I feel that one would expect chilli in a chilli cookoff. Or am I missing something?
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I make chili with no chili peppers because Iām not a big fan of capsaicin; I am on the āwrongā side of history in this way, in the world of chili competitions.
Thatās fine with me. My chili is one of the few meals my older two children will actually consistently eat- so popular, in fact, Iāve made my second batch in as many weeks just the other day.
My chili is also mostly beans, which is practically illegal in Texas (but not where I live)
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Iām confused about where this notion comes from. (No internet discussion of chili seems complete without it.)
I grew up in Fort Worth, where thereās quite a lot of celebration of cowboy history. Most chili I ate there had beans in it. No shortage of meat, but no shortage of beans, either.
Chili is trail food. You need spices to cover up not very tasty meat, and you fill it with beans because they are cheap, can be dried, stored, and reconstituted easily, and bulk out the meal and make you full.
The only chili without beans Iāve ever had in Texas was on a hot dog (and, imho, beans are a great topping for those, too).
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I think the no-beans thing originates in a Texas subculture: we donāt need to cover up bad meat with cheap filler like Them, we can use good meat.
Iād probably call that a stew. But hey, it works.
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Yes, I am familiar with that kind of thinking.
This spring, work forced me back to Texas for the first time since my grandmotherās funeral, about a decade ago. I said hi to many of the species of plant I missed, and what animals I could spot in downtown Austin.
I found that I hadnāt really missed the people.
Anyway, chili! Yum!
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As I plan my week away from home, travelling for work, I realized that thereās a project Iāve had on my mind for years but never bothered because itās āso simple, a child could complete it in an afternoon!ā Unfortunately, none of my children completed it for me, despite many many afternoons.
I own a tablesaw, which means making card racks is trivial. I had a cutoff of a 2x4 (a.k.a. four-by-two a.k.a. 47mmx100mm) that I had resawn (years ago, I donāt even recall what for) into a ā1x4ā (well, so a 2x4 is really a 1.75"x3.75", so resawing it would be a 0.875x3.75[1] minus kerf-width). I raised the tablesaw blade to roughly 1/4"[2], and then set the angle to 15Ā°. This was all off-the-cuff guesswork at the time. If I were to do it again, I might do 10Ā° or 12.5Ā° next time.
I ran the stock through with the rip fence set at about 0.5"[3], turned the stock around and ran it again on the other side. Then I set the fence to about 1"[4] and ran the board through again to create the second slot. Then I found the center of the width and cut the board in ~half with the blade set back at 0Ā°. Then I found the center of the length and cut the each of those parts down into quarters of the original stock, yielding 4 card racks. I used a 1/4" roundover router bit to round off all the edges, and then wacked it onto the bench sander to smooth everything out.
Without powertools, the hardest bit would be the slot, certainly, but everything else could easily be done with hand tools- the sanding in particular would have probably benefited from a manual process.
Shown with both unsleeved[5] and sleeved[6] cards.
The groove is deep enough to hold the cards firmly, but shallow enough that a card being accidentally bumped could likely pop out before being bent. If I were to do it again, I might try going for a shallower slot, but I fear that sleeved cards may fall out unless you were to ensure the cardstock was fully seated at the ābottomā of the sleeve.
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tablesaw
Perhaps best as a morning project, in case you need the afternoon for waiting around in A&E
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Iāve started dipping my toe in to the world of making things. So Iām now at a stage where my next project is using a pi zero in a case with a camera. I bought a kit and blithely attached the supplied heat sink and now the case wonāt close. So I have been considering 2 options. 1 remove the heat sink, 2 file the heat sink down. Option 2 feels more appealing but is there any physics to the depth of the spines to making a heat sink effective or is that irrelevant? Iām not yet ready to make my own case and donāt really want to buy another one but are there other options I should consider that someone here can suggest?
My wife wants a security camera and I donāt trust cloud providers. If this is successful I might go all anti big tech in my home set up. I owna Chrome cast thing for my TV and it would be nice to replace that with something less invasive.
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IME Pi 1 and 2 donāt need heat sinks at all, 3 only with intensive stuff like modern web sites. If the case is enclosed all youāre dong is dumping heat from the pi to the air inside the caseā¦
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In this case itās a Pi Zero but I take your point about moving the heat to the case. Thanks
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I would expect a Pi Zero to be fine without. If itās a metal case then you can just thermally connect the key chips to the case body. For plastic, I would expect (again, sorry) air flow to be more significant than getting the heat off the individual chips But donāt do anything based on what Iām saying here.
(motion, on the other hand, I know is a great piece of software for driving pretty much any webcam as a motion detector and recorder.)
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Yeah, I used motionEyeOS to run a little security camera on a Pi Zero a few years back. It wasnāt the most performant being one of the original Zeros but it was decent enough.
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Yeah, MotionEyeOs was my plan. Seems straight forward enough.
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Even if you donāt have air flow through the case, a heat sink will reduce the temperature of the hottest component. I donāt think it matters for the cpu in a pi, but there are single board computers where it can.
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My colleagues generously gave me an āexperienceā voucher for my 40th birthday, which I used this weekend on a half day blacksmithing workshop. The end result was a somewhat wonky herb chopper:
The place was Oldfield Forge in Herefordshire, in case anyone fancies a go 
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Blacksmithing videos and more recently coopering videos are my comfort watches.
When I initially read the location as āHertfordshireā I got excited 
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Make a holiday of it! The chained library in Hereford cathedral is good for a look, and you could probably spend a week doing cider tastings if you were so inclined 
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Iām using my current unemployment to tackle my pile of half-finished embroidery projects:
Top is a cross stitch for a friend as a ācongrats on your sprog!ā gift, bottom is a piece of blackwork for my aunt.
These are the two remaining pieces to finish, although once I finish the Jupiter cross stitch, I still have Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to do 
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Before Dungeon Crawler Carl I had never heard the term blackwork.
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