Recapturing my childhood.

Pardon me if I ramble a bit here.

Back in the day, my brothers and I would spend hour’s hand keying a program into our trusty TI-99/4, out of a magazine. Only to run it and find that we typed ‘0ff0ff0ff’ instead of ‘1ff0f0ff’; causing the attacking aliens to look like four-leaf clovers instead of the menacing killer robots they were. So we spend hours re-keying everything trying to find the error. Well after the invention of the tape recorder, and finally the 40K disk drive. We could save and edit, and trade of programs. But still the creation of those programs was most of the fun. And that’s the key; FUN! It’s why I got into computers.

Well, now I have multi-gigahertz, multi-gigabyte, million color, and flat-panel display computers; and what to I use them for? Writing high speed, transactional software; and as boring as that might sound; it really far more boring than even that.

So you can imagine how exciting it was to find Kids Programming Language! KPL First; everything is free. Second; there are tons of sample programs. Third; no one has any idea of how to do things right, so no one is telling you your doing something wrong!

Want to fly a ship across the screen? Five lines of code. Want a horde of attacking aliens to slowly descend onto your defended base? Maybe a 100 lines. This is what I really wanted to make computers do 25 years ago. I’m having far more fun trying to figure out why my KPL programs not scoring right; then why credit dispatch is failing… again.

Hint:

Trinity Site.

I've been warning about showing the workshop, and here it is. First the work table:
Soldering iron, old file server and bobble head dolls; what more do you need? A small update, with the addtion of three loads on plastic containers from CostCo, this pictue has greatly changed.

The large file server has been converted to a nice low-power NAS (doing my green thing), and the file server has been redeployed to a development system. Most of the clutter has been moved into project boxes.

Here's a break down of the projects in the picture.

The binary clock, which is complete. I just need to tap off 1.5 volts, and finish the case. Update: the case has been completed, but I had planed to have this as a wll clock. However after getting it all built and looking at it; the power cable really destroyed the look, so I'm converting it to a desk clock. Just that it will hand in mid-are from a small desk lamp converted to act as a base. This will allow the clock to kind-of hang in mid air and allow the pedulim to swing freely under the clock; and not take up the whole desk.

The reason I need the 1.5 volts is for this pendulim system that runs the clock. A little bit of old, and a bit of new. This should the most unique clock I've done to date. Update: 2 330 ohm resistors in series cut the 5 volts down to the ~1.5 I needed. They are really acting as current limitors, and as such will get a little warm, but since we're talking low DC voltage here, I'm not worried.

The worst that could happen is the the circut wil get over driven a bit and run a little fast. But since this is a cosmetic effect more than anything else that will have zero effect.

Next up is the retro-desk nixie clock. I've got some glass work to do before finishing this one up. But once I have a chance it should only take a day or so to finish (plus a trip to Sears for a dremmil bit to drill the glass).

I have no update in this other than to say that the glass has been removed from the back. I'm still not sure how I'm going to mount the internals, since I'm about 1/8" off; in width. I suspect I'll try to dremil out a mounting 'nock' on one side; then counter sink the other. Maybe back fill with sylicone.

This is a 1940's phone I'm restoring; and as long as the phone compnay has to support pluse dialing, I'm going to hold them to it. I may never have to explain where the Maltese Falcon is; but I'll look cool anyways. Update on this: I finished the internal reconstruction (the phone was from Australia) and will be re-wiring that handset. I think I'll use a straight line of cord instead of the current coiled. More authentic that way (I feel).

Upadate on the small nixie clock. It got done!

Cursed by Geek Style!

I blame myself really; after all the TV ads were designed with me in mind.

To bring you up to speed; I’ve been on the lookout for a new cell phone. I have a very simple phone that was a freebie two or so years ago (which meant the phone was already at least a year old to begin with). Black and white screen, no ring tones, no download content and there is no sync; which is what I’m looking for.

Nokia is running some TV spots; one of which has ‘bubba’ singing the Dukes of Hazards theme song; the other is a SITC wanna-be talking about how the last thing she does after breaking up is delete her boyfriend from her phone. Well I’m thinking hey, that phone looks kinda cool; sure it doesn’t have a touch screen or a qwerty keyboard. But if ‘bubba’ can afford one; they can’t be all that expensive.

Right?

Wrong, the phone I decide is geek cool turns out to be the one that is exclusively sold through Neiman-Marcus for $899.

I’m the first to admit I have no sense of style (what’s wrong with wearing socks and sandals?). So how am I able to pick the sole $1000 dollar phone out?

Back E-bay for me.

It's Tera not Terror

The other item I'm saving my lunch money for is this:

"Oh, yeah baby!" I doubt that's what Austin Powers had in mind, but to each, his (her) own. These little babies have 4 hard drives that you can partition striped and mirrored for the ultimate in redundant long term storage. And with the added support for 1000Mbs networking; it's something you can actually save gigabytes of data to; in your life-time.

it's about the size of a small toaster; and Buffalo figured out that people don't want leaf blowers running in their office, so it has an intelligent fan design that keeps it unit cool with a minimum of noise.

Oddly enough it also supports external USB drives in-case you want to BYOD. Not that I mind; just that seems generous.

Next time... what's that project on my desk and does the NSA know that?

Slow blogger...

Been a while; so I'm going to try and make it up, by posting twice. That counts right?

The first cool item: the Apple Mighty Mouse. While Apple has been getting a lot of press (and some of my business) introducting the iPod Nano; they snuck this little gem under the wire.

http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/

As Logitech tries to find new ways to put another button on the mouse; Apple went and reinvented it.

Yes, there's a scroll wheel, only now it's a 360 degree roller. Yes there are finaly two buttons on a Mac mouse; but instead of clucky buttons; they hid them by using resitance pads. So maybe there aren't two buttons....

Make it cordless and Bluetooth; and I'll have something else to ask Santa for.

The Test

Well I took the test; and it say's I'm Elrond. Although I'd rather be the agent from The Matrix, but same actor.

New planets!

From the time I was a wee lad (which oviously was a long time ago, if I use the term 'wee lad') there have always been 9 planets. Sure, we all knew that Pluto was just a little rock that bearly counted.

But now they have found a new planet; Number 10. They're calling it Xena, which is cool, and it even has a moon which they're calling Gabrielle which is even cooler.

Now you can look up in the sky and know that Xena and Gabrielle are up there forever obiting each other. Which I'm sure is giving Sam Raimi no end of mirth.

Still no pictures.

I'm still in the process of getting pictures uploaded to show some of the projects that are in the works here in the office.

I've got three clocks to finsh up; one binary and two nixie. Plus I now have everything I need for the Baby Bubble Machine.

A quick note about invisable technology. Here at the baby play ground, I've installed a NAS (Network Attach Storage). It's basically a hard drive that attaches to the the house LAN (seriously doesn't everyone have a Local Area Network in their house) and provides 160Gig of storage. Video, Music and pictures. Reguardless of which computer I'm on; I can always get to my files.

Now the question: why doesn't Sony or Microsoft figure this out, and add this to their next line of console games? Play your video game from anywhere.

What makes it geeky?

If it's technical beyond the point of cool, it's geeky!

iPod 1st generation to the Nano - Geek!
Nixie clock (I'll be covering these little guys) - Geek!
B & O - Geek!
PSP hacking - Geek!
Copy protection - Not so much.
Replay TV - Geek!
Tivo - Not.
RIAA - Couldn't find geek with a flshlight and a map.