DIY - Dave Jansen

DIY

A collection of 14 posts

Winter emergency center for our succulents

Winter emergency center for our succulents

In our previous house we had a veranda area (think "inside but kind of outside") area that was perfect for plants, as it had direct sunlight on it all day long. While I wouldn't want to spend more than a couple of seconds there during the hottest part of summer,

Somewhat Restoring a Vintage Traditional Korean Closet

Somewhat Restoring a Vintage Traditional Korean Closet

For as long as I can remember I have naturally looked out for people throwing out what they consider trash. So when I saw some furniture on the side of the street a while ago, my eyes immediately fell onto this closet that, in spite of it missing a few

Upgraded Soldering Setup

Upgraded Soldering Setup

I've had a very basic soldering iron for years, and it served its purpose well enough. It was one of those "plug in and they go" type irons that lacked any settings, and its tip wasn't really replaceable either. After I recently started installing new batteries with proper holders a

Applying new thermal paste on a GPD Pocket 2 for better thermals

Applying new thermal paste on a GPD Pocket 2 for better thermals

The GPD Pocket 2 (P2) has decent thermal paste applied coming out of the factory, but thanks to modders and tinkerers it became rather evident that you could get quite a substantial decrease in temperature if you re-apply the thermal paste with your own, higher grade paste. While I generally

Cleaning SNES and Super Famicom carts

Cleaning SNES and Super Famicom carts

When collecting older games —or simply revisiting your childhood games— it's usually a good idea to clean the games and, ideally, replace their batteries. A few months ago I made a video about the first Super Famicom game I replaced the battery of, but I had more work ahead of

Why and how I went Hackintosh

Why and how I went Hackintosh

I've been going through what you could call a transitional stage with my home setup this past half-year. From acquiring a few servers, to setting up my main home work machine as a Hackintosh, it's certainly been an interesting period. Most of these choices and projects come from the same

Server Padding

Due to part luck and part perseverance from a colleague I somewhat quickly ended up with several servers. My original plan was to purchase just the one, but these things have a way of going in different routes, so four(-ish) servers later, I now have a small stack of

Update: Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

Update: Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

A few weeks ago I installed a dual monitor arm on my tiny standing desk, and today I wanted to post a quick follow-up to this. First; I've been thoroughly enjoying this setup. It not only brought up the monitor(s, now) to the right height (as I had to

Video: Native Bluetooth and WiFi on a Hackintosh

Video: Native Bluetooth and WiFi on a Hackintosh

Today I'm installing a WTXUP TX-AC94360 PCIe card, which has a Broadcom BCM94360CD chip, for native Bluetooth and WiFi support on the Hackintosh I built not too long ago for home work usage. The process is easy enough, and this particular card is natively supported by macOS, so it works

Upgrading a PS4 Hard Drive

Upgrading a PS4 Hard Drive

Not too long ago I upgraded the hard drive of my PS4. This was just in time, too, with Red Dead Redemption 2 coming out not long after and weighing in at a hefty 100GB. The stock 500GB drive that came with my PS4 was already constantly full, requiring me

Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

Installing a Monitor Arm on my Tiny Desk.

I have a very small standing desk that I use as a sort of as a mobile home office, as I can roll it around the house to find the best spot for me to work in. Whether that's close to the servers for maintenance or so, to the more

Installing a grounded wall socket

Installing a grounded wall socket

For some reason that is completely unknown to me, only two or three wall sockets in our rental apartment are actually grounded — in the kitchen and laundry room. All the other ones actually have grounding wires present, they're just not used, and often tucked away into the wall without so

Video: Replacing the battery of a SNES game, or; Can I (Still) Solder?

Video: Replacing the battery of a SNES game, or; Can I (Still) Solder?

It's been forever since I last soldered something, so when I planned to replace the battery of my Donkey Kong 2 SF cart, I wasn't sure if I would be able to do an adequate job. Naturally I decided to grab the camera and record the process, not to show

Video: The Balcony

Video: The Balcony

Here I sand, stain and apply a coating to a garden set originally purchased from Ikea. We've since moved to a place that lacks a balcony, but we actually still use this table as our (very petite) kitchen dinner table, with a glass top we had made for it. This