a small post whenever my favorite products, services, projects, or games have an update. Maybe only major or noteworthy updates; we’ll have to see how I feel about this.
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Brian (and Pat) Built DIY Acoustic Panels
When we moved into our house a bit over a year ago, I promised my wife that I’d stop hijacking the kitchen table for my video recording and photography studio when capturing digital media for my blog if I could use one of the bedrooms for that purpose. Because my wife is amazing, she said yes, and she didn’t even get too upset when the kitchen table was hijacked for quadcopter repairs and spare parts. My recording studio’s not the biggest of rooms, but one of the things that I worried about was the amount of echo there was in the room.
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Simple CNC Walnut Tray, Motorizing and Test Driving a Scaffold, and Envelopment
I’m always posting Winston Moy’s videos, but I realized today that I’ve been linking to more of his work on Carbide 3D’s channel lately than I have been to his own work on his own channel. I feel like I should make up for that!
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What's Pat Been Up To? September 2019
It has been almost a month since my last update. I haven’t been working on a single, big project, but I’ve been making progress on several fronts.
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Deal: RECCAZR MK910F Mechnical Keyboard with Blue Switches
I’m excited! This deal was submitted to me by a Butter, What?! reader that purchased a couple of the $18.81 mechanical keyboards I posted a last month. Like that keyboard, the RECCAZR has imitation Cherry MX Blue switches, though I can’t tell what brand.
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Cinewhoop the Minnesota State Fair, Plastic Injection Molding, and Machining a Steel Knife on a Desktop CNC
I don’t know for sure if it was Paul Nurkkala that started the cinewhooping craze, but his video at the City Museum in St. Louis was fantastic, and it definitely got me hooked on these kinds of videos.
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The Real Moral Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars, Non-Planar 3D Printing, and Learning Epicness
This is an older video on the Veritasium YouTube channel talking about the real moral dilemma of self-driving cars. I’m posting it, because he includes real data with real numbers enforcing what I already assumed would be the case.
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Designing My First Perk for Patreon
I’m doing a bad job at Patreon. I don’t often remember to tell people that it exists. I don’t remember to post on Patreon. It also doesn’t help that I’m very public about everything I do or work on. You can’t really get a peek behind the curtain at Patreon, because that stuff is already out in the open!
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Why Switches Click, the Ingenious Soda Can, and a DIY Plywood Side Table
Why do light switches make that clicking sound? Does it serve a purpose? Do people just enjoy that satisfying clack? Or are switches just cheap, so they make noise?
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Deal: Cheapest Mechanical Keyboard Deal So Far!
This is most definitely the most generic looking mechanical keyboard I’ve come across since I started posted mechanical keyboard deals here, and it is also the cheapest. It has imitation Cherry MX Blue switches, but it doesn’t say what brand. It has some sort of RGB lights, and I have absolutely no idea what they do. I can’t really tell if the keys light up, or if the RGB is just some sort of backlight. At $18.81, who cares, right?
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Good Eats Is Back, Mr Steele Drone Compilation Video, DIY Plywood Side Table
What?! Good Eats is back?! I’m excited about this!
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Deal: Tiny Eachine Indoor Drone with Three Batteries for $15 at Banggood
While I was hitting publish on the blog I wrote today about getting started with FPV quadcopters, I figured it might be a good idea to see if there were any fun quadcopter deals going on today. I found one.
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So You Want To Get Started Flying FPV Quadcopters
If you follow me and Brian on social media, you probably already know that one of our hobbies is flying FPV freestyle miniquads. I’ve designed traditional carbon fiber frames that I cut at home on my Shapeoko CNC, and also a 3D printed nylon frame. We’ve hosted quadcopter build classes at our local makerspace here in Plano, TX. Brian has done some crazy things, like adding a payload release mechanism to one of his bigger machines.
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Liquid Nitrogen from Scratch, Cedar Spiral Lamp from 2x4s, and a Two Bucket Cyclone Dust Collector
I have to admit that during the first minute or two of this video, I thought I was going to be disappointed. It felt like it was just going to be an ad for Starbucks, and then when he revealed the method they’d be using to pull nitrogen out of the air was going to be an expensive piece of laboratory equipment, I got even more worried.
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Pat Was Interviewed on The Create/Invent Podcast
Earlier this year, my friend Jeremy S Cook asked if I would be interested in being interviewed by his podcast, The Create/Invent Podcast. Of course I said yes! I told him to watch out, because I’m good at talking, and if he and Max Maker don’t slow me down, I probably won’t stop.
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What's Pat Been Up To? August 2019
I decided that I’m going to try to post one of these “What’s Pat Up Been To?” blogs once a month. The last one showed up at the very end of July, and that was only two weeks ago. The last update required 1,300 words to cover four topics.
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Deal: Redragon K561 Tenkeyless RGB Mechanical Keyboard with Blue Switches at Woot.com
I haven’t posted a keyboard deal in a while, and this looked like the sort of keyboard I might have on my own desk, so I thought it was worth bringing to your attention!
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DIY Peakshaving Powerwall, Gourmet Pop-Tarts, and a 3D Printed Rack Lock
I enjoy Jehu Garcia’s videos. I fly FPV freestyle quadcopters, and that hobby requires me to find good ways to make electricity portable. Jehu is often building one kind of battery pack or another, and I’m often jealous of some of his portable battery builds.
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Building Implosion from an FPV Drone, 3D-Printed 3-inch Subwoofer, Machining Steel at Home
If you know me, then you know that I’m an amateur FPV freestyle pilot. You can probably guess that I’m extremely envious of Le Drib of Rotor Riot.
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What's Pat Been Working On?
I’m always trying to figure out better ways to utilize Butter, What?!, and I believe I may have come up with a good idea! I don’t often keep things to myself. I’ve been writing about the projects and experiments I’m working on over at patshead.com, and I’ve been vlogging about some of this stuff over on YouTube, but these are all self contained write ups.
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DIY Folding Workbench, Making Over a YouTube Channel, and Making a Picture Frame with a Table Saw
I’m only just realizing that two out of today’s three videos are already pretty old. I’m OK with that, because at least one of those old videos are new to me!
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Deal: Sony Playstation Classic Console for $19.99 at Best Buy
I’m not usually excited about these retro gaming consoles. I’ve been emulating classic video games for twenty years. I have all the old classics on my arcade cabinet already. Why would I buy some overpriced box with a limited selection of old games?
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Shucking a Western Digital Hard Drive, Flat Lay Photography, and Machining a Combination Lock from a Stainless Steel Bolt
What the shuck is our friend Brian Moses up to this week? He’s showing us how to disassemble a Western Digital Elements USB hard drive to retrieve the delicious SATA hard drive from inside!
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Deal: Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard with Cherry MX Green Switches
Walmart currently has the Razer BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard on sale for $45.99 with free shipping or in-store pickup. That’s marked down from its regular price of $109.99. That sounds like quite a good deal to me!
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Making a $3 Speaker Sound Awesome, the Mitre Lock Router Bit, and DIY Acoustic Panels
I’m not exactly sure how I came across these modified $3 speakers, but the video has inspired me to order some parts to work on a similar project of my own!
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Deal: Fire TV Stick for $39.99 with Two Months HBO
I always say that I don’t like telling you about deals unless the product is something I use. This looks like a good value, and it is two products that I use almost every day! I guess this is an early Prime Day deal.
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Extreme Long-Range Miniquad Flights, Room Divider Made on a Maslow CNC, and a Mini Gauntlet Arcade Cabinet
I am an FPV drone pilot. All my flying is short range. Sure, the GPS module on my quad tells me that most of my flights cover more than two miles of distance, but I rarely fly even 1,200 feet away from myself.
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Show Me Your DIY NAS: Jim W.'s 100TB In-Progress NAS
Across the years of all my DIY NAS builds, I’ve had a few people leave comments in the blog, send me emails, direct messages, and other forms of communication asking me what I thought about their DIY NAS. I’ve always appreciated hearing how people have tackled the same kinds of problems that I wanted to tackle with my own NAS builds, and I’ve always really appreciated seeing how people’s different preferences have wound up creating different solutions.
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Manually Operating a CNC Machine, Can You 3D-Print a One-Way Bearing, and Perfect Timing with the Marble Machine X
I seem to post a CNC-related video every week, and this week is no exception. My friend Mike sent me this video because he was intrigued by the clamping setup this machine uses for holding work pieces in place.
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Deal: Budget Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Brown or Red Switches (Expired)
I don’t like recommending products that I haven’t used myself. This is inexpensive enough, though, and it sure looks like a good way to try out a mechanical keyboard without investing in an expensive piece of hardware.
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Deal: *Prison Architect* is 75% Off During the Steam Summer Sale
Steam is currently in the middle of their annual summer sale, and there are a ton of awesome games that are deeply discounted. With so many games on sale, is it worthwhile for me to tell you about them?
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DIY 600,000 mAh Battery Pack, Machining Apple's Mac Pro Grille, Scratch-Built PC Case
I’m not sure when I found Jehu Garcia’s YouTube channel. He’s famous for building DIY batteries for powering your house, and he has all sorts of interesting battery builds for other purposes as well. I can only assume that I found his channel while in search of better ways of charging my miniquad batteries on the go.
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Dead Cells: Update the 13th
I’m excited. It isn’t even on sale right now, but Motion Twin just released a fantastic update for Dead Cells, and I just have to talk about it!
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Can You Swim in Shade Balls, Machining an Easter Island Moai Statue, and the Cheapest USB Oscilloscope
Last month, I watched Veritasium explain why there are 96,000,000 black shade balls floating on a reservoir in Los Angeles. If you watched this video, you may have wondered the same thing that I was thinking about.
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Pat's Backup Strategy for 2019
I often mention in my writing just how important it is to back up your data. I worry that people will think that if they make their storage more reliable, then they don’t have to worry about backing anything up. I worry even more when I explain how to make things more reliable, because it might be my fault that people think they won’t need backups anymore!
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Deal: Kerbal Space Program is 78% Off at the Humble Store
I have been playing Kerbal Space Program for years. I always say that I don’t like recommending things that I haven’t used myself. I have over 100 hours invested in the Kerbal Space Program, and I know that I’ve only scratched the surface.
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Brian's Top Three DIY NAS Cases as of 2019
Since building and blogging about my first network attached storage (NAS) computer way back in 2012 and then writing all my subsequent DIY NAS build blogs, I’ve tried quite a few different cases when building these machines. Beyond that, I’ve stared at the specifications of countless other models of cases looking for things that fit my criteria: typically something small and can fit at least six 3.5” hard drives.
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What's the Deal with the Deals Posted on Butter, What?!
Both patshead.com and briancmoses.com earn money from affiliate sales. My blog earns me all the coffee I can drink, enough money to pay for all our hosting costs, and sometimes even enough to buy me a fun toy or two each year. My blog doesn’t earn me a living. Brian’s blog generates quite a bit more revenue than mine, but he’s not close to earning a salary, either.
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Deal: Silicon Power 64 GB microSD card 2-pack at Amazon
I saw this deal on
r/buildapcsaleson Reddit, and I had to order a 2-pack for myself. -
CNC Engraved Nameplates, Throwing a Drone Out of a Drift Car, and a Spectacular DIY Desk PC
I’m a sucker for cool CNC projects. Wesley Treat is making custom aluminum nameplates to stick on his projects!
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Recessed Lighting LED Retrofit Kits are Awesome
Last year, my wife and I bought a house. We bought Brian’s house. Isn’t that weird?
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Upgrading Kitchen Cabinet Doors with a CNC, Liftoff Drone Simulator Update, and Designing 3D Printed Buckles
When I was trying to decide what size Shapeoko CNC machine I needed to order, my kitchen cabinets were the deciding factor. My kitchen cabinets are old, basic, and starting to deteriorate. I wanted a CNC machine large enough to cut awesome new doors for my kitchen cabinets.
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Significance of IoT in Classrooms
Internet of Things is a process that aims to transform the way humans and machines interact. While it has far reaching consequences in most sectors across the globe, education in particular will see a significant revolution as a result of it.
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Things That Make Pat Nervous: Running Your Firewall in a Virtual Machine
Brian and I often blog about server and network related topics, so our social media following tends to skew in that direction. If you’re reading our blogs, there is a good chance you don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t worry. Brian and I will both be happy to tell you where the limits of our knowledge and abilities lie!
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Deal: Kingston 16GB USB Flash Drive at Amazon
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The Perfect Pizza is Complete, More Captain Picard, and Making Gourmet Doritos
Watching the Bon Appetit crew research the perfect pizza has been a lot of fun. I watched every minute aside from the episode on toppings. I don’t care about toppings. I don’t believe a pizza is a pizza unless it is a cheese pizza!
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Show Me Your DIY NAS: @Sam010Am's 48TB Node304
One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time is to publish other people’s DIY NAS builds which I have come across and share them with our audience. Shortly after I finished the latest in my DIY NAS blogs, the DIY NAS: 2019 Edition, Pat and I were talking about when we’d launch Butter, What?! and the kind(s) of topics we would wind up sharing here, and this topic immediately jumped to my mind.
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Choosing a RAID Configuration For Your Home Server
Brian and I have been writing about our adventures with home servers for a long time. He’s been giving away DIY NAS builds for years, and he’s explained his ZFS disk configuration. I’ve been running a little virtual machine host at home, and I’ve explained my home server choices on my blog, too.
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You Should Be Roasting Your Own Coffee At Home!
I have an awesome coffee brewing equipment at home: A Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, a Baratza Preciso grinder, an Aeropress, two Moka Express ports, a couple of French presses, and a cheap pourover cone. Until recently, I’ve only been buying coffee that’s already roasted. Can you believe that?
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Catching a Drone, Machining an Aluminum Longboard, and the New DJI Osmo Action
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The DIY NAS Giveaway Has a Winner, DIY Studio Lights, and Open Source RGB LEDs!
I was checking my notes and looking for some interesting things to include in today’s post, and I remembered that Brian Moses’s DIY NAS giveaway has just come to and end!
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Making the Perfect Pizza
I love pizza. I enjoy eating pizza, and I enjoy making pizza. I’ve been watching Claire at Bon Appetit make gourmet versions of all my favorite snacks, so when I saw they were making a series about making the perfect pizza, I knew I was in for a treat!
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Butter, What?! is Finally Here!
Butter, What?! has finally gone live, but what in the heck is Butter, What?!
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