Projector Update

I did finally get the panel in....
But it didnt come with any cables, power or vga. So now if I want to use the thing I have to build those. Luckily it did come with a manual that includes the pinouts of the connectors. Unluckily the needed connector is a hd 26pin D-sub connector. Mouser to the rescue...

The Triumph of Organization

While reading a woodworking magazine a while back there was a little tip for building a toolbox with vertical panels which hold the tools.

Well after screwing up on the projector box I had 4 good pieces of plywood leftover. So I decided to finally build this project and organize some of my tools. I figured out a way to make the project using JUST plywood and some 1" by 2" boards, thier design used pegboard and dado cuts for the slots.

So Here I give you the Super Simplified Toolroom in a Box.



















These two pics (above) illustrate how the slats are nailed down, and some of the tools that will eventually make it into the box. Below are two of the panels in full trim, and the an overview of the box.















I still have to figure out somewhere good to put the box itself. :P

Progress (towards what?)

Just wanted to show off my handy work for the day....



















Yup thats my new screen and the projector box with the back off, in pre-paint form.

Notably it was also my last day at Papa Johns today. :]

Schemes, Plans, and Travels

Tonight I finally received the projector I bought off eBay (not that it took that long really), now I am waiting for the LCD projection panel. So I can complete my plans and build a wood box and have a projector :D. So from now on when we are sitting around staring at each other trying to figure out where to watch a movie, it can be at my place. Also so when Hyrum comes down; we aren't always complaining about the old TV with only a coax connection....

I got some inspiration from this page , then more digging led me to www.lumenlab.com , which has got me itching to build a bigger better more expensive version...Of course. Which is what I showed to Wayne and he wants to build one as well...

This last weekend I drove my eyes off, I left mobile Saturday at about 2pm headed to an 8pm concert in Tallahassee ( www.mutemath.com ), then drove right back home, barely barely made it home, at about 5. Then I got up 4.5 hours later and headed to Birmingham with grandma. Managed to stay awake till we started back, about 1.5hrs into that trip I bombed. Just praise the Lord I made it home in both instances without incident....Well aside from a burning rv...

No I didn't set that fire....You will notice I am on the OTHER side of the interstate....

While at Waynes place he told me about a hard drive that crashed and burned on him, which is why this article today on hackaday really got my attention . (Wayne: if you aren't confident enough to try the surgery I will do it for you..)

While in Birmingham I also got some Great pictures of the sunset ...
If anyone reading this was in Birmingham Sunday night, then you saw how awesome the sunset was. :] I was just glad to change my surroundings for a few hours, and get to meet Cooper, and see where Wayne and Kelli are living...And see Mutemath play 4 songs O_o

Just had an idea....

Ok i was reading this article tonight (which i got from digg as usual) and something occurred to me.
"Lyon still wanted to find out who was behind the attacks. He and Brown scanned the traffic data, found a zombie, and, thanks to an opening in Microsoft Windows, were able to see what other computers it had been connected to. This led them to a chat server in Kazakhstan; when they connected to it, they saw more attacks in progress. They notified the F.B.I. and the Secret Service, but, Brown said, “they sort of threw up their arms, because it was in Kazakhstan.” To Lyon, however, the lesson was clear: with clever techniques and a little luck, any attacker could
be found."

"thanks to an opening in Microsoft Windows"
This gives me an idea; whats the best way to find a zombie army, by being in control of the zombies themselves.....

SO on with the idea, what if there was a piece of software similar to the bot software that resided on a good bit of the machines involved, similar but different in that it would be used by a good network to gather information about a given attack, and could possibly either disrupt that attack (by commanding the pcs under its control to quit participating) or could just gather information about the attack to be given to the authorities. The software could be installed on a voluntary basis, like seti@home.

The idea that enables this is, the criminals running these bots dont know/care what else is running on the bots themselves. So your program could run alongside thiers without them realizing you are gathering data on them.

In fact the ppl like Lyon, could theoretically setup a farm of machines and just let them be infected and maybe then one of thier machines would be one of the bots attacking, and could be used to trackback to the attackers....

Note to self: always finish reading the article before posting idea to blog, there are alotta ppl alot smarter than me. :/

The Great Depression

The other night me and my grandma were sitting at dinner talking and I decided to ask her "what caused the Great depression?" And she didnt know, she said "well the stock markets crashed" so I asked "why?" and she said "well money had no value" and I said "but why? What caused it?"

Ultimately it had never been explained to either of us so for the purpose of educating my already very clever readers....

The answer is the leaders in countries with the most influence were having a problem with deflation (money wasnt worth anything) and they in turn used solutions that would work on inflation to try and solve this problem. Most americans (or at least I didnt) dont realize the great depression was worldwide.

So to compress it down more, alotta really "smart" ppl had a whole string of bad ideas which ultimately lead up to the stock market crashing, banks folding, and ten years of turmoil.

Luckily we came out of it, and eventually someone had a bright idea to network computers which eventually snowballed into the idea of wikipedia, which happens to be where I got my information. :)

My router is fixed :D

I have been having a huge problem with my internet. For several months whenever I would try to log into my yahoo email it would login and get to the front page but clicking the inbox resulted in "document contains no data". Similar things were happening on Ebay and Cingular's website.

Well Ashley was over today and insisted on me letting him try to fix the problem, he got in there and changed the MTU size, and everything started working. Apparently he talked to D-Link support (I have a netgear) a while back and they showed him this solution.

Niether of us even knows what an MTU size is and I especially cant see why it needs to be a certain size for some websites to work and others to not..... It really demonstrates how complex our system (the internet) is and how fallible it is.

I remember learning about the OSI 7 layer system years ago when I was studying for A+ exam. Even then I was blown away by the shallowness of most ppl's (mine included) knowledge of what makes networking work. I bet most sys admins never venture to learn about more than the first layer or two. That is to say, comprehensive in depth knowledge is often left to somebody else.

Shallow knowledge is becoming common in Chip design as well (of all places), these days the guys designing computer chips deal mainly in blocks. The blocks are composed of what are really higher level assembly commands, they know how to combine the blocks and make something work. But they dont really bother to delve into what the blocks are composed of, what really makes thier chips tick. It's the same thing that happened when every piece of electronic gear went from having discrete components to having chips everywhere. Previously in fact the blocks that modern chip designers fiddle with were chips that you would see in the previous gadgets.

Whats the problem?....your probably asking. Well when you put the blocks together and it takes 12 nanoseconds for the command to go through the chip, you just have to accept it, cause thats as fast as the blocks can go. If you knew the internals then you might be able to do something about it, but you dont, your professor never taught you that, and you just wanna go home and hang out with your kids anyways. So churn out another crappy/buggy chip and make the boss happy and go home. :P

Dont get me wrong I am all for standardized components and all that, yay for standardization. But I also TOTALLY believe in popping the hood and taking the covers off and tweaking things.

I also believe in full disclosure and fully endorse the idea of Open source Hardware.

Remind me to go off on more tangents...then maybe I would update more than every three weeks. :P

I hope any readers I may have enjoy my rambling...
And btw, Ashley, Thanks a ton for fixing my internet even though you SUCK!

Want some links?..hehe I have a month's worth to unload

http://www.mpja.com/ supply house for tinkerers

http://www.camerahacker.com/Car_Camera_Mount/index.html
Marshall...are you out there?
http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia thanks cale
http://www.vintageprojects.com/ What a great website, I have thought of this website several times but never
followed up :P
http://www.dimensionengineering.com/ Their converters can up-switch voltage
http://forums.howwhatwhy.com/ubbthreads.php The perfect forum subject/format
http://jlnlabs.online.fr/ Crazy to hard to believe experiments
http://www.solutionscatalog.com
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_14_2005.asp?pageid=665&co_pageid=3
...do NOT do this...
http://www.abstractdynamics.org/archives/2005/08/27/web_20.html
Power in the new age of internet
http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml Give it a loose description of a word and it will
"hopefully" give you the word, I need a portable version of this implanted in my head. :P
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/09/02/the_latest_ip_crime_boxwrap_patent_infringement.php
This is getting really old and outta hand (but then you realize this guy misinterpreted the ruling)
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/ The science hobbyist
http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html More than enough info on electricity
http://eio.com/resorcin.htm Robotics/Electronics Information/Article site
http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2new.htm Cool new gasoline to Hydrogen conversion company
http://www.uktech.freeserve.co.uk/report/report.htm An open sourced CNC mill
http://photobucket.com/albums/b124/jrou111/ A moment of silence for James' car
http://diybanter.com/ Diy internet forum
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=295 A guide to slipstreaming I can actually follow, see thier
article on putting it on a cd too
http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/shoot-to-thrill/2005/09/14/1126377359164.html

Dontbuyjunk.com The name says it all
AutoSpeed This is what I am talking about, these guys dont only mind getting under the hood but they arent afraid to etch a circuitboard either, all to make thier cars faster...
New trigonometry I would like to investigate this more, because I never did get a good grasp of trig
MetaEfficient Blog about efficiency and cleaner living
boevhomyak.jpg Why didnt I think of this...

things I should read...
http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/
https://www.cs.tcd.ie/courses/baict/bac/jf/labs/scope/

Words dont cover this

Katrina came by, and didnt manage to blow our house down, and for that we are blessed. She did knock out power for about 3 days (at my house) and put everyone out of work for about a week.

Not sure what to say about everything that has happened to the west of Mobile because of Katrina. I feel like I should write something but I cant seem to get it started on the right foot, perhaps I will just hand you a dandy link instead. Read it if you have the time (warning: *some* offensive language (nothing unusual for the net though)).

I cant seem to wrap my head around the real problem and what should be done about it. Which is why I cant write about it. I just thank God for all the resources that are being thrown at it and pray the right ppl will get the right things done in good time. That is, rather than more patchwork and stopgap solutions.

I am also interested in what this will hopefully do to american attitudes towards our waste and use of resources (ie gasoline), and where we build our "homes".

I also wish I was a little greyer (see link above).

Ugly Hack job!

I did something extraordinary yesterday, I totally did a quick ugly hack job.

I have always wanted a light to read by above my bed so I wouldnt have to turn off my room light at night.

The light came from the upper console of a car I rescued from the dumpster while I was at Joe Bullard previously. The power supply was given to me and I bought the Erector set a coupla years ago. It took me about an hour to do it (from inception to completion), which is a new record for me, usually I have to draw everything out and have it perfect and everything. I guess it shows you can have function devoid of form. :P

Here's some pics

N.A.D.D.

An eloquent description of what keeps me on the internet all the time...
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html
Maybe not eloquent but definitely accurate.

Today in Crappy Pics

The day started by responding to crisis for Naomi, her car was overheating and leaking water. So I went out and took a look at it and attempted to fix it. I replaced a hose and two clamps, but am not 100% confident I had the problem nailed down. In the process...
"Oh there's the bleeder valve". The fabled coolant system bleeder valve which was supposed to be there but has never been found before. :P

After leaving South I went home and cut the grass, nice huh?


After cutting the grass, I started working on the actual building phase of The Spotlight Project for Ashley. I started by experimenting with bending the aluminum I planned to use for the swiveling mount, the experiment was a success. To bend the thick aluminum I mounted the piece into my vise clamp then grabbed a big piece of square tubing and torqued down on the thing.
So next i needed to figure out how much clearance a spinning QBeam Max would need. So I mocked up a model and measured the necessary values..... (yes I am the duke of Ghetto, because James is the king).

Then I transferred all this to the aluminum....
Broke out the level in an attempt to prevent my bends from being twisted.

Proceeded to make my two bends..

Then I went to the computer and used Graph Paper Printer to print out a piece of paper with 1/8th inch divisions, then used that to check my bends for being right and to layout where I needed to drill (as if it was gonna help)

Next I took on punching a good pilot then drilled two holes completely off center :/ . I have got to be missing something about drilling, other ppl's hand drilled holes come out reasonably right...

Then I continuted mutilating the project by using a bit intented for something completely other than aluminum.

Once I had done my worst the bushings more or less fit, hopefully well enough for the axles to line up....
Finally I went to Big Lots and bought this 99 cent turkey baster, but I had other plans for it than flavorful poultry. I intented to shove JB weld through it, in order to bind the pulley I bought to the motor I scavenged. It worked wonderfully, this is an aftermath picture of the setup....

And these are the pieces drying.... A good (hopefully) successful day of building :]


And now... for something completely different




Killer 7ft Spider AHHH!!!
I saw this spider in the bushes while mowing the grass, she is HUGE at least 3in long. So I got Grandma and my camera out there and snapped a few pics. When I uploaded the pictures I had no idea this was waiting for me, LOL. Gotta love unsuspecting optical effects. :D

Net Highlights

Once again mostly nabbed from the illustrious www.digg.com

http://www.propertyroom.com/ Interesting site ,with lots of great buys (ok I havent actually perused it yet, the very similar http://www.govliquidation.com/ has my brother thinking of selling lotsa things on Ebay, anyone wanna front some seed money?

http://www.shelter-systems.com/ This site features tons of tents for different purposes all built around a Yurt-like design, it also has a guide for building a twig and tarp kayak, in under four hours....

Quantum Diaries - Follow physicists from around the world as they live the World Year of Physics : You can all thank Marshall for this one and the next one.

NOVA | The Elegant Universe | A Conversation with Brian Greene | PBS This was a very well produced program that attempted to explain string theory, which attempts to explain everything else...No matter how far they probe they arent gonna find God. :P

StopIE: Help stop Internet Explorer, the worlds most popular and worst internet browser - StopIE.com Stop the Madness!! Use Firefox or Opera!

Firefox Extensions FAQ - The Extensions Mirror Very useful for firefox users, for those that arent, just look at all the different things it can do!

13 things that do not make sense: He's not kidding these things dont make much sense at all.

Tracker Trail - Fire From Ice - Rob Bicevskis This site revealed to me a very simple method that can be used to machine globes, something I had always wondered about. Also shows how to make fire..or something....

InternetFrog.com: Network Tools, Internet Speed Test and Website Tools How fast is your internet?

Ergonomics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is an article I always wanted to find, I am as very interested in the design of various things, especially chairs and other furniture. :P

Interestingly enough I found this site while looking for something I saw in an old popular science years ago. It was a chair that was supposedly designed using what NASA had found to be the most nuetral position (muscularly) for the body. They found this out by observing the astronauts floating around in skylab (is that the right name), particularly what position thier bodies rested in, in zero gravity. I ended up finding the flogiston chair , which is decidely less sexy than the chair I was looking for but based on the same concept.

I want to build one, in particular

I want to build one which can be used as a computer chair, I also want to base subsequent workstation ideas on the same basic shape, btw a coupla my concepts can be seen at my bellsouth site (i gotta watch my bandwidth though that site has a mere 30mb PER MONTH dl rate) but here's a pic anyways....
And now for the lighter side :D

Funny: Why Women Live Longer Than Men

Fun Stuff : World's Worst Women Drivers : GopherGas

40 Things That Only Happen In Movies

The Shirt Fold a shirt from a dollar bill, I am soon gonna try this...as soon as I get a dollar bill!

eBay Motors: DETGEP Industries Gas Saving Device ! L@@K ! NO RESERVE (item 7993916387 end time Aug-23-05 14:50:17 PDT) This is the solution to our fuel problems!!

Homertage For all my Halo fans out there (you know who you are!)

Ok no more enthusiasm for today, I used up my exclamation quota.

Thanks for reading

Philoshophy, Truth, And Paradox (and a bit of "The Good" thrown in for good measure)

Mainly this is just an update in justification for having not finished any projects yet this week....

I was gonna add pictures so look for them as soon as I figure out where to put them.

Tues I finished mounting the bearings (aka engines), then yesterday me and Marshall spent alotta time walking to and from the car mounting all of that to the arm...

Then we proceeded to watch two episodes of the old Hitchhiker's Guide Tv Show, until the cd decided to not work on the last file. Which led us to complain that current OS's file managers and so on still hang on a file having a simple read error, same as on an Apple II, you'd think in 20-30yrs we could work out a way for this not to happen, and it happens in every OS I've seen too.

Today I got up in the morning and Marshall, Dorothy, Anna and I got up early and went canoeing (early for us) . Then after work tonight I proceeded to Ben's house and we talked about...paradoxes and nothing and exploding cows. Mainly about paradoxes and the nature of metaphysical vs physical.

The trebuchet isnt done and due to YET ANOTHER REDESIGN also known as Y.A.R.D. it wont be finished till december. But at least it gives me plenty of time to find a counterweight.

I am about 90-95% sure I will be going back to Joe Bullard. Probably be working there by Tues Next week. I am wondering where this leaves my very strong desire to go with Ben and company to the Highlands for labor day, I need to figure out how to present it so as to not cause a power struggle between me and John :/. Oh well... maybe with marshall gone this weekend I can write some of the other stuff in my head, but then a dozen other things are happening as well....oh well we'll see :P

Must Finish Trebuchet!

So I have a fairly heavy problem on my mind, its about (iirc) 16in wide, 3ft High (at the very top max) and 3-4ft wide. I need a solution like yesterday for the trebuchet counterwieght, I need it fast and I need it cheap (like maybe we can manage $100 MAYBE). That is as you can probably tell a fairly bad combination. :P

I'm trying to complete this project before marshall leaves and everything looks to be lining up nicely, except for this. My current ideas for this problem involve somehow getting various scraps of metal. Including (but not limited to)

-Big Hunks of steel
-Disposed Train wheels (where?)
-Discarded large flywheels (or lots of little ones?)
-600lbs of machining filings (how to contain them?)
-Discarded big rig brakes

-Earthen Materials
-water (containing 600lbs of water moving at x mph is no easy thing)
-sand/dirt
-concrete (the easiest but also the one my team is most opposed to)

-Dangerous things
-600lb of lead acid batteries (gotta be against the law)

Then after I figure out what material and how to mount it I have to figure out how to transport it. That used to be an easy problem, but now that i lack a running pickup its not nearly so trivial. :/

Any ANY input and suggestions would be greatly welcomed.
I will try to keep a more open mind than my other teammates, if your solution has enough merit I will try to pitch it to them. :P

If the material is sufficiently cheap I may even try to weld up a box to contain it (in this kind of shape) .

Coming soon to this blog: :P
Unfufilled Potential: How computers have let us down....
I want credit for this: An idea I have long kept to myself that may soon be possible and I want to be noted as a creator so I will release it publicly...finally

Recent Progress

I've been spending the last few days working on about 3-4 projects and hanging out with ppl I dont get to see much.

The projects I've been working on include retrofitting the trebuchet to working order, a lego electronics kit for my sister, ashley's motorized spotlight project, and what will eventually become a lathe. :]

Btw, I had that interview, but I dont think it went well enough for them to call me back. I have pretty much decided to stay in mobile and to go back to work at joe bullard and start working towards being debt free, seems the right thing to do.

I still want to construct an engineering style analysis of the situation just for kicks...if I get around to it.

Backlog of links

Oh, this is gonna be a long one....

The last week or so I have spent DOZENS of hours on the internet, and I intend to get alotta those links and some of the ideas and thoughts about those into this blog.

Categorically.... or randomly whichever works better

Ok Most of these links come from

www.hardocp.com

or www.wired.com

or www.makezine.com

or www.digg.com

Thanks to Hyrum for showing me an article about http://www.consciousconsumers.net/a_hydristor.html this transmission. Which is what led me to digg and then that led me to makezine, that little link may be a HUGE thing in the next few * insert randomly large period of time * . Anyways about the transmission http://hydristor.com/news.html if it works as advertised it is pure genius. So this guy has this great idea and he takes it to the car companies in America and they totally blow him off. Any company that doesnt eventually change, and not just within its own bounds but in response to the world, will die, goodbye big three...

Anyways, those two sites evetually led me to some things I am gonna do.

http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg/gooteecn.html Really inexpensive CNC , I have a plan in play to beat this!

MAKE: Blog: CVS camcorder usably hacked!

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

Free, Amazing Secrets, Household Hints, Saving Money

CNCzone.com-Machinist Community Forums - Welcome Page

OhGizmo!

GPX2 already linked this one but i really like it a lot

Free Online Language Courses

Nokia codes

Linux Newbie Guide by Stan, Peter and Marie Klimas

Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend -- nothingisreal.com

The Pirate Bay - The worlds largest BitTorrent tracker Worked for me

Coudal Partners Marshall and Basil get all the credit for solving this one (I helped too) only to find out Annie had solved it all by herself...quicker :P

PAPER CRAFTS | ENTERTAINMENT | YAMAHA MOTOR

The whispering wheel ...So what ! :/

MILITANTPLATYPUS A good Blog with losta links and updates (way more than me)

quotes | A Mountain Top

Hello, Dollar! - Question for Readers: Finance Software and "Virtual Accounts"? --Money tips never a bad thing...

BRL-CAD Home Page --The most powerful modelling softtware i would say, cant tell if its available or not and probably only in source code which doesnt help me :P

FreeCAD Homepage

QCad Screenshots

AVR Butterfly MP3

Bowden's Hobby Circuits

LinuxDevices.com -- your embedded Linux resource

WELCOME TO ROUNDABOUT OUTDOOR AMAZING invention, why didnt I come up with this?

David Randolph - Articles - Why should everyone mod everything? Check out his http://www.bigorangecouch.com/modules/articles/article.php?id=2

OZ2CPU - Homebrew electronics page If I ever start building circuits this would be the site to be on

Silicon Sam's Technology Resource (SSTR) - Main Table of Contents I havent even started to tap this resource

Welcome to Dan's Workshop - a photo repository of advanced home shop projects – this ones been around for a while but he's got some really great projects, and his lost foam casting is the ONLY way to go

Parellel port output Everythin you ever wanted to know about interfacing the pc parallel port

BillyReisinger.com :: The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza Pizza Possibly better than mine

DigitalCamera@101reviews » Totally Customizable Keyboard Marshall are you reading this?

Hacking A Mouse For Encoders My kinda article

Boondog Automation More CNC stuff

http://tiletoy.blogspot.com/ Havent figured out the point of this yet, except maybe a wireless sign

5 Bears - Home An amazing machinist

http://www.ata.org.au/articles/articles.htm Articles about Solar energy

VGA over Cat-5 cable

Bicycle frame building for the rest of us. You can BUILD a custom bike, thats amazing

Cooking For Engineers - Test Recipes: Marshmallows Much like Good Eats.

pcd8544 based displays (serdisplib) I thought all discarded lcds were useless, i was wrong...

Surplus Stores

Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs

Mad Physics :: Ask Mad Physics These guys are nuts, hey that gives me an idea :D

MetalGeek : Code, Metal and Cleverness: How to Bend Tubing and Pipe by Hand

Return of Tetris Shelves : Gizmodo

http://www.techmanifesto.com/archives/2005/07/25/find-a-human-fast/

Speeding through video games.

Messiah Entertainment, Inc. :: Online Store “New” version of the NES

Experimental Balloon Building The name says it all

NOTE TAKING:THE CORNELL SYSTEM Need to remember this next time I step into a classroom

DIYParts.org This is a computer part trading network

9 reasons we dont do what we should

http://www.dosgames.com/ find your favorite DOS game

New hydrogen generation technique announced What Can't the Israeli's figure out?

http://www.multimachine.net/

There are more...I will get to posting them eventually....

Things could be moving.....

Well,
Thanks to Ben, I landed an interview for tommorow morning with http://www.logicalcomm.net/ at 8:15am O_o. So if any of you read this before then please toss up a prayer or two, a job in a computer field would be more than I had hoped for. :)

Also I applied at South today, for a A/V Technician Position.

Things could be moving......

Goals and Other Realizations

I need to make this brief because i need to goto bed

I have been working on having some overarching long term goals, and I think i have a couple figured out.

1. Achieve independence --this would be mainly in the financial realm, which would mean not having to depend on grandma for my expenses, and paying back ALL my debts..

2. Refine and position myself so that my talents can be utilized productively and profitably everyday. Particularly my talent with invention and creative problem solving.

I will flesh out current options for attaining these goals next time I post..

Thanks for reading,
Goodnight :P