final blog move

WordPress has finally worn me down enough to set up a non-wordpress blog/site management tool at my own domain. The blog is now at https://mouse.mousetrap.net/blog/ the RSS feed is https://mouse.mousetrap.net/feed.xml comments are by Discus, so people can use twitter, facebook, google accounts, etc or a Disqus account. I think I’ve got it set up now

April, according to Google

It also said: You’ve traveled a total of 1,654 miles so far in 2021 If true (and it sounds right) that would put me at about 6,000mi/yr.

first run with the lab hotplate

I set up the MSW inverter, which was actually a 700w unit rather than 400w as I’d remembered. It’s been in storage in the “basement” for a long while. I put the little hotplate on the Kill-a-Watt and it pulled 285-290w instead of the rated 330w; I’m glad to see that. I’m in float here

solar crockpot: red beans (no-soak)

I’ve been doing my dry beans in the pressure cooker to save fuel (30mins @ 10lbs), but cooking with excess solar uses no fuel at all. It turned out so good I’ll just stick with it. Some salt pork or bacon scraps in there would be nice… My mental arithmetic suggests we are trading time

site move / snood / daily cardio

mud defense Yesterday I was getting increasingly nervous about my ability to get up out of the previous campsite back to the forest road after it rained. The forest road (FR 88) itself was fairly hard packed, so even though it was rutted in places from prior rains I figured I could always get down

dogbowl oven biscuit experiments 1 – 4

These were done back-to-back, allowing the oven to cool (and biscuits to be eaten) in between. I wanted to use a commodity biscuit rather than DIY to reduce variables.  I wanted plain cheap biscuits but Walmart is out, so I got their Great Value Jumbo biscuits. The instructions say: preheat to 350f,  bake 13-17mins, or

ABQ to Cuba, NM

I stealthed in Albuquerque a couple days to take advantage of laundromats and pleasant weather. Tomorrow was forecast to be 85F though, which lit a fire under my butt. Finding a boondocking spot on a Friday is suboptimal but turned out ok. My next stop was scheduled to be NF outside Cuba, NM, forecast to

dogbowl oven shakedown run (preliminary temperature test)

I assembled the dogbowl oven and heated it gently to watch the internal air temps. This run was limited by my having only a food thermometer that maxxes at 220F. the gear the bowls listed I ordered off Amazon. I used the smaller cooking bowl since it was shorter and would not touch the temp

experiment: laboratory hot plate

[I’m stacking up experiment ideas faster than I can execute them. I’ll catch up, I promise. ] One of the Great Disappointments of van life so far is the realization that hotplates (and other simple resisitive heat sources) typically run at full power and only vary the duty cycle to control heat level. I’d love

anecdote: the economics of overpaneling a charge controller

The upgraded panels have been mounted for about a month and this morning is the first time the controller got close to clipping power at rated current (40A). Refresher: the EpEver 4215BN solar charge controller specs say it is rated for 40A output, which the docs also express at 520w on nominal 12v systems. The