What did I do this weekend. Well, first off I replace the front brakes on the ole ‘Woo. I had new rotors for her to, but the caliper mounting bracket bolts weren’t budging and considering I was on an incline, I felt it not wise to attempt to use too much force.
Also, I learned how important it is to ensure the jack you bought will fit under your car.
And also, I learned that the previous owners of the vehicle stole the lug nut wrench and the jack handle.
Which meant I had to use the only tool left, a screwdriver, to raise the car’s own jack. No, it wasn’t really fun.
I was actually disappointed the brake pads had as much left on them as they did. I was hoping my soft brakes were the cause of next-to-no pad left. I was wrong - but in a week or two I’ll tackle the rear brake pads and rotors - hopefully those are the ones causing the issue. The guy at Napa, in a super casual glance through a hole in the rim assured me that “Yeah, they’re shot”. So if you can’t trust that, who can you trust?

Then, on Sunday, I went through all of my computer parts and electronic packratting. I managed to go from 4 large plastic bins down to 2. I threw away a lot of things, some of which were:

• 17 computer power supplies (Out of 19, I kept the 2 AT ones for use as bench power supplies)
• 5 cell phones of varying age, the newest being about 5 years old
• 11 hard drives, with a combined storage total of 9GB!
• Batteries for a laptop I don’t have any more
• Batteries for several cameras I don’t have any more
• Easily 300 feet of coax cable alone - plus about 200 feet of misc cable
• A ginormous box of obsolete electronic devices from a local school district. A lot of Mac gear.
• 2 complete PCs, not anywhere near powerful enough to do anything of much use these days.

I also have something like 35 12 foot long brown extension cords.

All of this is part of my “One Project, One Trip” mentality. If I have a project to complete, I’ll buy the main parts of it and anything else I think I need but don’t know if I have.

So I think I’ll start making a home inventory system for the office. Keep all my cables tagged and organized. Same with the tools. And if I’m going to do that, I might as well make it web enabled, so I can query it from Home Depot and see that yes, I do have a 25 foot long S-Video cable. And if I’m going to do all that, I might as well throw my barcode scanner into it, so I can just scan things when I get them and know what they are right away.

Ain’t technology great?

I’ll have some pictures of the brake action later, but forgot to take some of the cable action. However, I will be taking timed pictures of the move out date, so I can make a neat little time-lapse movie about it.

Anyway - big move happens this Friday. And I think we’ll be ready.

So I was having a rough day to day to say the least. That is, until I got a little email at about 5pm. And that email? It was this:

Yes, that’s right - I finally got beta access to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. (Read about it on Wikipedia) I’ve been nothing but smiles and in the absolute best mood ever since! Why? I applied to be in the beta almost 2 years ago.

To give you a sense of scale, since I applied to the beta, I’ve:

• Lived in 2 cities
• Met, then proposed to, my Mishka
• Had 4 different jobs in 3 cities
• Been published in 4 magazines and 2 newspapers

So yeah, you can say I’ve been waiting.

And sadly, I’ll need to wait a little longer, too:

Only 25% done downloading after 3 hours.

But that’s A-OK with me because I FINALLY HAVE BETA ACCESS! HOT DAMN!

I mean, look what I’ll be playing soon, so very soon.

And I’d love for you to join me too - if you pre-order the collectors edition (I’ve ordered 3) then you get an automatic invite into the open beta which will be coming up in a few months - AND you’ll be able to play with ME! So do it!

Pre-Order Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector’s Edition

So since I’ve decided to keep the ‘Woo instead of upgrading to a sexy CX-7, I’ve decided why not go the next step and actually upgrade it.

My Leganza is an “SE” model. Not the absolute bottom line, but not the top end “CDX” version. But, what I have going for me is the fact that most of the stuff the makes an SE a CDX is already there. All of the internals are there - wiring harnesses, sensors, and the what not. And to be honest, for being a ‘bargain’ car maker, Daewoo did do a lot to the hardware side of things¹ - it gets over 30mpg, the 2.2 liter engine is surprisingly peppy, 4 wheel anti-lock disc brakes², power windows, locks, mirrors, etc. So it’s definately worth keeping around for awhile.

The best part is since they sold it all to Chevy, the Daewoo branded stuff is getting dirt cheap - I bought the service manuals and wiring schematics for over 80% off their normal price! Hell, I can buy the Daewoo allow rims for only $50 a piece, when they originally went for almost $250 each! Not to mention, the Daewoo website is amazingly helpful. I can buy, literally, any part that the car has - right there online.

But even better, and back to my original point - eBay has many of those same parts, and even cheaper. So since we’ll be moving to a place with a garage and multiple rooms soon, I might as well get started!

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Taking away from the comfort side of things to do it [↩]
2. And it’s a 2001 mind you - there’s a lot of 2008 cars that don’t have 4 wheel disc brakes [↩]

Well, the Bent Festival is over. It was an amazing event, I met a lot of awesome talented people, and took a metric ton of pictures - over 1700 in all. Here are some of my favorites, starting with my absolute fave!

Albino Ghost Monkey from Rice Lake, WI

Tim Kaiser from Duluth, MN plays his homemade instruments

The custom hacked and bent keyboard played by Albino Ghost Monkey

Closeup of one of the hacked synthesizers connected to a stationary bicycle

Hacked Nintendo, used to display odd visuals of classic games

DJ Tendraw from England gives us his hardcore renditions

Memory Selector from Chicago/Minneapolis plays a chill set

Creme De Menthia of Illinois waxes his bending skills

Mike Rosenthal of “The Tank” cooks for the group at the Bent BBQ

Datura 1.0 and Tim Kaiser discuss their art over Bratwurst

Ronald Schleper teaches a drum machine bending workshop

Beatrix*JAR pumps up the audience at the end of day 1

There really are to many good pictures - it’s hard to choose. If you’re feeling brave, feel free to look at the over 750 shots at my Flickr set.

Really looking forward to next year! And thanks to Wired’s GeekDad for asking me to shoot it!

There’s a lot of neat things going down in the TC this weekend, and here are some choice ones to check out!

The Bent Festival - Happening yesterday until Saturday, the 5th annual Bent Festival makes it’s last leg stop here in Minneapolis. Check them out at Intermedia Arts, on 28th and Lyndale. You’ll meet & greet and listen to some of the most interesting music in the world of DIY circuit bending. From soft soothing melodies to a brash jarring cacophony of sounds - you can find it there. At $10 per concert, it’s your best choice for 6 solid hours of music, and on Saturday there is a wealth of workshops to show you how to do it yourself and a barbecue to help you keep going! Please Note: They don’t like credit cards, so bring cash. And some of the workshops have a fee, so keep that in mind.

Studio Bricolage’s First Friday - A lot of people know about Leonardo’s Basement, an organization that helps boys and girls from 6 - 16 expand their minds with the help of music, art, robotics and more. But did you also know they hold an event every First Friday of the month at Studio Bricolage? Studio Bricolage is the adult oriented version of Leonardo’s Basement. For only $10, this month’s session will teach you how to melt plastic toys into bowls, crochet plastic bags together, create your own inflatables and a whole lot more. We’ve been here a few times, and it’s always a great time¹

Black Dog Exhibit Opener - If you’re not doing anything at all tonight and you’re in the St. Paul area, check out the Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar for the opening night of their “Limitless Energy” exhibit - showing the energy that resides within the artist. Cost is free, and you can see some of my stuff! And maybe, even, buy it!² And remember, my art comes JACC approved, for that extra goodness!

And now for a few shots from last night’s Bent concert

1. Really looking forward to their Arduino workshops in June! [↩]
2. Yes, I’m a shameless whore. I’m learning that’s just the artist’s way [↩]

I’ve always been a PIC¹ kinda guy. PIC² is a microcontroller made by Microchip. It’s fairly popular in the hobbyist market because they’re so widely available and so very cheap. They can do a lot, but they can be a pain to develop with unless you know all the parts you need to accomplish your goals, tough for a newbie. I use the PICKit 1 development kit because it has a lot of the extra basic bits you need to do anything useful, less hunting == more fun.

Over the past year or so³ I’ve been hearing more about more about the Arduino⁴ The Arduino is a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. It looks like a lot of fun, and it seems like overnight a mountain of interesting tips, tricks and projects have popped up revolving around this little guy. It’s design is also open and you can download both the hardware design reference documents as well as the source code for the IDE and on-board library. So I’m temporarily jumping over the fence and just ordered one online from Adafruit.com. At $65, it’s a bit more then the PICKit, but the wealth of information out there makes it promising - especially simple how-tos and projects, dwarfs the information you can find on the PIC, even though the PIC does have “123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius” on it’s side.

The Arduino really seems more aimed at the hobbyist market - which makes sense as that is what it was designed to for. You can create programs that will run stand alone or connect it to your computer to allow the virtual world to interact with the physical world. People have built a lot of interesting things with their Arduinos from clocks, POV machines, theremins to even a hitcounter that rings a bell when someone visits their site. They do make it look quite sexy, no?

So I’ve got a few simple projects I’d like to make⁵ , and I think they would be an excellent way to test out what that ATmega168 can do. I’ll make a little write up about it in a few months. Wish me luck!

1. Programmable Interface Computer [↩]
2. More about PIC: Official Site, Mailing List, Tools [↩]
3. Ever since I started reading MAKE magazine - you should subscribe too [↩]
4. More about the Arduino: Official Site, Wiki, Photos, Tutorial, Introduction To [↩]
5. Projects: External iPod display/control, Canvas project, Proximity Clock, My grandiose living clock, etc etc - I’ve talked about some of these back in the day, time to get ‘er done! [↩]

In episode 12, season 3 of Futurama - title “The Route of all Evil” - Fry, Leela, and Bender brew beer inside of Bender, and end up treating him like an expectant mother.

Well now, Simon Jansen of Asciimation remembered that episode and decided to make an actual functioning brewing Bender, and wrote out all the steps he used, including circuit diagrams! Fanboy note: It’s joked that Bender is powered by an ancient 6502 processor, so Mr. Jansen decided to gut an old commodore disc drive and use it’s 6502 to make Bender talk.

Kudos to you man, kudos!

So I’ll have some links and such, but it’s a Friday free for all this week.

First up, it’s Cody bashing - from me, and others. First, I get up this morning to find this JUST PUBLISHED piece on MPR entitled “How old is to young to see Juno” - holy Christ! The movie came out 2 months ago, and NOW you decide to write up some fluff? And the parents in the article - could they be more dense? Yes, you really should wait for a movie to ‘break the ice’ about your teen slutting it up. Because personal responsibility is unacceptable. It’s never your fault.
Then, from the sexy folks over at MNSpeak, I learn about a leaked Diablo Cody screenplay for the movie “Quotey”, which is a “dramedy about a brilliant-yet-spunky screenwriter who says what we all think but still faces persecution for her quirky ways“.
Finally, the people over at CC2K take a look at the dialog in the next Cody screenplay and wonder just what the fuck is she saying. I will say, I agree with all their points.

So how was your Valentine’s Day? Mine was great, lovely dinner under the a canopy of sharks. And I found out the singers I had hired to sing to Mishka were not only liked, they were loved. She cried, they made a big scene - she was supervising the front gate so everyone waiting in line got to see it too. She said “I saw 4 men come down the escalator in Tuxedos and I thought to myself ‘That wonderful crazy bastard didnt!’” - but I did baby, but I did.

It’s been a few days now with Vista on the new Dell laptop and I have to say, I don’t think Vista deserves all the crap it’s gotten. The only problem I’ve had is the thing where it won’t properly sleep or wake up all the time - other then that, it’s been great. Then again, with 4 gigs of ram and a 2.2GHZ Core 2 Duo proc, maybe it’s beefy enough to handle any inconsistencies - either way Service Pack 1 comes out in a few weeks (Or I could DL it now from MSDN, which I may do) and from what I’ve been hearing it has a lot of nice improvements.

I finally have all of the episodes of “The IT Crowd“, a deliciously wonderful UK sitcom about Roy and Moss, the IT department of a large company. They are banished to the basement and are lead by a woman who doesn’t have the faintest idea on how to even turn a computer on. It’s one of the few TV shows that I not only love, but I identify with - especially the BofH attitudes of the staff “Did you try turning it off and then back on?”. You can’t buy it in the US, but The Pirate Bay has it for download - though as soon as an NTSC version hits it’s mine!

Seriously, how can you not love this:

Upcoming photo gigs: I’ll be shooting for the F1 Overnight Website challenge, the city of Minneapolis’ Bike Walk Week and MPR’s next Story Slam. See me there.

The links? They’ll show up later. I’m a busy guy today, damn it!

Until then, here’s JACC on the kazoo singing his rendition of “All you need (is love)” - thanks again, JACC!

Nor is it like that 6 band shooter you had as a kid. Meet Anthony Smith’s “Disintegrator” - this hand carved dual barrel badass features 288 rubber bands and a firing rate of 40 per second. See the video below, then check out the website. There are hobbies, and then there are obsessions.

Here’s a new web ad from Apple, and I’ll admit, it is pretty clever. It even looks like Mac and PC are interacting with the leaderboard. Have a look:

Apple: Because you’re to dumb to use a PC.