This is a story from a while back, when my daughter was in elementary school. One day, she came home with a school assignment: a plain fabric pencil case and a few sheets of what looked like ordinary colored paper. She said, “Dad, if you heat this, the design will transfer to the fabric!” Honestly,…
A long while back, I bought a mini lathe. It mostly sits in a corner like a forgotten relic, but sometimes, it becomes the most essential tool in my workshop. Like when I had to machine a servo motor shaft that didn’t fit. The problem was that the motor to be replaced had a 12.7…
We’ve all been there. That sinking feeling when you finish assembling a perfect connector, only to realize you forgot to slide the heat shrink tubing on first. It’s one of the most frustrating mistakes in any workshop. For a lazy technician like me, disassembling the entire connector is simply not an option. A long time…
Earlier this year, I bought my mother-in-law in Malaysia a brand-new, top-of-the-line Cuckoo IH pressure rice cooker. She was thrilled. The irony? The rice cooker my wife and I use every day is an old workhorse I’ve kept running for years with my own two hands. This isn’t a story about being cheap. It’s a…
Tired of the crowded tourist spots in Korea? If you’re looking for a peaceful getaway loved by locals, let me introduce you to Seonyudo Island—a stunningly beautiful island on Korea’s west coast, whose name fittingly means “Island Where the Immortals Play.” Just a short drive from the city of Gunsan, Seonyudo offers a perfect blend…
If you’re a tinkerer like me, you understand the obsession. It’s that tiny, irrational detail that nobody else notices, but it keeps you up at night. For me, it was the missing 1/4″ screw mount on my GoPro Hero 8. Sure, the stock GoPro finger mount is functional. But as someone who grew up with…
For any technician in the field, sometimes the simplest tool is the most effective. When you need to quickly test a servo motor or make a simple manual move without hooking up a host controller, the built-in JOG mode on the drive itself is your best friend. While dedicated software provides more data, this panel-operated…
Replacing an electrical plug is one of those simple tasks everyone thinks they know how to do. The parts are cheap, the only tools you need are a screwdriver and a wire stripper, and the instructions are always the same: open the housing, strip the wires, screw them into the terminals, and close it back…
I was looking for something in our kitchen cabinet the other day when I stumbled upon a shocking sight: my wife’s secret collection of insulated bottles. I knew she liked them, but I had no idea it was this extensive. Her justification? “They’re all for different purposes!” As they say in Korea, “When you see…
A few years ago, a small crisis occurred in our kitchen. My wife, a hobbyist baker, declared that her old, stylish scale was no longer reliable. “You can’t get a consistent taste without precise measurements,” she said, and I knew she was right. As a technician who preaches the importance of precision in my own…