Everything Else

…observing the Orion Nebula

January 31, 2012

Last night was a pretty cool night for astronomy (both figuratively and literally) – there was a great deal of stuff visible, and since I traded my old iPhone for one of the new Droids I was able to take advantage of Google Sky* and some of the other location apps to find interesting stuff [...]

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Hey, it’s been awfully quiet around here…

December 16, 2011

Yes it has, during the run up to Christmas things get a bit crazy in the Hobley household. That’s not to say I’ve not been very busy on the CNC router, but mainly producing presents and other festive stuff. I have been working on a tip-top secret project featuring the Ebow-clone I put together in [...]

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…fixing “Plugged in, not charging” in Windows 7

August 22, 2011

I had to dust off an older laptop recently and found to my dismay that the battery was not charging under Windows 7. Apparently this is a common problem – my laptop is an HP DV9730US, but many makes and models all seem to have the same issue. I tried the fixes that involve removing [...]

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… “conflicting accounts” in Google Apps/Youtube/AdSense etc…

July 20, 2011

I don’t normally write about this kind of thing – but what an “absolute bl**dy nightmare” Google’s recent account updates have been. I have a Google Apps account for my domain, so that I can use the Gmail style interface to read my email – this all worked fine for a long time, then Google [...]

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Messing with Time

June 28, 2011

I posted a while back about the JVC camcorder I bought, and how it had the high-speed shutter mode – it also has a variety of time-lapse modes too… The crystals are the “sodium silicate” kind you get at toy stores, and the clock I built myself…

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Some early Jarre studio footage

May 31, 2011

Came across this clip on YouTube. I love this stuff. Way back before personal computers and emulated hardware were so prevalent, this kind of thing was pure magic… [Fairlight!! - Ed] …and if you’re wondering if all those vocal samples were ever put to good use, check this clip out…

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…Portal Cake (no lie)

April 19, 2011

The primary ingredients… Optional ingredients, to taste… This is what delicious *and* moist looks like, on the inside… Every bit as difficult as it looks. Gravity is not your friend right now… The cherries go on just before serving, or *everything* will turn pink. Portal Cake Too. UPDATE: The cake also has coffee and 100% [...]

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1 second of time, stretched to 24 seconds

March 13, 2011

I don’t usually give in to impulse-buy urges, but I picked up a camcorder (JVC GZ-HM550) at Fry’s the other day and was surprised to see it had 120, 300 and 600 fps shooting modes. I didn’t know consumer camcorders could do that… So I put it down again, and went home thinking I’d research [...]

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Space Invaders!

February 25, 2011

…coasters! I just got these fantabulous Space Invader coasters from my brother-in-law – they’re actually made right here in Indianapolis by Cameron Oehler – check out the guy’s site: www.1337motif.com They seem to be assembled from lots and lots of tiny veneer squares – you can see the alternating grain in this photo: Although it [...]

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…a sinewave generator using PWM

February 9, 2011

I was reading up on filter design when I came across an article on the Lab3 site…. The results were impressive, using just Pulse Width Modulation generate an accurate 8-bit sine wave. The key is a good low pass filter – most of the time I’ve been using as RC filter, but this uses a [...]

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