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!

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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 [↩]

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! [↩]

No, not The Office, but the office. Workshop. Datacenter. Server room. Den. Library. Whatever you want to call it - it’s the geek sanctuary inside of your home. The place you can leave PCBs strewn about and know they will still be there tomorrow. The place where no one questions why you have 27 90mm and 30 80mm fan grills¹. The place that gets your blood flowing, makes you want to complete that project, or maybe start one of the many projects you’ve been meaning to get around to².

I used to have one of those, but no longer.

And it sucks. Srsly.

At one point in time I had a nice 2 bedroom apartment. The larger one with the bigger windows was where I put the bed and other bedroom furniture, and the smaller one with the single window that gets deliciously blocked by a tree outside was my office.

I had a nice little shelving unit setup to act as a server rack. It held a half dozen computers, from an ancient Mac SE to a modern Proliant server. It also held all the networking gear, from a beautiful 24 port gigabit switch with all those pretty blinking lights and fiber optics, down to a wireless access point and the keyboard video and monitor needed to play with all those machines.

It also had a long plain table, about 3′ wide by 9′ long. That was my workbench. It held my soldering iron, soldering supplies and and anything I was working on - and would hold it in perpetuity, until I decided it was done or otherwise got rid of it.

Then, my lease was up, so I decided to move to a new place. At the last minute, that fell through, and I tried to stay where I was - but they had already rented it out. So I was stuck with what they had left, a 1 bedroom.

Oh, I tried to make it work - the living room was more or less the office now - minus the capability to leave things out for months or years at a time. I could try it, but when you live with people you need to be a tad considerate of them, and understand that although I have a method to all this, they don’t get it - and really probably never would.

So I did what I could to make it ok. I couldn’t really complete any projects - my style is to work on multiple projects concurrently, switching when I get stuck/bored/waiting on parts/etc - and I couldn’t start any new ones, because of space issues, and because I’d have to put the stuff away when I was done. That isn’t acceptable to me.

Then, I decided to move us to a loft. I thought it’d be great, and don’t get me wrong, I do love it - it’s just there’s even less privacy because it’s so open. There are partitions making 2 rooms of sorts, and one is acting as an ad-hoc office for me, but sound travels and I just feel so trapped in there sometime.

I really need to find us a new place when the lease is up, or rent a place I can call my own and move everything over there. Not sure what I’ll do yet.

So, do you have a sanctuary?

1. Really good deals on both and poor reading skills. Separate purchases, but I thought they would work together. I don’t know why I thought that. [↩]
2. I have a baker’s dozen of projects to start [↩]

So I’ve tidied up the blog a bit and streamlined some things¹.
I removed the tag cloud because, well, they’re stupid and no one really uses them like they should, anyway. In its place sits a new blogroll of TC people. Blogs of people in the area I come across, I’ll just keep adding them to it. If you want yours added to the list, just leave a comment. I don’t really like how there isn’t really a definitive separation between individual links, I’ll have to see if I can’t fix that later.
I’ve also added a new “Minnesota Links” page - just a set of URLs I like to hit up that involves my home state. I’ll add to that as well when I come across new resources.

I went to bed last night seeing a dusting of snow outside. Thought I’d have a picture of the snowfall for you today, but when I woke up it was all gone. Though supposedly we’ll have up to an inch of snow tonight, so maybe tomorrow I’ll have the picture²

Also, I’m working on a long term story now. In my quest to prove “You can never really hide yourself on the internet” I’ve created a second blog. I’m using a completely new login ID, one that has nothing to do with me. I’m writing posts about things that are more out of scope then I normally do, and I’m rewording things currently happening or not writing about it at all. Nevertheless, in 6 months time or so, I will have an exhaustive article on performing internet forensics.
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1. Plus added a sweet footnotes plugin so I can do this [↩]
2. Damn, I remember trick or treating in the snow [↩]

So several months ago I purchased a Buck Rogers pinball machine playfield. The playfield is just that, it’s the area the ball runs around on - no back, no legs, etc. Just the field and the accompanying electronics used for it.

After a lot of soul searching I decided to not use the lights that came with it. Why? The reasons were simple - the main wiring harness was a thick complex rope of wires that ran through the table - making it hard to discern which lights were what. So what to do? I just spent a whopping $4.75 to purchase 50 40,000mcd white LEDs on eBay. Those are more then I need, but better safe then sorry.  Not to mentionI know exactly how much voltage they need, how to build a harness for them, and other things - AND, I can do other things - like make certain lights blink with some arduino action. So that’s settled.

That leaves things like the top and legs and such. I can’t find it on their site but Target has these neat ‘Build your own’ furniture  kits - and there are some legs I think might fit perfectly for the occasion, I need to measure them though. The top will be acrylic from TAP and the surround will be some wood I purchase and stain later, not sure - I don’t want pine though. Maybe a nice oak?

I’ve also ordered parts for a brand new PC, a badly needed upgrade - they arrive this week.

I’ve gathered all of the supplies needed now for what I’m calling Project Note - I look forward to building that this weekend or so. I’ll take plenty of pictures, but it’s a gift for someone for Christmas so you won’t see it until then, sadly.

More later - it’s been a busy few weeks.

Although not as clever as the majority of ones at Ikea Hacker, I too have improved the use of some Ikea furniture!

Although they are no longer listed on Ikea’s online catalog and I neglected to take a picture beforehand, awhile ago I bought 2 DVD holders from Ikea. They each had 5 shelves, made out of metal, and neat concrete bases. I bought them before I lived in a loft, because I knew I wanted to live in a loft, the one we’re at specifically, and thought they would look great - and they do. Problem is, we have way to many DVDs - more then enough to fill both towers up to the brim and more! A few of them were larger box sets and I didn’t want a line of DVD holders stretched along the wall so I ran to the hardware store and came back with five 3 foot long boards. They are 6″ wide and 3/8″ thick and fit perfectly if you turn the DVD towers sideways. Now I can just buy longer boards if we have more DVDs to store - I think it looks great as it is, but with a little gunship gray paint I doubt you’d be able to tell these are wood from a distance. For added safety, bolt them to the stands, and then screw some angle iron into the wood to hold the DVDs and prevent sliding.

Here’s a few pictures - click to make ‘em bigger!

Here you can see the board on top of the old stands:

The finished holder, already filled out:

I won’t tell you what I’m working on for my next project, but I will post a random picture for no reason at all. Heh heh.

Speaking of projects, the pinball playfield coffee table is still in the works, I’m now waiting on a few additional parts via eBay to come my way. I want the playfield to shine!

As a collector of screen printed gig posters, I know the pain that is the cost of frames. Not only that, but where can you find a frame that will fit an 11″ x 23″ poster correctly?
Calling around here in St. Paul, the average price ran about $50 for an 11″ x 23″ piece of glass - not the whole frame, but the glass! There has to be a better way! And, there is!

What do you need? A sheet of acrylic and some sectional frame kits. Read on, and I’ll show you how!

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Our windows are 8 feet high by 3 and a half feet wide. There are 5 of them (Well, 7 total, but 5 connected to each other), and each window is separated by 15 squares. That’s 140 square feet of space that’s visible to the street. So, self, here’s the deal - build us a clock that stretches up the entire window.

Then, expand on that and make it scroll messages.

Then, set an alarm set and snooze button that’s wireless, and put it them in the street next art crawl.

Then, be awesome.

Don’t forget future self.

Oh, and you guys out there, come see me Friday before 6pm in the Education building at the State Fair - I’ll be working the MNArtists.org booth, as usual.

Ha ha! I won it! I won the auction for a 1979 Gottlieb Buck Rogers pinball playfield! He gives it a 9.5 out of a 10 in regards to shape, just a few things missing but other then that it’s almost brand new - just needs a couple parts, some polish, and then it’s coffee table time! I’m hoping to do it a bit cleaner then the person who wrote the HOW-TO; my woodworking skills aren’t great at all, but I think I can pull off a few things to make this table more refined and include things like miter joints. I’ll also need to work on a proper circuit to supply power to it - I’m thinking of using one of the rechargeable 18 volt batteries used in my Ryobi system + an additional charger. I figure I can use a DC-DC step down to convert from 18V to the ~6.3V the lights need, plus what ever additional power is needed to compensate for resistance. I can gut the charger, connecting inline to the battery and that way it can just charge the battery, or charge the battery while powering the lights, or just power the lights. Not bad for a $40 investment, $20 for the charger, $20 for the battery. Plus, this battery is a standard Ryobi uses so I can count on them being available for quite some time. Anyway, I’m stoked! I’m also hoping (Though not real sure I will) that I also win this auction, which is for another pinball playfield - this time for a 1978 Bally Playboy machine. It’s not in perfect shape, but it’ll clean up real well. If I get good enough at this, maybe I’ll try to sell them. I figure at most $250 for the parts, and it should easily sell for $500+, call it art and I can go as high as $800 no sweat. And $250 would be the max, a lot of the playfields go for only $50 or so, it’s just a tight market suddenly.

Anyway, pics of the new Buck Rogers playfield after the jump.

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