Category: Tech (Page 1 of 4)

Mods to make a Monoprice Maker Select V2 Work Properly

July 21, 2022 / btb / 5 Comments

The Monoprice Maker Select V2 (A Wanhao Duplicator i3 clone) is a printer that comes with a Melzi mainboard that is seemingly designed to die 💀 and try to take your house down with it in flames🔥 but before that it will make some mediocre prints while the Z-axis wobbles about and the hotend never prints at the advertised speeds.

When I bought this printer (March 2018) it seemed like a good deal as I was able to find it refurbished at a discount ($199.99 at the time) and it was even recommended by TheWireCutter.com making it look like a good buy.

Since then I have learned a LOT about 3D Printing the hard way and also learned that this printer is a dumpster fire 🗑️🔥. Today there are much better printers you can buy that work decently out of the box and thankfully you can’t buy this printer anymore but if you find one that someone is getting rid of and you’re feeling like you want to take a deep dive into modifying a printer here’s some upgrades I’ve made over the years to make this printer work properly.

I Got Hacked

April 29, 2020 / btb / 0 Comments

Security or convenience. Pick one.

Last week for me was a stark reminder of how quickly we can become far less confident about everything we do on a computer and the internet. My goal in this post is to document what happened to me and what I’ve done since. Hopefully someone else finds it helpful but additionally if someone who knows better reads this I’d be interested to hear about what I’m still doing wrong. So here it goes…

Using multiple computers at home without a dock.

March 24, 2020 / btb / 0 Comments

One of the problems I found early on with working from home is that my home office is usually setup for my personal computer and switching cords between my work PC and my personal PC became quite a chore and now that I’ve solved this problem for myself I thought it would be good to share with others how I did it…

3D Printing Ecto Goggles

November 11, 2019 / btb / 0 Comments

Attempt 1.0

As a child born in the 80’s Ghostbusters was my childhood. From Ecto Cooler Hi-C to the Kenner Firehouse and the VHS tapes that were on repeat constantly. So when I found a Ghostbusters Adult costume at a Goodwill for $6.99 I had to buy it but then I quickly realized I felt incomplete without a Proton Pack, PKE Meter, Ghost Trap, & Ecto Goggles. So I did what any geek with a 3D printer and a desire to make a movie prop would do I turned to Thingiverse and this is what happened next.

Cross-Platform Selenium with DotNet Core

May 23, 2019 / btb / 0 Comments

A bit about this project

I was asked by a co-worker for an example of using Selenium Web Browser Automation with C# so I wrote a quick example in C# with MSTest and DotNet Core and I posted it to Github.

https://github.com/andyrblank/Selenium-C-Sharp-Example

Then I wrote this blog post to attempt to document how it works. Hope you enjoy!…

Refurbishing A Centipede Arcade

June 6, 2017 / btb / 0 Comments

This is going to be fun!

It was a Friday night and I was listing some things for sale on Craigslist when I did what I do every time I’m on Craigslist and that was to check the Free listings. Usually there’s a bunch of crap in there and anything worth its salt is gone in a blink of an eye.

Which is why I was amazed to see a Centipede arcade cabinet and thrilled when Continue reading

Get The C: Drive Back In Explorer on Windows 10

December 3, 2016 / btb / 0 Comments

Change is a necessary part of life but sometimes it’s just $&#%^! annoying.

Windows 10 implemented a feature for us they thought was going to be awesome (among many others) and that’s “Quick Access” in Windows Explorer. If you love it, great! Get the hell out because this article isn’t for you 🙂 . But if you’re like me and you expect to open it and start navigating the same directory tree you have been since Windows 95 then here’s how to get it back

Plex Tip #3 – Mass (bulk) Edits

October 10, 2016 / btb / 0 Comments

It’s October and in Upstate NY that means cold air, colorful leaves, hot cider, pumpkin spice, & Horror Movies.

Reasons why your Wifi sucks!

October 5, 2016 / btb / 1 Comment

And 7 things you can do about it.

DotNet MVC Single Page Application Take Two!

October 4, 2016 / btb / 0 Comments

Shortly after writing my last post I started thinking of better ways to create a DotNet MVC Single Page application. So here it is.

First I tried translating this to Dot Net Core but unfortunately it doesn’t have a method for Request.IsAjaxRequest() and I’m not ninja enough to write my own yet (although I did try) so this example remains in C# Dot Net MVC 4.5.2.