The next big step in the kayak was to glue the top on. First you put a coat of unthickened epoxy on the bottom side of the top piece, and then use thickened (cab-o-sil) epoxy... [read more]

The next step in my kayak building journey was to plane the end clamps. These need a specific radius that changes depending on where you are along the top of the boat. The kit includes... [read more]

The next big step is to glass the hull bottom. I sanded down the putty with 80 grit, and then went through all the grades all over the kayak: 100/120/150/220.   You then cover it with... [read more]

The kayak is still moving along! I’ve been a bit busy enjoying the outdoors: mountain biking (yeah on two wheels!), camping, and rock climbing.  The next part was to glass the interior middle section; there... [read more]

The kayak is starting to look like a real boat! First you have to level it, propped up on some sticks/sawhorses:   Then install the bulkheads:      And finally, start gluing it together with... [read more]

I got to the stitching part of the “stitch and glue” kayak build! It didn’t take very long….the kit was easy to work with.  I had to push my tablesaw off to the side to... [read more]

The kit came about a week after I ordered it. The delivery company received it in SFO, and was reluctant to deliver it to me right away — they wanted to wait an extra week... [read more]

I’ve been wanting to build my own kayak for quite a while. Ideally I want to make a strip-style kayak; something out of locally sourced redwood would be awesome! For now, I decided to start... [read more]

Exhibit one: A pot that was my parents. The plastic handle broke of years ago and I hacked on a wooden one. It wasn’t lasting….   Cross grain experiment was not strong, so I drew... [read more]

What could be more adorable than a baby rhino? This was in Kaziranga National Park, north east India in 2014.

I want to record some video with my Canon 5D Mark III. I’ve done some basic experiments, but I really want to learn what the professionals do with this camera. First off, I upgraded to... [read more]

I’ve succumbed to the pressures of social media and made a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Corbins-Treehouse-258636957809592/      Please like it! I’ll post things on my blog and the page..

I’m working on adding bluetooth support to my LED cyr wheel.  A long time ago I picked up an Adafruit nRF8001 breakout board — I was worried it was too big to fit in my wheel,... [read more]

Use Anki to learn a language with sound enabled flashcards. 0. Buy a Mac if you don’t have one already 1. In Safari’s Preferences, turn on the Develop menu item (Advanced tab) 2. Visit duolingo,... [read more]

I’m working on learning Italian. When I was a kid, I hated learning languages, and had the terrible monopolistic language view that everyone should speak English. I have long since realized that was a really... [read more]

I’ve been keeping bees for about a month now. I absolutely love the little girls! My friend, Stefan from A Jar Of Honey in San Jose, gave me a hive to get started. I needed... [read more]

Here is another fantastic picture of my Nepal trip by Dawa Sherpa from Himalayan Trails Adventure Travel.  I’m sitting admiring the mountains, while Michele is checking something out. Our other local guide, Ankit, is looking... [read more]

Photo by Dawa Sherpa, the wonderful guide on my Nepal Unicycle Tour through the Himalayas.  

I’ve wondered why my YouTube payments never show up in my Google Adsense payments. I finally realized that it is because they have never hit the $100 minimum threshold for payment issuing (ever!). I enabled... [read more]

I occasionally want to download all my blog posts from WordPress. This is easy to do in the web config – go to Tools -> Export and “Download Export File”. The download would max out... [read more]

I do a lot of adventures. My last adventure was unicycling the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. I wasn’t planning on having a lot of access to electricity, so I wanted to get a portable solar... [read more]

May 2018 Update: Issues with the latest Botvac: http://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog/2018/04/neato-botvac-a-neat-idea-that-will-eventually-break/ I have a Neato XV-11 Vacuum that I bought quite a few years ago when it first came out. The initial version had quite a few glitches and... [read more]

Here are my website statistics: http://www.seethestats.com/site/corbinstreehouse.com I just ran across SeeTheStats — a site that imports Google Analytics data and turns it into some cool graphs that anyone can see. I’m hoping to slowly grow... [read more]

I’ve had the unfortunate affair of several people stealing one of my videos to gain hits on their Facebook pages. It is this video: LED Cyr Wheel v2 – Initial Test, that I uploaded to... [read more]

I ordered a small switch from Grainger and it came in a huge box: What a waste of packaging!! Shame on you guys. Please don’t overpack; it is wasteful.

Wicked Device is making a cool little Arduino clone called the WildFire. Why is it cool? Because it includes the CC3000 Wifi chip built in, an SD card slot, and the ATmega1284p processor – which... [read more]

UPDATE: Thank you Aria hotel! They are going to update their signage and start towing offenders. I just talked with someone from the security team and they are on top of this. They are also... [read more]

Adafruit has a CC3000 breakpoint board for $35 on their site. Rather expensive, considering the chip should be $10, but it adds some nice features and they wrote a library for it. Cut to the... [read more]

I finished designing a custom PCB for my LED cyr wheel. It simply combines all the chips I use into one board. Ideally I would eliminate all of the other boards except the Teensy, but... [read more]

With my LED cyr wheel I kept getting random errors in reading data from my SD card with Ardunio code. Sometimes init would fail, even at half speed. Most often I would get corrupted data,... [read more]

So, I want to use Ecto (and probably other blog tools, like MarsEdit) to upload Sketchup .skp files, but it was always giving “invalid file type”. I poked around in WordPress, and here is what... [read more]