This week, I have been mostly working on... » Everything Else

…observing the Orion Nebula

Stephen Hobley — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:56:36 +0000

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 to look at.

I was able to locate the M42 Orion Nebula in the sword of Orion – and got a pretty good view of it too. At first glance you think it’s a local cloud, but after a quick check with Google images I was able to confirm that it was in fact a cloud, one that was over 1300 light years away and about 24 light years wide.

It’s always exciting to see live images, rather then photographs, or digital files – gives you a sense of connection (even though what I saw was how the nebula looked in 700 AD.)

Here’s how it looked through the scope – this is not my image of course, but it was borrowed from Google images and the site http://www.weasner.com/co/Photos/Photos.html

A few years ago I got to see Jupiter too…

* Yes fanboys I know you can run Sky on newer iPhones, just not on my old one.

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Hey, it’s been awfully quiet around here…

Stephen Hobley — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:26:04 +0000

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 the last post – but this is quite a way off just yet.

I was invited by my buddies at Make to put together a Christmas gift guide, and so rather than go for glitz and glamo[u]r I decided to go for the 10 most practical Maker tools I’ve used in 2011…Similar Posts:

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

Stephen Hobley — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 02:46:30 +0000

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 the ACPI battery manager from the device manager console, but these did not work for me.

What *did* work was:

1. Turning off the laptop,
2. Removing the battery,
3. Cleaning both sets of contacts with Isopropyl Alcohol and an old toothbrush,
4. Putting it back,
5. Turning the laptop *on*,
6. Removing and replacing the battery while the laptop was powered up and running,

So there you go, just in case you find yourself in the same position… Similar Posts:

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

Stephen Hobley — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:33:47 +0000

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 started to insist that I “linked” all my other GoogleGoodness(tm) (think Youtube, Picassa, Analytics, AdSense etc…) to my account with Google Apps. So being a good Googledrone(tm) I complied and linked them all.

So earlier this month I get a message from the GoogleCentralCommand(tm) that in my eagerness to comply with Google’s every whim, I have unwittingly created a “conflicting accounts” scenario. That is anything outside of Google Apps (Documents, Calender etc…) is actually linked to a cloned account in the Google personal webspace (are you still with me on this?)

Fortunately Google provided two ways I could make amends for my flagrant transgression -

1. Migrate all my external application data to my (now) central Google Apps Account
or

2. Create a new account (new name) in the Google personal accounts space and link all my external apps to that.

I actually favo[u]red (1), but it seems that all my external account access has somehow been blocked by the stephenhobley.com admin (Hmmm… who is that??) Furthermore, two of the terms you need to agree with state “This account data will be *removed* from your old account” and “This step cannot be undone”

- WAAAAY TOO SCARY!

So I ended up taking option (2) and relinked all my “other” Googlestuff(tm) to a new account that exists in the personal domain. This seems to be less destructive of the two – but it still took two goes to create the new account, and two text messages to my cell phone to confirm it.

The only downside is that I now have to access my email on one browser, and Youtube on another browser, as you cannot be logged in to two GoogleAccounts(tm) at the same time.

So NOW, all I have to do is go through and re-authorize/activate/enable all the other lousy “social” linkages that follow me around the web like an over-affectionate puppy.

Bah! Humbug!Similar Posts:

Messing with Time

Stephen Hobley — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:50:14 +0000

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

Stephen Hobley — Tue, 31 May 2011 12:02:51 +0000

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…Similar Posts:

…Portal Cake (no lie)

Stephen Hobley — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:52:34 +0000

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% coco unsweetened chocolate in the “dusting” – so we’re all “buzzing” at the office right now…Similar Posts:

Space Invaders!

1 second of time, stretched to 24 seconds

Stephen Hobley — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 02:59:27 +0000

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 it and find out if it was really worth getting. They wanted $349 for it, and so I was very surprised to see it selling online for $600-700.

So I went back to get it.

Here’s one second, stretched out to 24… (This is Bell’s Brown Ale BTW – which is an excellent beer).

I’m going to have to hook up some 1KW lights and try this again, the 60W tungsten just wasn’t enough.

The only thing I can find wrong with it is it’s actually too small to hold comfortably, but apart from that I have no complaints. I don’t know if it’s worth $700, but for $349 it was a bargain.

It even has bluetooth and I can control it from my phone. Whatever will they think of next…?

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Space Invaders!

Stephen Hobley — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:09:05 +0000

…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 could be some clever form of “wood-stain printing”.

I would pay real cash money to have the saucer, the bases, and the gunship – just to complete the set.

All your beer are belong to us.

Update : I got the following response from Cameron -

“I’m glad you like the coasters! I do hand make them. I cut strips of wood the size of each pixel, then glue them up to make the columns of the invaders, then sand those smooth, and glue the columns together to make logs of each coaster a couple of feet long. Then I cut off slices, sand the coasters smooth, treat them with Danish oil to bring out the color of the wood, and finish them with a waterproof finish. Anyway, thanks for checking out my work, and let me know if you have any other questions about them.”Similar Posts:

…a sinewave generator using PWM

Stephen Hobley — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:40:53 +0000

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 Chebyshef low pass with a cutoff at 12 kHz. This one was built using some parts salvaged from an old TV.

These images show the PWM output along with the filtered sine wave – easier than using a dedicated DAC.

Another neat trick I learned from Lab3 was to set a pin high during the interrupt handler routine – then you scope the pin while it’s running and see exactly how much CPU is being consumed.

This is interesting, as it makes it possible to (cheaply) implement something I’ve been thinking about building for a while…

More to come on this.Similar Posts: