Currently my laptop is a late-2008 MacBook Pro. It is probably the best laptop that I’ve ever owned. It is definitively the only laptop that I have ever used for more than 1.5 years. This laptop is currently working on it’s 4th year. From the original specs this model of MacBook Pro only suppose to support max of 4 Gigs. Some people before were able to get 6 gigs on it, however, after Lion everything changed. With a firmware upgrade, my late 2008 MacBook Pro supports 8 Gigabyte of RAM!!!! Check out this article for more details.
So with my new found knowledge, I quickly purchased my upgrades from Newegg. This is what I got.
First, Memory… for $40 bucks I was able to double my memory. GREAT DEAL!!!!
Then I decided… maybe I should go ahead and upgrade my HD. I thought about a SSD, but I can only afford a 120GB SSD, which is smaller than my current drive size. The SSD will be must faster, but much smaller. I then saw the Hybrid drives. It got mix reviews, but the price is right, so why not. (note: right after I bought mine, newegg put this drive on promotion, it is now only $89.99!!! DOH for me!!!)
So with my removal of my 250 GB drive, I though it would be nice to have an extra external drive, so I got this case for $7.99. Yeah… pretty cheap huh!! The best part is I can use this new USB case to transfer all my data to my new drive so I won’t miss a beat!!!!
So with very little money, I’ve refreshed my laptop and hopefully I can get another year or two out of it!!! That will be excellent, if I can do that!!!
So two nights ago, my family and I returned home and the house was super cold. My wife asked me if I turned off the heater while we were gone, I immediately know that something was wrong. When I went over to take a look vents, it was just blowing cool air. At the furnace, the blower/fan was running, but there were no flames in the burner. So my trouble shooting begins.
My particular furnace is an Armstrong Ultra Sx80 Natural Gas fired furnace.
1) I checked online and the information that I found was that most likely what happened was that the filter was super dirty and because of this the lack of airflow caused one of the safety switches to trip and prevent the auto pilot lighter to ignite. So what I found out is that there are couple of limit switches and resetable roll-out switches right above the burner. Of course, I changed out the filter above the blower and look for the resetable switches. Once I reset the switches and check the resetable switches with a voltmeter, everything looked good, and …. no fire .
2) I then looked online where people said that there could be blockage on the pressure switch and in the hose, so I disconnected the rubber hose, cleaned out both side and check the pressure switch with my voltmeter, and … no fire.
I gave up and finally called a furnace guy. The guy showed up and was very friendly, check the basic things that I checked and said oh… your high limit snapdisc temperature breaker was tripped. It was the black connector in the back of the controller. He unscrewed it, pull it out and “smack” the breaker on the side, tested again with the multimeter and plug it back in. turn everything back on and poof!!! it fired up.
So with $99, I learned what a high limit switch/breaker looks like.
And the house is warm again!!!
The funny thing about this was that the furnace tech said that I am his second Electrical Engineer of the day. He said that his first visit today was also an electrical engineer.
I bought an iPad 2 not too long ago. I really do like almost everything about it, but every so often I wish I could use a pen to draw on my iPad. After looking online and finding that typical products
Such as
These stylus are around $15 to $25 dollars.
So I decided to look for a cheaper DIY solution.
After doing some researching, the popular method is to use conductive foams. This is the same method used in the different commercial pens listed above. The make magazine produced a very popular video about making your own conductive foam iPad stylus.
I digging through my garage, and did find a small piece of conductive foam, in my pile of electronic stuff, but the foam was harder to locate then I first expected.
Even with my small piece of conductive foam, I was not able to produce a reliable stylus, it seems that all conductive foams are not created equal, and my particular foam is not very conductive and hand a big problem of fading in and out. This made the use of the DIY stylus useless.
I did tried to make the U-tip stylus with a chip bag, and it did work… sort of, still very inconsistent and it was difficult to keep the u piece flat and when the pen is not vertical, then it would not register. Still looking for a better solution.
So before I finally give up, I decided to make my own modification to the Japanese design. So the following is my version 1 of the Poor man’s iPad Stylus.
Starting with static bag material and a pen. I decided to use the backend of a pen, this way I can use the pen as a regular pen (this is similar to the Box Wave’s stylus).
I cut a small strip of static bag material. the strip needs to be as long as possible and a little bit wider than the pen. This way you can tilt your pen slightly and still maintain contact.
First, attach the strip to tip of the pen, in a J shape as shown below with tape.
Second secure the other end of the strip with tape. I recommend putting an additional 2 strips of tapes on the side of the strip to secure it.
CAUTION!!!: make sure the tape don’t cover the static strip completely, in order for the stylus to work, your hand will need to be in contact with the static strip at all time.
And that’s it… check out the video to see how it perform.
Caveats:
- The pen seems to not work as well with screens with screen protective films.
- Make sure that the hand is in contact with the static strip at all time.
A while ago, mom started to complain about low volume when using Facetime with me. At first I thought it was just my mom’s computer volume not turned up, but when I made a recording after the Auburn Alabama game with my iPhone 4′s video camera, I realized that my volume was really really low. I then realized that the problem is not on the far end but on my iPhone itself. I used the voice recorder to test the mic and it was fine, but when I tested video recording the sound quality was muffled and very quiet. After some online research, I’ve found that there are two microphones on the new iPhone 4. the second mic suppose to be for noise cancelation, however, I believe it is also the primary mic for video recording.
This is the first mic.
This is the second mic.
So what I did was to use a needle to pick up the dirt that is trap in the second mic. CAUTION!!!! be careful. Do not force it or you may destroy your mic.
But after I cleaned the second mic hole, the recording video sound quality returned and Facetime sound quality also returned.
So, I was just cleaning out my garage yesterday and I decided to put everything in their place. I been thinking about doing something with my snowboards. However, the snowboard mounts are pretty expensive. After reading a bit on the internet, I decided to do it myself. So it is really simple and it works great. So for materials, 2 sheet rock screws and some electrical tape. I just wrap the electrical tape around the head of the screw and then screw the screw in to the wall with the electrical tape exposed. Then simply slide the snowboard in between the two screws and there you have it. A very low profile snowboard wall mount.
Take a look below.
1) My original idea and design.
2) Sheet rock screw with the electrical tape on one side.
3) Place the screw around 11 inches or the with off your board.
4) Slide the board in between the two screws and it should hold.
So I been wanting a new white board in my home office to draw out some ideas and mark up some new things or even leave some messages. I remember having a big white board when I was growing up and it’s aways been really nice. I never even thought about how much a white marker board costs until I started to search for one around town. I wanted a 4′ x 3′ white board, however, it cost around $50+ dollars for one. If I drop down to 3′x2′ then it drop down to around 30 dollars (Costco). I really did not want to give up the surface space so I began to look for alternatives. After searching a while, I’ve found couple of websites talking about DIY white board on the cheap. I looked up their methods, and then I went over to Lowes to check out the material and price. i was able to get a 4′x3′ white board surface for only $9.98!!!!! And with that, I am in, I will build my own white board.
You are probably wondering well what are you really building anyways? I mean you got a surface, just nail it to the wall. In a way, yeah, you can do that, or you can even just buy white board paint and paint your entire wall to be a white wall like surface. However, I decided to go with either a frame or a hidden frame design.
After careful research, I decided to take advantage of left over wood from my home made, bed frame project few months back and use it as a support frame for my white board project. I also decided to a small piece of the left over trim as a pen holder for the whiteboard.
The following is my design.
My Material and cost
White board surface $10
small wood screws $2
tile plates x 6 : $2
contact cement : $5
subtotal: $19
wood strips around the house: $0
left over trim around the house: $0
During Construction
The completed whiteboard in my office.
Challenges:
1) I found that gluing the frame on the back of the board was more difficult than I expected with out a clamp. So get a clamp.
2) I originally designed the board to be 4′ X 3′. However the board purchased from Lowes states that it is 4×3, but it is 4′ but less than 3′ high (around 2’8″). So I had to reduce my frame size.
All in all I was able to make my white board under 20 dollars and in few hours. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.
So of course everyone by now know that I lost my little white macbook . So I did some research and found few softwares such as Undercover or Lojack for Laptop, or Adeona (which by the way is free but currently not working so don’t try it), and I even looked into mobileme. All these solutions seems good (except for Adeona ) and I almost bought one of them until I found this.
Well… good questions… I eat, I watch TV, I sleep, I sleep, I should be studying, but today I fix things. Yep. I fix things. Today, I fixed this old broken lamp I got from Birmingham office a long time ago. It was handed down by some guy named after a razor. Anyway, it used to be a touch lamp but the touch sensor burned out. Well… so I went to the local Radio Shack and got me a small switch. I pull out my trusty old tool kit. I drilled a hole and did some soldering and wham, I got a working lamp. It is not a touch lamp anymore, but … hey a free lamp.
.
Recent Comments