I really hate working with visionaries, most specifically The One Whose Stuff Always Changes.
To be more precise, I hate having to base production environments on TOWSAC's ever-morphing
APIs and semi-complete implementations of things.
click here for the rest of the story...
[ published on Fri 20.06.2008 12:30
| filed in
interests/anti
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]
I dislike throwing away repairable things. Like this old,
very cheap but quite good knife (originally from Ikea): after more
than a decade of daily use and the associated dunkings, the wooden handle
had finally rotted away and split.
So I made a new grip: reused some wood reclaimed from a door frame, shaped
it with my router, glued-and-screwed the grip halves on, sanded and lacquered
the thing multiple times.
Why? Because I can, because it is fun to (re)make things and
because a well-made thing gives me satisfaction.
[ published on Sat 14.06.2008 18:36
| filed in
interests/tinkering
|
]
Rob gave me some promising (i.e. ring of fire) chili seeds
a while ago, for planting behind my house. I successfully got them to
sprout (I have anti-green thumbs and can kill off most types of plants,
without meaning to but still easily),
and a few days ago I planted them in 14 or so small batches.
This is how they looked like before I planted them. I'll keep you updated
on how this planting experiment fares.
[ published on Sat 14.06.2008 18:04
| filed in
interests/au
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]
Ebaypal are not allowed to go forward with their paypal-only scheme,
says the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission aka the consumer
watchdog. Schadenfreude is what I feel right now; in my opinion ebaypal deserve
all the flak they get.
This pending ruling is welcome news,
because (as I mentioned a few
weeks ago) the extra mandatory fees make ebay vastly more unattractive to
sell one-offs like I do occasionally. (What also sucks is ebay's sugary
political correctness bullshit but that's a separate story.)
In the meantime I've gotten me an account at Oztion, the biggest(?) local alternative. As they only
charge fees on successful sale (so far) and offer auto-relisting that's
a vastly nicer environment for people like me who sell only odds and
ends occasionally.
[ published on Sat 14.06.2008 17:19
| filed in
interests/anti
|
]
My Wheely King RC toy was a tad fast for crawling over obstacles
and also lacked torque and endurance with the stock motor and batteries.
Simple fix:
I cooked up a cheap brushless motor setup.
Ingredients:
- one cheap Chinese 2830 outrunner (850KV, 58g, 3.17mm shaft): $20
with shipping
- one fairly cheap Chinese/German ESC (speed controller) for brushless motors, $35 plus $15 shipping
- smaller pinion gears, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 17 teeth: $20 plus $10 postage
- some time for filing down the motor mount: dusty but free
Install the 14 tooth pinion. Mix and stir well. Season with absolutely
incomprehensible Chinglish instructions for the ESC. Simmer
on "Medium Angry" for a week. Find the German partner
company who's responsible for the design of the ESC, and who has a manual
in Real English. Turn off the heat, install, enjoy the slooooow speed at full
blast. Up the pinion teeth, to 16. Reinstall, enjoy both the torque and
fast-walking speed on full throttle.
Mounting the brushless dwarf was interesting, because it doesn't have the
same screw pattern as the big 540-size original motor. It comes with a
converter plate but using that the shaft is too short. So I made do with
the smaller screw spacing. I simply filed away a fair bit of
the motor mounting plate and then used a drilled
steel washer as counter-piece for fastening the motor.
Getting the ESC to stop beeping and start working was almost as horrible
as having to learn vi without a clue and a manual (ie. it beeps a lot but
doesn't work, no matter what you do). Extremely frustrating.
The thing being a very no-name non-brand, I even cut off the
heatshrink to have a peek at the circuit board looking for manufacturer clues,
but to no avail. Eventually and only because of a few really
odd, happy circumstances I finally found out that it's one of these and got a working
manual. Wohee, this actually works!
I glued on an old heatsink block to the ESC's metal back plate
and then closed it up again with transparent heatshrink tube. Looks neater
than the original.
Overall the result is very pleasant. Torque is way up, this ESC has a proper
brake (which the original didn't have) and with the tiny brushless motor
(a powerhouse despite weighing only a measly 58g) I get very nice
long run times even with the
old original nicad battery. The reduced weight up top helps too.
[ published on Fri 13.06.2008 01:06
| filed in
interests/tinkering
|
]
As mentioned a few days ago I've just escaped the clutches of
our telco monopolist - successfully I should say.
Here are my experiences with the Telstra Elimination Project.
click here for the rest of the story...
[ published on Fri 13.06.2008 00:15
| filed in
interests/au
|
]
We're back, connected once again: some techie must have been in the
neighbourhood saturday night, because Saturday 2138 line-sync suddenly
reappeared, and today I finished setting up the remaining bits
(e.g. inbound POTS-to-VOIP etc.) and verified that Internode didn't make
a mess of their part of the service conversion.
Looks all mostly good, except line attenuation has jumped up 10dB
(without the previously required inline filter), which makes little
sense, and sits now at 50dB downstream. This sucks as it severly limits the
achievable sync speeds and makes things a tad more brittle. Ticket open,
we'll see.
[ published on Sun 08.06.2008 20:44
| filed in
still-not-king
|
]
Actually it's not just low on blood but stone-dead, but it'll come
back -- eventually (like in the film Reanimator...).
click here for the rest of the story...
[ published on Fri 06.06.2008 09:55
| filed in
brainfarts
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]
When Conny went to brush her teeth tonight before bedtime, I suddenly got
a fairly urgent/distressed Request for Assistance: she stood mesmerized at
the bathroom door, and a meter from her sat an (equally mesmerized) huntsman
spider of less that minimal size (maybe 10x10cm with the legs). She strongly
dislikes spiders.
And so do I. Usually, smaller specimens I don't bother; they eat bugs and thus
are not exactly welcome but tolerated household members (if they stay hidden
and out of the geckos' way). But this one was too large for my liking, so it
got the bucket-on-top-and-then-poison-inside treatment (huntsmen are
very fast). Sorry fella!
Conny asked for this note to any future spider visitors to be posted on the
web (maybe spiders use google? dunno): Small and tiny spiders tolerated,
large ones very unwelcome. May be dealt with harshly!
[ published on Mon 02.06.2008 00:18
| filed in
still-not-king
|
]