James Mackay - NotExpectedYet

Sleeping on an inclined bed

Photo Credit: unsplash-logoErick PalacioSo a week or so ago I posted the below on Instagram regarding an article I'd read about sleeping on an inclined bed. We all love sleep, even those of us who don't get as much as we need and being someone who use to very rarely

3D Printing

Where I've been and what I've been working on... OctoFarm!

So I've not done an update here in some time, and I truly doubt anyone is wondering at all why... But heck! I feel I should give some explanation and it affords me a perfect setup to segue into my latest and most time consuming project OctoFarm! I have had

3D Printing

"Tutorial" for creating your own stencil for plotting with a 3D printer

What you will need 1. An Autodesk account so you can use their free web design software: Tinkercad 2. A free opensource program called Inkscape to generate the paths and create an SVG from the image. 3. Some Googlefu to find a black and white image of something you want

3D Printing

My adventures in 2D Plotting with a 3D printer and a "Tutorial"

2D plotting is a mechanical drawing technique for large scale printing and we can quite easily mod our 3D printers to do this, albeit the size will be pretty much dependent on your bed size so it may fall outside of the "large" in large scale printing.

3D Printing

Eryone PLA Review My Daily Driver

I've been testing/using this brand for a good few months now, and I just wanted to give the company a little shout out on here. They were a relatively new brand to me and I must admit, for the interest of transparency, my first try of this filament was

3D Printing

Octoprint Multiple Instance Installation Ubuntu 18.04 "Tutorial" + Script

Skip to "Tutorial" Skip to ScriptSo a wee while ago I use to run my Octoprint instances all from multiple Raspberry Pi 3 which worked great for a very long time, but also had its drawbacks which the main one for me was the wires… lots of wires… I’ll

3D Printing

Manual Mesh Bed Leveling with Klipper

Ok, so my bed is an absolute mess and I've been meaning to do a manual mesh for a very long time. It's now gotten to the point where it's pretty much a requirement for my 2 year old CR10. Been the stubborn bloke I am I was not about to just go out and spend actual money on a BLTouch

"Tutorial"

PiHole and Grafana "Tutorial"

So after setting up some metric collection wizardry in other places, I wondered what the hell else I could gather in my house. Without malice in my heart, I began to scour the internet for idea's and I managed to stumble across a wonderful little script for collecting PiHole metrics

"Tutorial"

Octoprint-MQTT, Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana "Tutorial"

A tutorial to learn how to put together 4 applications to build yourself a cool dashboard for your printer(s).

A Long Way Home

This is another account of lost time, it's something that's intrigued me a lot since first hearing of stories like this. I find them very interesting, and would love to experience something like this just to be able to confirm to myself they do happen. How does one physically transferr

A Personal Tale

Diet Day 7, a Failing and a Realisation

So, this would be day seven of my carnivorous diet. I failed tonight, I've just eaten a very large meal of fish and chips from my local. In the interest of transparency, I thought it best not to hide this fact and still report on my findings. I began my

The Screaming Room

What curious questions arise when we talk about haunted houses. Is it all baloney? Do any of these stories even have merit? If any of them are at all true, then why do these "spirits" hang around on this plane of existence. I have no idea, but I do love

A Personal Tale

Blood Test Baseline

Today, I'd like to work on my blood tests and what they actually mean. It's certainly been interesting learning about all these little markers we use for health, and it's even more amazing the way our bodies use this organic information to keep ourselves in tip-top shape! Before I begin

Health and Wellness

Time to be a Carnivore

The answer I suppose is the way I feel, I wouldn't call myself depressed but I am tired all the time and I get moments of feeling like the entire world is against me. I use to put the paranoia on cannabis but since I quit this some months ago

Down Time

So I've been away for a few months, what's happened? Where did I go? Well, I've been basically living my life! I've had a marriage to appear at, documents to sort for that and have spent the past month in Brazil. That's all coming to an end on Saturday though

Future Air Raid

I found this time travel case mentioned in the book The Little Giant Book of Eerie Thrills and Unspeakable Chills which is written by Ron Edwards, C. BH. Colby and John Macklin. In 1932, newspaper reporter J.Bernard Hutton and photographer Joachim Brandt were assigned to do a feature story

A Lesson Learned

Don't Fallacy Your Logic

Navigating the information world today has become somewhat of a daunting task. The internet allowed information to spread like wild fire and not all of it is what it seems. A lot of lies wrapped up with some truth, agendas promulgated and even trolls just trying to get an emotional

Strange Neighbourhood

Highway Back in Time

Another jaunt back with mysteries of time travel accounts. This one takes place in a small Southwest Louisiana town of Abbeville. The tale was originally recounted by a character with the initial's L.C in Ken Meaux's High Strangeness column in Strange Magazine 2, Spring 1988. L.C. and a

Science and Experimentation

Sham Surgery

The Placebo effect is a curious phenomenon if I've ever looked upon one. Trials have shown people often react to a placebo in nearly the identical manner as an actual drug. A placebo is an inert substance that has no effect on your body. Placebos such as sugar pills are

Strange Neighbourhood

Hotel Time Warp

Story time! Weird and wonderful stories that are just on the cusp of being too crazy to confirm. I love them! So I've decided to start sharing a few of them on here. Two couples find themselves driving through France on their way to Spain. Tired from their journey, they

Health and Wellness

Benefits to smoking?

Well, let's hit right off the bat with a most controversial of topics! Smoking. I first started when I was 16 all those many moons ago. I loved it! There was nothing I enjoyed more than relaxing with a "cigarette" after a good days skateboarding. It chilled me out and

A Personal Tale

Introductions

Welcome to my Blog. My name is James Mackay and at the moment I don't really have much of a clue why I am here. The only thing I do know is that I want to write. I've been wanting to write for some time now, put my thoughts out