Thursday, July 14, 2005
Hack of the Day: 2 Hour "Custom" Wine Rack
After years of searching, Kimberley and I finally found DVD storage units we were excited about: a pair of Card-catalog-look DVD racks that fit nicely under the breakfast bar in our downstairs area.
They fill two of the three "areas" under the bar. That was several months ago. Since then, we've been looking for a way to fill in the center area in a way that meets our storage needs and Kimberley's interior design requirements. We considered a custom bookshelf to hold our mountain of cookbooks, an ornamental wine rack to hold the "drinking" portion of our ever-growing wine collection, and just about any other cabinet, shelf, table, or whatever we came across in any home or furniture store that looked like it might fit the space.
In the end, we didn't really find anything that knocked us out. It was especially difficult because we kept going back and forth between Wine Rack and Bookshelf for the space, we needed both. After a while, you start looking for "creative" solutions, and having metalworking skills in your bag of tricks gives you a lot of ways to solve problems.
On a night when we were killing time before a movie, not even looking for furniture (which is almost always when we find it), we stumbled across a Pier1 piece that was a combo "Wine Rack/Baker's Rack, ornamental-ironwork shelf thing". Kimberley liked the piece and wondered aloud if there was anything I could do to make it fit our space. With the eyes of a hacker and a blacksmith, I sized it up as about 10 minutes of cutting... Oh yeah, I can make that fit.
Here's what we eventually came up with: "The 2 Hour "Custom Winerack"
As I figured, it was about 10 minutes of cutting, including the time to change my grinder over to a cutting wheel. The rest of the time was spent cleaning up the posts with the grinding wheel and repainting the piece. All told I really only spent about an hour and a half, so the "2 Hour" title is rounding-up!
We're very happy with the look of the piece, as it fits the rest of the funky sort of warm eclectic thing we've got going on, and matches a couple other items of ironwork in the room.
Read More...
Friday, June 10, 2005
Lucky Guy
So I know I have a fantastic spouse. I love her, and she makes me very happy. But every now and then you get a little extra reminder of just how lucky you are...
Had one of those moments recently, thought I should share:
The setting:
~6:50am on a Friday morning
Kimberley is getting ready for work and I'm sitting in bed trying to wake up; watching the Practice Round of the Formula 1 European Grand Prix on the TiVo. (Delayed several hours, time-zones and what-not)
While Kimberley moves from bedroom to bathroom and back, doing her morning routine, the commentators are laying out the "story lines" for the coming race:
Honda returns after a 2-race ban! Will Bridgestone sort out their tire problems? Can Kimi Raikkonen take his fourth straight pole?
And of course, the big one: The FIA and team owners have agreed to change the qualifying format:
Instead of determining the race order via the "current" system of aggregating times from a Saturday afternoon one-lap session and a Sunday morning one-lap session, they will now do only a single session on Saturday, and that time will determine race order.
At which point my darling bride sticks her head back into the bedroom and asks:
"Is that on race fuel, or light tanks?"
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
That she was even LISTENING to the commentary was a pleasant fact. That she understood the significant difference 60 kilos or so of fuel can have on qualifying speed AND race strategy?!?!?!
Wow, I'm a lucky guy. Read More...
Had one of those moments recently, thought I should share:
The setting:
~6:50am on a Friday morning
Kimberley is getting ready for work and I'm sitting in bed trying to wake up; watching the Practice Round of the Formula 1 European Grand Prix on the TiVo. (Delayed several hours, time-zones and what-not)
While Kimberley moves from bedroom to bathroom and back, doing her morning routine, the commentators are laying out the "story lines" for the coming race:
Honda returns after a 2-race ban! Will Bridgestone sort out their tire problems? Can Kimi Raikkonen take his fourth straight pole?
And of course, the big one: The FIA and team owners have agreed to change the qualifying format:
Instead of determining the race order via the "current" system of aggregating times from a Saturday afternoon one-lap session and a Sunday morning one-lap session, they will now do only a single session on Saturday, and that time will determine race order.
At which point my darling bride sticks her head back into the bedroom and asks:
"Is that on race fuel, or light tanks?"
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
That she was even LISTENING to the commentary was a pleasant fact. That she understood the significant difference 60 kilos or so of fuel can have on qualifying speed AND race strategy?!?!?!
Wow, I'm a lucky guy. Read More...
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
30 Second Hack - Play your iPod Shuffle while charging!
So every now and then I whip out some quick little hack to make my life (or someone else's life) easier. I rarely even take the time to document them, since usually the hack is so trivial as to make documentation insulting.
The last one was this little circuit for a bloke on Miata.net. Yes, I'm a lazy bastard, I didn't really draw the circuit so much as link to one someone else drew, and tell him what resistors to use. But the point is, I applied my hard-earned BSEE to the gripping problem that was this dude's garage door opener.
Well, here's another 30 second Hack. I'll literally spend 10x more time with this blog entry than I spent on the hack:
How to play tunes on your iPod Shuffle while charging the battery.
Problem: The iPod shuffle both charges its battery and does data exchange (iTunes and thumb-drive) via its built-in USB port. Normally this is great, except that for some inexplicable reason, any time the iPod has a data connection going, it disables the player functionality.
Why is this a problem? If you're sitting at a PC, why not just use the PC to play music? In my case, I work at any number of PCs, both in my office and in the lab. For various reasons (company policy, not the least of which), I don't have iTunes installed or any .mp3s loaded on any of these machines.
So my choices are to either play my iPod and run the battery down, despite being inches from a suitable charging port, or to charge the batteries in silence. Dumb.
Solution: I made a USB "Power Cord" which charges the battery but doesn't establish a data connection, so the iPod keeps-on-a-rockin'.
For background, consult the USB pinout standard, but you can just duplicate this in all is simple-gory details below.
You'll need the following:
Parts: Electrical Tape, 1 USB Extension Cable with suitable ends (probably Male 'A' and Female 'A')
-or- a regular A-B cable and one of those Female-B to Female-A adaptors (which is what I used because we have literally hundreds of these things lying around at work).
Tools: X-acto Knife, Cutters
Disclaimer: If you somehow manage to mess this up and fry your iPod or your PC's USB port, I accept no responsibility for this. Simply disabling the data lines should be safe, if you can accomplish that task without doing anything stupid.
Procedure:
The last one was this little circuit for a bloke on Miata.net. Yes, I'm a lazy bastard, I didn't really draw the circuit so much as link to one someone else drew, and tell him what resistors to use. But the point is, I applied my hard-earned BSEE to the gripping problem that was this dude's garage door opener.
Well, here's another 30 second Hack. I'll literally spend 10x more time with this blog entry than I spent on the hack:
How to play tunes on your iPod Shuffle while charging the battery.
Problem: The iPod shuffle both charges its battery and does data exchange (iTunes and thumb-drive) via its built-in USB port. Normally this is great, except that for some inexplicable reason, any time the iPod has a data connection going, it disables the player functionality.
Why is this a problem? If you're sitting at a PC, why not just use the PC to play music? In my case, I work at any number of PCs, both in my office and in the lab. For various reasons (company policy, not the least of which), I don't have iTunes installed or any .mp3s loaded on any of these machines.
So my choices are to either play my iPod and run the battery down, despite being inches from a suitable charging port, or to charge the batteries in silence. Dumb.
Solution: I made a USB "Power Cord" which charges the battery but doesn't establish a data connection, so the iPod keeps-on-a-rockin'.
For background, consult the USB pinout standard, but you can just duplicate this in all is simple-gory details below.
You'll need the following:
Parts: Electrical Tape, 1 USB Extension Cable with suitable ends (probably Male 'A' and Female 'A')
-or- a regular A-B cable and one of those Female-B to Female-A adaptors (which is what I used because we have literally hundreds of these things lying around at work).
Tools: X-acto Knife, Cutters
Disclaimer: If you somehow manage to mess this up and fry your iPod or your PC's USB port, I accept no responsibility for this. Simply disabling the data lines should be safe, if you can accomplish that task without doing anything stupid.
Procedure:
- Using the X-acto knife, Slit about 1" of the USB cable's outer insulation, preferably near the iPod end, but it doesn't really matter.
- Your cable probably has a woven shield and/or a foil jacket around the actual wiring. Try to slit and part this to expose the 4 wires, while doing the minimum amount of damage here.
- Using the cutters, snip the Green and White wires (data lines). For neatness, I actually snipped out about a 1/4" of these wires just to make sure they wouldn't short to each other. I suppose the really anal types might work harder to ensure no shorting of the data lines to the shielding occurs. I didn't. Doesn't seem to matter.
- Tuck the wires back into the shield weave/foil.
- Wrap electrical tape around the slit.
- If you're like me, the electrical tape will be a sufficient indicator that this is now a USB POWER CABLE which will no longer serve any other purpose. Otherwise, you might want to label the cable somehow, so the next unsuspecting geek doesn't try to use it to sync his PDA or something...
- Plug in the cable to your PC or hub. Plug in the iPod to the cable. Confirm that the amber light on the battery indicator is lit (charging). Marvel at the amazing ability to charge the battery and listen to music at the same time.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Echoes from an old hobby...
So I found this on Fark today:
Robot misses contest after being banned from plane
My opinion? The students were idiots. I started building/fighting Battlebots and similar robots in 1999 and have never had any trouble getting them onto airplanes, even in the post-9/11 world. We're not talking little firefighting boxes on wheels here, I'm talking nasty pointy battle robots built to shred stuff a lot tougher than airplane skin.
With a few basic precautions, the only problem I ever had with an airline was that my toolcase was over the max weight and had to pay an extra fee.
One other note, some competitors flying from overseas with machines in higher weightclasses went to the extra expense of crating and shipping their machines since they would have been over the usual luggage weight limits. The firefighting dorks in the article might consider that for next time too. Even shipping 400lbs from the UK to Las Vegas cost less than an extra airline ticket...
As I said... idiots. Read More...
Robot misses contest after being banned from plane
My opinion? The students were idiots. I started building/fighting Battlebots and similar robots in 1999 and have never had any trouble getting them onto airplanes, even in the post-9/11 world. We're not talking little firefighting boxes on wheels here, I'm talking nasty pointy battle robots built to shred stuff a lot tougher than airplane skin.
With a few basic precautions, the only problem I ever had with an airline was that my toolcase was over the max weight and had to pay an extra fee.
- Empty any compressed-gas tanks (C02, etc.) and lock them open
- Cover any sharp edges/points (its a Battlebot, after all)
- Disconnect the batteries.
- As an extra measure for making things easy for everyone involved, I packed batteries in a separate box next to the robot. (Some airlines require the batteries from electric wheelchairs to be stored in a special "Battery Box" for fears of gas accumulation, so I planned ahead in case I was asked to do the same)
- Oh yeah, I showed up 2 hours before the flight in case there were any problems!
One other note, some competitors flying from overseas with machines in higher weightclasses went to the extra expense of crating and shipping their machines since they would have been over the usual luggage weight limits. The firefighting dorks in the article might consider that for next time too. Even shipping 400lbs from the UK to Las Vegas cost less than an extra airline ticket...
As I said... idiots. Read More...
Friday, March 18, 2005
SDMC Membership Fee Increase
OMG! People kill me.
Here's the background: The Miata club is having its (required) Annual meeting soon. This is where we elect officers and do all the other official club business that lets us keep our California non-profit status. Among the business on the table is a proposed increase in membership fees. The stated reasoning for the fees is increased cost of club operation, insurance, sending out newsletters to our 500+ members, etc.
After six years with no increase, the proposal is to raise the fee from $25 per family to $35 per family, per year. For reference, one of our club members stated that his local Porsche Club membership is $135/year and the BMW club is $75/year.
This group is pretty damn active, averaging like 2+ events a month, not to mention monthly meetings, etc., so for myself and Kimberley, its a no-brainer decision.
On the other hand, there's always gotta be one guy who needs to be a dissenter. This was posted to the club mailing list:
=====================================================================
>From: xxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx
>Date: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:05 pm
>Subject: Re: Increasing Dues?
>Not that it matters, since I'm sure it's going to happen. But I'd have to
>quit, if the dues got any more expensive. I can barely afford the $25.
=====================================================================
I admit that some of our members are under tighter budgets than most people, but this sort of blows my mind. We're talking an increase of less than 3 cents a day. I started thinking: Give up 2 trips to Starbucks, and you're there. Pass on "Supersizing" your BigMac twice a month, and you're there.
Well, being the "natural born leader" that I am, I came up with an even better solution. Here's my response the club list. Enjoy:
=====================================================================
>From: "Mike Herbst"
>Date: Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:13 am
>Subject: (NMC) Membership Fee Increase - (non)Run
<HUMOR>
I've come up with an idea to cover the potential increased membership
fees, assuming the measure passes at the Annual Meeting.
I propose to lead a (non)Run to help everyone in the club scrape
together the extra $10 to cover new membership fees:
The SDMC Membership Fee Increase (non)Run:
TIME/PLACE: Annual Meeting, Immediately after the Vote
WHERE: We will (not) be driving a scenic route through Julian and
Anza Borrego.
DISTANCE: Approximately 110 Miles (not) Driven.
WHY: On this (non)Run, we'll see (imagine) some of the most beautiful
areas of San Diego County while enjoying the comraderie of the SDMC.
Furthermore, by (not) driving this route we'll save approximately 4.2
gallons of regular unleaded fuel, which at today's prices should more
than make up for the $10 Membership Fee Increase. Members running
Higher Octane or with less efficient cars will of course save more
money. I heartily recommend these extra savings be used to purchase
regalia or be donated to the club.
I hope you'll all join me and Kimberley as we lead the (non)Run! It
should go by very quickly, as I drive very fast in my imagination.
(And apparently only in my imagination.)
See you at the Annual Meeting!
</HUMOR>
In all seriousness, I'll be voting "Yes" on the fee increase. The SDMC is a fantastic community and resource, and would be a "steal at twice the price", especially when compared to other (less active) clubs in the area. I'd like to think that I'll be able to remain a member (and keep paying whatever dues) even if I ever manage to wreck, sell, or otherwise lack, a Miata.
Cheers,
Mike "Herbie" Herbst
===================================================================== Read More...
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