LifeHax!

A page of quickies that can probably best be described as (ugh) 'life hacks'.

I think my issue with the term 'Life hack' is not so much with the label itself, as with some of the silly and often absolutely-pointless junk that gets attached to it by the second-to-absolute-lowest form of content-aggregator YouTube channels and spam-sites. Though I guess we at least get to use the concept of 'hacking' in an actually-historically-correct way!


Anti-Moisture Pill-Box

Vitamin capsules into cough lozenge containers.

I was tired of cough lozenges absorbing moisture from the air and going soggy in my bag once the pack was opened. And I realised that they fit very well into the cylindrical containers that effervescent vitamins come in. These containers have moisture-absorbant crystals in the cap, so should not only seal up the lozenges, but keep the interior super-dry (likely I will change out the cap every so often). Since I have access to a sand-blaster at work, I went overboard and removed the old labeling off the aluminium tubes and re-painted them (I had intended to do them white, but had run out of white spray paint, so they are red!). Finally, I added a label with my label-writer. .... I did two, as my mum had also complained about cough lozenges going soggy in her bag some weeks back when I was visiting (which is what prompted me to think of this solution, I guess!)


Wall Hack!

Big heat-leaching window I don't need. Rental appartment I can't permonantly modify.

Boarded-up window with TV mounted on it.

Sheet of black-melamime-coated 17mm form-ply cut to the width of the window (and another cut to fill the bottom of this, and another window).

The back (outside-facing) has a sheet of roofing-foil spray-glued to it, to reflect more of the summer sun out, in addition to the thermal (and accoustic) insulation the 17mm plywood provides.

Front is somewhere to mount the eWaste-rescue FHD signage screen I use as a monitor, and some other things that I prefer wall-mounted, including - mounted just above the screen - a USB industrial camera with a c-mount zoom lens so It can focus just on my face from that distance and not half my room, for web-confrencing, mainly back during COVID lockdown.

It's a terrible photo, I know. I need to take a new one anyway, as soon as my new phone battery arrives from overseas, as I now have a shelf at the top, and my 24V fan attached.

You can't see them, because I painted them black to match, but the boards are held in place by spring door-stoppers with the springs reversed. So no permonant modifications to the window frame, even.

Spring-loaded door stopper.

Recently in my state, tennancy laws were adjusted so that renters can now (within reason) put hooks in walls without getting landlord permission. But I don't think dynabolting big-screen mounting brackets into the rendered-brick would be covered by that!

To come: I also had some huge sheets of 25mm-thick corrugated cardbord from some equipment packaging that I cut to other-window size and spray-glued reflective foil on the out-facing side and put colourful contact-vinyl on the in-facing side. Reasonable insulating in summer/winter and light enough to just rest in place, and be easily removed when I want the light.