Spoken Songs: Poetry Read Aloud

Poetry is meant to be read aloud.

This is my little poetry corner, containing dead folks’ poetry (for copyright reasons), in English (because it’s my native language), starting with William Shakespeare.

This series began in 2000, when I was experimenting with the then-new technology of online audio, via RealNetworks‘ RealAudio player. For quite a while I read and uploaded one short poem a week, mainly to learn what’s involved in audio blogging. At the beginning of the project I wasn’t too keen on poetry; now I really enjoy it, and some poems now affect me deeply.

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Adjusting the Count Lever on an Ansonia Clock Movement

While waiting for its case to be repaired, my craft-altered Ansonia Derby clock has been running on a test stand – off and on for quite a while. I noticed that every great once in a while the count lever failed to drop into the 8 o’clock slot, causing the number of hours struck to be incorrect from then on.

The problem was that the count lever needed adjusting so the lever wouldn’t hang up on the walls of the slot it was dropping into. In this post I describe my adventure of adjusting (bending) the count lever.

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Clock Repair: My Meager Knowledge of the Hardness of Metals

It’s taken me a while to learn some basic metallurgy that I need for clock repair. When I started I scratched up my brass clock plates by cleaning with SOS pads – steel wool – because I didn’t know that steel is harder than brass. In this post I collect what I’ve picked up in this metals game of Scissors, Paper, Rock.

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Getting Started With 3D Printing

Designing a 3D Printable part using FreeCAD
Designing a 3D Printable part using FreeCAD

One of the things holding me back from 3D printing for so long was learning what tools I needed and how to use them. It’s relatively easy to print things once you have a design: Cults3D, Hubs, and many others (including your friends who have printers) can print your designs, your local library may have printers for you to use, or you can buy a printer for a few hundred dollars.

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Building a Quick Router Table Cabinet

In converting a desk into a clockmaker’s bench, I wound up buying a router and router table to make the drawers. The router table has been taking up space on my workbench ever since.

I decided to make a rolling cabinet to mount the router table to, using scrap plywood and some drawers left over from a bathroom remodel. The project is a good example of a thrown-together wood project, and a few lessons in “measure twice; cut once”.

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Making A Filament Dryer from A Food Dehydrator

I’ve occasionally seen posts and videos about how to dry 3D printing filament using a food dehydrator, but never felt the need for one… until recently. I had a failed print that looked like wet filament was to blame, so I decided it was time to make my filament dryer. This post is about my experience – mostly good – with that dryer.

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