nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

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HobbyLab USB Oscilloscope


Inside of the HobbyLab USB Oscilloscope
(Click for more photos…)

Today a USB Oscilloscope from HobbyLab arrived. The nice thing about it is that it also has a logic analyzer build in. So, if things go as planned I’ll hook it to the Honda Music Link tonight and start picking apart its serial data.

Also, I’m moving photos of things I’ve acquired (purchased, traded, or otherwise come into possession of) into a photo album called Stuff I’ve Acquired (photo gallery retired). Thusly many of the links down below have probably broken. My photo gallery is long overdue for a reorganization. It’s become difficult for me to find things.

acquired thingselectronicsmoved from livejournal

Inside My Teef!


Some of my teeth. And flesh.
(Click for more of my teef…)

Digital x-rays are nifty. When going to the dentist today I happened to get an every-five-year full mouth set. Fortunately earlier this year I installed a digital x-ray system at my dentist’s office.

The full set (plus one mistake where the sensor slipped from the holder) is available here: Dental X-Rays (photo gallery retired)

healthmoved from livejournal

What’s that sound…

Continuing with photos of things in my basement, I give you this: a photo of one of the speakers now hanging next to my workbench.

I’ve had these speakers hanging around in a closet for a few years now after acquiring them during a quantity purchase from ABC Warehouse where they were being sold for cheap. They were briefly used in my office back in my apartment, but were put away when I moved here.

In the end I only had to spend around US$4 to get everything hung, and all of that was spent on eye hooks and some 20 gauge steel wire at Lowes. Partially because I was too cheap to buy ~100′ of zip cord (and partially because I knew it would work) I cabled them up with a single run of CAT5, one pair for each terminal. Suspension was done via eye hooks and some measured, cut, and bent wire. It seems to have worked out well. As expected, the hardest part was the cable run across the basement. During this I was reminded something I already knew: construction people are lazy.

As I was being lazy myself, I decided to just run the speaker wire parallel to the mains power, through the same holes in the joists. Since the speakers aren’t that great to begin with, I shouldn’t notice any interference. Well, in running this I found that (as expected) all the holes drilled by my dad and I were nice and clean, parallel with the floor. All the holes drilled by the original electricians were sloppy, mostly pointing upwards with the original Romex simply rammed through.

Anyway, it’s done, and now I can listen to music at my workbench without having to turn the home theater stuff at the other end of the basement up. I’ve been somewhat worried about bothering my neighbors, so I figure that this is a good way to cut down on such noise.

Now to get a good night sleep, something I haven’t done in all too many days.

around the housemaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Filth!

I’m surprised by how un-dusty the inside of the cold air return is, just above my furnace. I opened it up today as part of installing a second doorbell chime in my basement because, as anyone who has come by my place has likely noticed, I can’t hear the doorbell when I’m down there. Additionally, I tend to be downstairs working on things fairly often, so the lack of doorbell pretty much makes people have to just walk in.

I am also really liking Adobe Photoshop Lightroom again. Beta 4 is really quite polished, to the point where I’m considering buying CS3 when it comes out. It just simply seems like a much better app than Digital Photo Professional, which I’d been using for a while now.

Today an order of camera stuffs came in, too. This is good. Now I’ve got a hunk of protective glass on the 24-70 L, a lens cap for it, more lens cleaning stuffs, and step-up rings so the circular polarizer can be used on both the 50mm and 100mm lenses. However, when going to take a photo of the bottle of Fiddler’s Elbow I’m trying tonight I didn’t put a memory card in the camera. With the camera set to take pictures when no card is installed, you can imagine where the photos went. Whoops.

acquired thingsaround the housemoved from livejournal

eBay Lens Sale

Woo! $475 for the lens and $20 for the hood, sold to a guy in South Africa who appears to be legit.

I like to think that I get more bids by being willing to ship overseas. I think if one is careful it’s generally safe, and with the US dollar doing horribly there’s a big advantage for people in other countries to buy our stuff. Shipping overseas is pretty easy, too. Same old USPS, just different options to pick from.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournal

Donating Software

Do any of you know how to donate software licenses?

I’ve got a 20 CAL copy of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, for x64 here. It’s NFR, and was handed to me by a MS rep. Unfortunately I don’t have a use for it. I can’t really sell it, so I’d like to donate it to a charity which can use it. But I don’t know of any. If any of you know of a organization which can (and will) use it, and how I can get it to them, please let me know.

And yes, it’s brand new, still sealed, etc.

Thanks. :D

computersmoved from livejournal