General updates
Posted by tuckie - 04/05/08 at 11:05:13 pmI haven’t had as much free time as I would like, but the semester is now over, so that’s a good thing. My weekend has been stolen by my parent’s main computer system. It had been acting poorly for quite some time. Now that the semester was over, I decided it was time to do a clean install of windows. It turns out that it was running so poorly in fact, that the backup software wasn’t running–on top of that, the hard drive was dying. Long story short, I was missing only about two weeks of backups, and the files that were placed on the drive during those two weeks, I think I’ve recovered from the main hard drive. Now the computer has a new drive in it (had to go to Best Buy to purchase a SATA drive, as there was only one IDE connector that was taken up by cd drives), and windows is installed (on that note, I hate dealing with SATA chipsets and floppy drives) with all updates. I’m currently copying files off the the external backup drive, and then I have the fun process of figuring out which files are missing from the last two weeks. when dealing with this sort of thing, I recommend DriveImage XML, Acronis True Image*, DiskInternals NTFS Recovery*, and the Ultimate Boot CD. A combination of these tools will generally allow me to get files from point A to point B, and then back to point A. (note * = not free)
When that’s all sorted out, I would like to do a fresh install on my main computer, as it acts a little wonky from time to time. Even further (much further) down the road, a reinstall of windows on my laptop would be nice, as would getting a backup server up and running utilizing some old ide drives, and my 1tb sata drives, configured using LVM or the likes.
As far as nixie goes, I’ve spent some time on the code, and spent a bit more time messing around with Eagle PCB design software, its pretty slick. I’m not nearly as far as I would like to be, but hopefully I’ll have some more time later in the week.
Oh, and some pics from the last month or so of mine:
Nixie!
Posted by tuckie - 13/04/08 at 02:04:58 pmMy nixie tubes came in yesterday, and I finally had a chance to take a few pictures of them. I’m still trying to decided upon the best method for driving them, though. know that either way, I’m going with a direct drive method. My initial plan was to use shift registers and old nixie drivers, but the inability to have more than one pin selected at a time really limits my wiring options. I’m currently thinking about designing a circuit board for mounting the tubes, along with some surface mount transistors, and just driving the digits via a larger number of shift registers. The problem with this design, is it doesn’t allow much in terms of prototyping (and I would have to learn how to use a pcb editor, such as eagle). I probably won’t have too much time to mess with them, as the end of the semester is on its way, but we shall see.
Florida pictures
Posted by tuckie - 17/03/08 at 09:03:52 pmA bit belated, but as promised:
Slightly more info can be found if you go to the image on flickr.
A fourth undersea cable cut
Posted by tuckie - 03/02/08 at 09:02:32 pmI have no idea what’s going on, but on Wednesday two undersea cables were cut, and another was cut on Friday. Today I found out that “A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions.” On top of that, they are reporting that no ships were near the area of the first two cables, so the idea that boat anchors cut the cables is out of the question. The end result is that a lot of areas in the middle east have little to no internet access. Whether its a conspiracy/coincidence/terrorism/government attack/swamp gas I have no idea, but its pretty weird nonetheless. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday, when a ship pulls up to fix (and see what happened to) the original two cables.
Finally getting my lens
Posted by tuckie - 30/01/08 at 04:01:18 pmWell, Ritz called yesterday to let me know that my lens is in, but I didn’t get a chance to pick it up, so I am doing so after I get out of work. I’m hoping for a new lens (brand new is always better than fixed :) ) but we’ll see what happens.
In other news, Nikon released information about their new camera, the D60 and it appears to be a big letdown. It’s essentially a d40x but with a stop action mode (limited to 100 shots), a dust reduction system (a good feature, but not worth the jump from the d40), some other features, still no built in motor, and a $750 price tag for the kit. I personally am looking for a cheaper Nikon with live view, and a feature-set similar to the d80.
Services!
Posted by tuckie - 02/01/08 at 04:01:17 pmHelp me, help you.
First post!
Posted by tuckie - 02/01/08 at 02:01:52 pmI’m thinking about switching over from pluggedout blog to the ever popular wordpress. Should be a bit more stable and a bit less susceptible to comment spam, but we shall see.
Edit: now switched over, if you see something below this post, its ported from the old blog.
die phpBB die
Posted by tuckie - 26/07/06 at 09:07:06 pmWell, I’ve nuked phpBB and switched over to punBB after being sick of spamming on the forum. I still have a bit of work left to do on the site, but its definately a lot cleaner looking. If you guys have any suggestions feel free to throw them my way.
It’s been a while
Posted by tuckie - 24/04/06 at 09:04:42 amYeah, I’ve kinda slouched off on the blog for a while; it’s been a busy semester for me. In terms of projects, I have a few that I have been dabbling with.
What has been taking up most my time as of late has been devising a remote controlled ignition device for this year’s Fourth of July. Using a 12 channel remote controlled relay board located here, I am in the process of rigging it to a 12 volt battery and putting it in a fancy enclosure. If anyone has ever used a model rocket kit, think of one of those electronic igniters, but with 12 channels, and a wireless controller.
I have also been doing a bit of work (not much at this point) with my wrt54g from fon. Right now I have openwrt installed on it (think mini linux) and have installed a kismet drone for wardriving.
Well, that’s it for now, hopefully things will pick up when the term is over.
No matter what your religion is…
Posted by tuckie - 12/12/05 at 11:12:14 am…have a merry Christmas.
Its Christmas morning and I have yet to open all of my presents. I’m at my Grandpa’s house and we’re getting ready to leave. A few presents were brought to be opened, including a few books, more Family Guy, Serenity, and my free iPod Shuffle (I signed up for a credit card, they send you a shuffle). The shuffle is a pretty neat piece of hardware–minus the lack of a screen. I’ll probably just use it for podcasts and data, although I’m a bit turned-off at the lack of a plug and play podcast sync for the shuffle (it appears to only work on the regular iPod, although it would be nice if someone told me otherwise).
I’ve managed to keep myself busy here thanks to an access point that the neighbors were kind enough to leave open ;). I don’t even need my cantenna.
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