Everything Else

…Companion Cube from Portal

July 2, 2014

I just spent the last couple of weeks tinkering around with this… a Companion Cube from the video game Portal. It’s made from quarter inch plywood with laser cut oak veneer for the surface detail. The locking mechanism is basically identical to this project. And yes… it was a triumph. Click on any of the […]

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Finally cutting something out

December 6, 2012

Built the enclosure, and hooked up fume extraction and air assist… This is cutting 1/8″ plastic – everything seems to work just fine – 3 passes and the pieces just drop right out. The cutting residue washes off with soap and water. UPDATE : I was looking for tips on identifying laser safe plastics and […]

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…Thorn’s Guitar, from the Hex Girls

November 27, 2012

Who are the Hex Girls? Obviously you’re not a Scooby Doo fan… My daughter LOVES the Hex Girls, and for Halloween she wanted to be the lead singer. So I decided to build her a guitar closely modeled on the one used by Thorn (or Sally McKnight). We started with the Batman logo from the […]

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Did anyone else catch the Hellraiser reference in last weeks Scooby Doo?

June 18, 2012
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I was watching the latest episode of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated with my daughter last week and could not fail to spot this gratuitous reference to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. (Something I never thought I’d see). What was really interesting was that this was a 20 second vignette that had nothing to do with the regular […]

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Anyone know what these things are…?

March 20, 2012

We helped out set up a science room for a local school. Most of the things we found had an obvious function, but we were unable to figure out a couple things. Anyone got any idea what these do? (…nothing to do with Harry Potter…) (The patent search didn’t really turn anything up…)

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Jupiter and Andromeda (again)

February 13, 2012
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It was murderously cold outside last night. But I stayed out long enough to attempt a photograph of Jupiter. This time I had bought a Microsoft Lifecam 1080p webcam, and removed the focusing assembly so that it was just a bare sensor. This was attached to a 2X Barlow lens and installed in my 8″ […]

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…observing the Orion Nebula

January 31, 2012
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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
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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
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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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