Ralph Yamamoto's Blog

Bees in Oregon 2026

ralphjy — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:20:29 GMT

beacon_dave and I have been trading messages about flowers and bees in response to my Earth Day post. He has a BeeBox nestbox for bumblebees and I mentioned to him that I've never been able to locate a natural bumblebee nest...(read more)

Premature Spring in Oregon 2026

ralphjy — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 07:00:53 GMT

We've had a pretty mild winter so far in the greater Portland area. We haven't had any snow yet in the Willamette Valley and our local snowpack in the Mt. Hood area is about 30% of normal. This week we've had a couple of days ...(read more)

Coyote Summer

ralphjy — Sat, 17 May 2025 06:15:54 GMT

We have always had coyotes in our neighborhood, but this spring and summer they are much more of a problem. In the past I would have coyote encounters maybe a few times a year. In the last few years that increased to about a dozen, but th...(read more)

Mason Bees Spring 2025

ralphjy — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 17:43:24 GMT

It's been couple of years since the Save the Bees Design Challenge but that challenge inspired me to support native pollinators in our area (mason bees and leafcutter bees). The Finisher's Prize was a Insect Hotel that I put out in the ...(read more)

Transformers (toys) circa 1980s

ralphjy — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:10:52 GMT

My wife was looking for Legos for my grandson that she remembered we had stored in a footlocker in the garage. It turned out that there were no Legos but dozens of toy transformers in a wide range of sizes. These date from the mid 80s to ...(read more)

Christmas in July

ralphjy — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 16:16:39 GMT

Actually, it started mid last week when I got a UPS notification about a pending delivery from Hungary. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it arrived on Friday Turns out that it was a package from Arduino. tariq.ahmad had told me...(read more)

Backyard Beekeeping: Bee Class

ralphjy — Tue, 09 May 2023 20:53:33 GMT

I just completed my community college beginning beekeeping class - 3 hours of classroom instruction and 1 1/2 hours of bee hive maintenance demonstration at a suburban backyard apiary. I discussed this class in an earlier post: Backyard Be...(read more)

Happy Earth Day 2023 to the E14 Community!

ralphjy — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 16:08:53 GMT

Happy Earth Day 2023!! This year's theme is Invest in Our Planet. My contribution has been my solar system that I installed at the very end of 2017. To date it has generated about 28 MWh and my net electricity consumption for the last 64 months...(read more)

Oregon Beekeeping: Native Bees

ralphjy — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:43:07 GMT

I had posted earlier Backyard Beekeeping: Native Bees about a local Parks and Recreation class that I had signed up for. It was a small class of about a dozen people held in an outbuilding at a local farm. Not quite the han...(read more)

Backyard Beekeeping: Native Bees

ralphjy — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 21:02:08 GMT

I enrolled in a community college course about backyard honey bee hives - Backyard Beekeeping: Back to School. That course is in May after the Save the Bees Challenge has completed. My wife pointed out to me that our local Parks and ...(read more)

Backyard Beekeeping: Back to School

ralphjy — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 15:05:25 GMT

The "Save the Bees Challenge" has raised my awareness of the potential for actually having a honeybee hive in my backyard. It will be a little late for the challenge, but I signed up for a class on Backyard Beekeeeping at Portland Community Col...(read more)

Merry Christmas Element14!

ralphjy — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 06:21:15 GMT

Last month scottiebabe inspired me with her post A simple game on the RPi Pico to buy a Pi Pico LCD. I doubt that I'll ever develop a game for it, but it seemed like a piggyback display with buttons would be a perfect additio...(read more)

WII Fit Plus - 5000 days

ralphjy — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 21:51:28 GMT

I've achieved another milestone with my fitness electronics - 5000 days on my WII Fit Plus system with balance board. I'm always amazed when I get some longevity with electronics, especially stuff that I use on a daily basis. In this ca...(read more)

How to Repair a Kindle Fire HDX Due to Battery Bulging

ralphjy — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 05:24:00 GMT

I bought a 7" Amazon Kindle Fire HDX when it first came out in November 2013. It's claim to fame was its high resolution 1920x1200 color display. I've been using it pretty much daily since then for an hour or two for videos and puzzles.&n...(read more)

NeoPixel Dice

ralphjy — Thu, 26 May 2022 21:26:00 GMT

I was somewhat inspired by a post by scottiebabe - Electronic Die to look at square NeoPixel Arrays. I've used NeoPixels in PCB strips and rings and also flexible strips before, but haven't tried square arrays....(read more)