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

Lightsticks In The Toilet

March 3, 2007


Toilet after pouring in the contents of green and red cyalume lightsticks.
(Click for more photos of playing with Lightsticks In The Toilet (photo gallery retired)…)

Tonight while going through a few old boxes in the basement I came across red and green lightsticks, still in the wrappers. So, I opened them and activated them. After playing around with them for a little while I decided to do something I played with when I was much younger, except this time I decided to take some pictures of it.

What did I do? I cut open the light sticks and poured them in the toilet, watching the slowly changing, swirling psychedelic glow emanating from my toilet. Unfortunately these toilets aren’t that great for it, as most of the oily phenyl oxalate ester and H2O2 ran down into the bottom of the toilet and out of view. Still, there were some interesting things to see.

  
(Click to view each image at a larger size…)

More photos of this all are available here in the Lightsticks In The Toilet (photo gallery retired) album. Some of the better photos are:

· Toilet water with just the green cyalume lightstick compound in it.
· Red and green cyalume lightsticks setting on the toilet lid.
· Closer image of the toilet water containing cyalume lightstick compound.
· Lightstick compound swirling down the toilet as it is flushed.
· Photo 1 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 2 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 3 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 4 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Glowing sink containing the remains of the cut open lightsticks.
· Lightsick remnants and cuts in the sink where I set them so they wouldn’t make a mess.

around the housemaking thingsmoved from livejournal

Data Destruction

February 21, 2007


Spool from a DLT IV cartridge cut open with a bandsaw.
(Click for more Data Destruction (photo gallery retired) photos…)

While cleaning out the basement (yes, the long-awaited get-rid-of-the-crap-you-don’t-use cleaning) I came across a bunch of old magnetic media which I wanted to render unreadable. I tried a few different methods, and I think that the best is the use of a band saw. As you can see above, DLT cartridges are easily disposed of by removing the spool from the housing and cutting half-way through them with a bandsaw. This turns the whole spool of magnetic ribbon into lengths no longer than ~6 inches. When a bunch of cut tapes are mixed in a box and then tossed like a salad they can be rendered nearly irrecoverable. I don’t think even the big agencies would be too anxious to try and recover data from that.

I also cut into hard drives, from edge of drive to spindle, and in one case cut away one corner of the whole drive. Having to dispose of some ZIP disks and DATs I also sliced into portions of these with the bandsaw before tossing them. ZIP disks would be cut to the hub of the platter, and DATs straight into the side of the tape bearing the full spool until reaching the hub.

I still have to figure out a good way to dispose of lots of both pressed and burned CDs. This too may employ the bandsaw, although a bonfire would work good as well.

around the housecomputersmoved from livejournal

Loads…

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