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

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February 20, 2007


KEYWORD SEARCH: CHEMTRAILS (as seen in Berkeley, CA)
(Click for more photos from this trip…)

Hmm… So… What to say? I just returned from dropping my car off at Cass Collision in Shelby Township. The person seemed pretty insistent on having someone drive me home, but needing the exercise (and with it only about a mile from my house) I walked back anyway. With the weather in the 40s today it was about as cold as Mountain View was at night over the weekend, which I was pretty comfortable with.

Oh, so, yeah. The trip to Mountain View. Except for some cascading delays which put me at the airport a bit more than two hours late, all the traveling went great. I’d never rented a car before, but (likely due to the reservations being handled for me) both the pickup and drop-off went rather well. I was given the option between a Ford Mustang and a Chevy Malibu Maxx, but I opted for the Malibu Maxx in order to have something with better visibility and four doors. While I thought I would be driving people around, that didn’t happen. But… it’s all right.

On Saturday we headed down to Berkeley to grab pizza from The Cheeseboard Collective, which was absolutely wonderful. Mike, Joy, Jeff, Megan, and I ended up sitting on a ledge in front of the bank eating it while drinking Orangina and Reed’s Ginger Beer.

After that we went to the excellent Rabbit’s Food Meadery to taste a bunch of different meads and ciders. I really wanted to get more than just the single bottle of dry mead which I acquired, but due to the whole liquids on a plane security theater and my suitcase it would have been difficult to bring any back. I’ll just have to get more next time I’m out there.

I didn’t take very many photos while I was out there, and (stupidly) none of the meadery itself. The photos I did take can be seen here (photo gallery retired), though. These include a good number of my room, #423, at the Hotel Avante. It really is a great hotel, with a especially friendly staff and wonderfully clean, very comfortable rooms. I was quite happy with it.

foodmoved from livejournaltravel

Spark Fun Electronics Hacked?

February 12, 2007

Hmm, I received this from what appears to actually be Spark Fun Electronics (sent from one of the servers physically near them), and the site itself is still offline:

Hello,

On February 8th, 2007 it came to our attention that someone or something gained unauthorized access to the Spark Fun Electronics server. It is highly unlikely that this person gained full access to our server data. But because there is no way for us to confirm the depth of the access, we felt it in the best interest to warn our (wonderful, wonderful) customers the server contained sensitive customer information including some credit card data. All numbers have since been removed and we are putting systems in place to better protect sensitive user information in the future.

Please check your credit card statement for any unauthorized activity. We will do everything in our power to work with you and your credit card company to investigate any discrepancies.

We truly appreciate your business and are very sorry to cause a scare. Please contact us (you can reply to this message) if you have any questions or concerns and we will address them as quickly as possible.

Best regards,
Spark Fun Electronics

—
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

UPDATE: Here’s some more info about the message… it appears to be legit:

c0nsumer@rowla:/var/log> grep "server89" maillog
Feb 12 13:36:26 rowla postfix/smtpd[50546]: connect from server89.sparkfun.com[65.58.240.213]
Feb 12 13:36:26 rowla postfix/smtpd[50546]: setting up TLS connection from server89.sparkfun.com[65.58.240.213]
Feb 12 13:36:26 rowla postfix/smtpd[50546]: TLS connection established from server89.sparkfun.com[65.58.240.213]: TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)
Feb 12 13:36:27 rowla postfix/smtpd[50546]: 180394AC23: client=server89.sparkfun.com[65.58.240.213]
Feb 12 13:36:27 rowla postfix/smtpd[50546]: disconnect from server89.sparkfun.com[65.58.240.213]
c0nsumer@rowla:/var/log>

server89.sparkfun.com is now down, and Spark Fun doesn’t publish SPF records. However, sparkfun.com is 65.58.240.188, so with a whole /25 (or less, maybe a standard /24?) they could be in the same subnet. It all appears to be in a block of colocated stuffs owned by dnssys.com who doesn’t have much of a site. Still, the email message appears to be legit…

At least there are no strange charges on the card I used there. Yet. :(

computerselectronicsmoved from livejournal

Wii!

February 11, 2007

Yay! Target over in Utica has Nintendo Wiis in stock. The person who rang up the sale informed me that they had around 75 of them in stock this morning. What I saw was a display case still completely full. So, excellent.

I also picked up both of the newest Skinny Puppy and The Streets discs. I’m not sure about the SP yet, and I haven’t listened to The Streets yet. Hopefully they both end up being good to me.

acquired thingsgamesmoved from livejournal

1280 x 1024 LCD

February 10, 2007


1280 x 1024 LCD for sale at Target
(Click for more moblog photos…)

I’m not sure why I find this so strange, but a 1280×1024 LCD seems really odd to me. It just seems really, really, really square. Then again, I guess 5:4 is… Maybe I’m just more familiar with 4:3, 16:9, and 16:10 displays.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal

Vegetarian Miên Chay

February 10, 2007


Vegetarian Miên Chay prior to adding hot water.
(Click for more photos…)

While over at Nino Salvaggio International Marketplace in Troy yesterday I picked up a $0.69 Vietnamese cup of noodles labeled solely Vegetarian Miên Chay. Despite a tremendous 2100mg of sodium per serving, I rather liked this cup of noodles. The saltyness is a bit much and the noodles clumpted together a bit, but it quite tasty with a bit of hot spicyness to it. It even includes a rather ingenious folding plastic fork.

The whole cup had an odd air of cheapness to it, and I have a strange almost-sweet aftertaste in my mouth (communism?), but I must say that it tasted pretty decent. The rest of the photos are available by clicking either the image above, or this link (photo gallery retired).

foodmoved from livejournal

Backups

February 10, 2007

Well, backups are working. Every night my PowerMac G5 backs its important stuff up to external disks, and then a few hours later rowla.nuxx.net shoves its important bits down to one of the disks. It’d be better if it was all sent offsite, but I do only have a certain amount of space available remotely.

computersmoved from livejournal

9090 Update

February 9, 2007


9090 PC001 Component Side — All Parts Fitted
(Click for solder side…)


9090 PC002 Component Side — All Parts Fitted except U38, C92, and C100
(Click for solder side…)

Wow, I can’t believe it’s come this far. Starting a few months ago with a pile of PCBs and a couple of ROMs and a microcontroller I got to work building Trevor Page’s 9090, a clone of the sound creating bits inside the Roland TR-909.

I’ve been working on it here and there, ordering all the resistors one day, a bunch of caps another, etc. Except for my screwing up and failing to acquire (in the course of three separate rounds of ordering) enough .47uF electrolytic capacitors and an IC (CA3080) which I’m waiting to receive in the mail, the PCBs are complete.

In addition to the two above, there is also a board with ten separate 1/4″ mono jacks which handles audio output for each of the ten separate instruments. The component side of that board can be seen here and the solder side here.

So, what’s left before it is done? Quite a bit, unfortunately. Let’s see…

· Get the missing three parts and fit them in place.
· Decide on an enclosure and design the front and rear panels so they fit the pots, knobs, LEDs, power switch, audio jacks, MIDI jacks, and mains connector.
· Order remaining parts.
· Design indicators / artwork and figure out the best way to apply / fit them.
· Cut the enclosure to fit all the externally-fitted components (pots, jacks, etc).
· Physically assemble the enclosure and mount the boards inside.
· Cable everything together.
· Test everything to be sure all instruments and switching jacks work as expected.
· Troubleshoot, if needed.

As you can see, there is quite a bit more to go, although I think this is a good stopping point for now.

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

bleep.com

February 9, 2007

Well, despite owning the actual thing, I finally got around to buying the Gescom Mini Disc from bleep.com in MP3 format. $9.99 for all 88 tracks in 320 kbps is rather nice. I must say, BLEEP sure does the online music buying / download thing right. And with a few dollars laying around in my PayPal account from someone buying something from me, it was even easier.

Hell, I think I’ll snag The Sounds Of Machines Our Parents Used next.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournalmusic

Cranberry Granola Bars

February 8, 2007

Cranberry Granola Bar
(Click for high res image…)

Last night Danielle came by and her and I (in addition to eating some wonderful Thai food) made some cranberry granola bars based on the Good Eats Granola Bar recipe from the Power Trip episode.

What was done is the recipe above was used, with the following changes:

· Salted sunflower seeds were used, and the normal salt in the recipe was cut back slightly.
· Only cranberries were used, and they were chopped relatively finely.
· Toasted wheat germ, all that was available, was used.
· Due to my mistake a bit of extra honey (perhaps 8oz. was used).
· A 8″ x 8″ glass pan was used, as a 9″ x 9″ (as called for in the recipe) was unavailable.

Other than that, the recipe was made as described. Next time I’ll do a few things differently:

· Use hulled sunflower seeds. In-hull seeds contain more fiber, but don’t crisp up enough to be comfortable for all to eat.
· Line the dish with parchment, as it was difficult to remove the bars.
· Let the bars cool part-way after baking, then remove them from the dish, then cut.
· Possibly use a larger dish so that thinner bars can be made.

Also, a detailed photo of the texture of the bar can be seen here.

foodmoved from livejournal