A collection of ramblings from Tim.
Written on Oct. 12, 2005 .
Hrm... Work.
After lots of careful consideration, it looks like I'm going to stay here a while. I could lay out a heap of positives and negatives about the whole thing but it boils down to one thing: Earth Monies. I need more Earth Monies! (see reference Invader Zim)
Written on Oct. 10, 2005 .
Work.
Train was late, full when it arrived and the next one delayed too... Why am I not suprised? Cityrail will sweep that shit under the carpet now, everyone has gotten over the shiny new timetable and have resumed their routine of not paying attention to running times. Cityrail are going w00t! We got away with it again! Change the timetable, run it real tight for a few solid months then go back to how it was. Arseholes. I'm tired of the gorram trains!
Working at another store today. More stories of 'oh-by-the-way-your-working-here-now-don't-care-about-employees' type Big Business Acumen. <sarcasm> GG Bosses! Terrific in fact. Well done, I love you! </sarcasm>
Written on Oct. 9, 2005 .
Sunday...
Yummy chicken Kievs for lunch. Had to use them, defrosted them for another day but didn't eat them. Don't want to waste yummy kievs!
Watching some recorded Discovery Channel. Extreme Engineering! In this episode they are building a MASSIVE face shovel. MASSIVE! Very cool. I love mining gear. It's awesome! It takes 8 railway cards and 30 trucks to move it in pieces!
Oh! and the explosives! Muahahah! 190 holes. ~1ft in dia and 45 ft deep, blasting cap... 2 tonnes of amonium nitrate + fuel oil in each hole. Nasty.
Another documentry for me to watch! The top 10 tanks.
Written on Oct. 7, 2005 .
Friday off.
It appears that I have been strong-armed into a new position. Fscking terrific.
Today I made some more inventor parts for my new project: The CRO tool. It is going to have a Square + Sine wave generator with a frequency meter/display. This is the integration of two dick smith kits.
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There we are P2220 and P704X. The knobs are almost-dayglow-green... The ones I have here are. I guess they mixed the plastic colours incorrectly. I will have to buy more SINCE TOMORROW IS MY LAST DAY... 
The two kits are:
K7338 : Sine/Square Wave Generator (Not on website)
Written on Oct. 5, 2005 .
Work.
G0t jet pack? http://www.peroxidepropulsion.com/article/26
Stuart Ross has come up with a jet pack belt! Here is the offical (though incomplete) website http://www.rocketbelt.co.uk/
Written on Oct. 4, 2005 .
Tuesday.
Crappy day at work for no particular reason...
Finished off (read made working) the video distribution amp. The chip was working but the image was just about white. I tested it on the DVD, you could only just see the screensaver logo bouncing around the white screen. No contrast at all, in addition only the first amp and last amp from four were working (this chip has 4 amps). I started checking for more shorts and found one! There was a short between the PCB pin and a ground plane. I fixed that up with a scribe and tried it again. No cure.
I read the datasheet about the chip (MAX497CPE) hopeing to find some troubleshooting info. Looking at the example circuit diagram it clicked. I decided to check if the chip was getting power - or at least power to the right places. I started by fitting a new battery to my multimeter. Something I should have got ages ago. After seeing which pins should be getting power I started checking traces starting at the regulators. The chip requires both +5V (pins 9 and 15) and -5V (pins 11 and 13). This is achieved using a 7805 (positive regulator) and a 7905 (negative regulator). BAM! no -5V on 11 and 13! I started checking for un-soldered pins. On this board there are no vias so connecting the top and bottom layers is depended on soldering both top and bottom pads of some components.
I ran into a dead end. I started manually checking the traces again. Whats this! A mistake on the board; NO! Immediately I was looking at ways of jumpering the -5V where I needed it. Looking closer at the middle of the board the -5V jumped straight off the regulator, through a filter cap and to an empty pad. Hrmmmmmm... There was nothing in this hole because I was making this as a Standalone unit. It has pads here to daisy chain +/-5V to other slave boards. Gee! Where do those traces lead on the other side of the board? Bloody pins 11 and 13! 
BUGGER! I stuck a PCB pin in there immediately and soldered it both sides. I didn't bother with the +5V because there are no traces on the top of the board taking +5V anywhere, just a pad surrounded by the ground plane.
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Whoola! Workies. 
The finished product at last! Still lots more images in the gallery. I'm so proud 
Written on Oct. 3, 2005 .
Monday. A day of cleaning... ...and cleaning. 
Most of it's done now, there is just a little to do in the kitchen.
Written on Oct. 2, 2005 .
Sunday. Off to fix Kel's Car.
All went well, air cleaner, fuel filter, oil filter, engine oil, transmission fluid. There was so much crap in the engine that Dad and I actually had to open the rocker cover and clean out some of the muck! It seems to change gears smoother now and idles better.
Written on Oct. 1, 2005 .
Saturday. Yay.
Started work on a video distribution amplifier for work. Should mean prudy pictures on all the screens. DVD players don't like having 10 TVs connected to them! TVs also don't like having a piss-weak signal. Some TVs just go dull, others roll vertically or flicker. Some display the blue screen of 'no signal'...
I used my new toy to take these photos. I couldn't be bothered dragging out my D60.
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There is still work to be done on the power supply side of things. The IEC + Fuseholder needs to be wired to the switch and then to the transformer. An earth wire will also need to be run from the IECs earth terminal to the steel body of the transformer for safety. The leads on the transformer will be shortened and cable tied to make them look prudy.
I also need to grab a few metres of cable, some sidecutters, a DVD, a Drink and my wire stripppers. Why? So I can make the 12 coax flyleads I need to make to join the 8 RCA outputs to the amp and the 1 RCA input to the 4 inputs on the amp (while I have a drink and watch a dvd...)
I also discovered that one of my drill kits had some 'Spur Point' type bits in it. Excellent! Perfect actually. It meant that I didn't end up with the eliptical holes that you would get in thin plastic from a standard twist drill. Hence, all the holes that the RCA sockets poke through are beautiful and centred.
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"Also known as a wood or dowel bit, they have a central point and two raised spurs that help keep the bit drilling straight. The bit cuts timber very fast when used in a power drill and leaves a clean sided hole. They are ideal for drilling holes for dowels as the sides of the holes are clean and parallel. Sizes range from 3 to 10mm. Spur point bits should only be used for drilling wood or some plastics."
I used a trick to drill the holes in the back panel. It involved printing a 1:1 drawing of the front panel holes, locating it on the panel with a rule to make sure that it was in the right place and then sticking it to the panel.
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I am rather pleased with how neat and tidy the panels turned out! Naturally I knocked up a design in Inventor before I started. This helps immensly. It only took like 5 minutes to knock up a set of working drawings from the model. I love inventor!
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More images / work in progress shots: http://www.zagadka.org/gallery/vidamp
Written by on Sept. 26, 2005 .
Well all this dual and 6 processor stuff is crap. No time to pick it up from the guy. There is definately an impending space issue. To that avail I will be installing a new 40 gig hard drive. One that came out of the system that Goldy sold me. It's a nice quick seagate drive. Hopefully not too loud! We will see.
Written on Sept. 26, 2005 .
Monday off! I worked Saturday. Yay.
Bought a UPS. It's DOA. I discovered today that ZBox (This Webserver) was off. I was like WTF?! Powered it back on. Later in the afternoon I looked again and it was off again. The bloody UPS software that was on there was like "OMFG teh UPS is not talking to ME OMG!; if the UPS is not talking to me, It must be on battery OMFG! I'd better shut down this server!" All well and good IF THE BLOODY UPS WAS ACUTALLY CONNECTED! It turns out the UPS was a dud and it has to be taken back anyway. I just didn't think the software would have a spaz attack like that... Hence - Server down for most of the day.
Other than that.
I set up my new CRO. A Dick Smith Q1806. It's good for 60MHz. I also set up my new lab power supply. A Dick Smith Q1760. 0-30VDC @ 5A.
The images show the manufacturer's version Pintek CRO. Mine just has "Dick Smith" where it says Pintek on that one and "Q1806" above the original "PS-605"...
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Written on Sept. 24, 2005 .
Written on Sept. 19, 2005 .
I hate banks, why should they close at 4? BUSINESS hours are 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Why 4? Are they not doing business??? Arseholes...
I just saw a trailer for a movie called Serenity. It looks really cool. I simply must see it when it comes out! It is based around a small series that was screened only on cable called Firefly. It has a big cult sci-fi following. The fans banded together and the director of Buffy and Angel picked it up and went with it! Cool! It looks like it may be similar to some of our Starwars RPG games where lots of property and people get broken and blown up to complete a simple task! Yeah, our characters were never good at diplomacy. Especially Darren's, Jabba the Hutt ended up taking Darren's character, "Drink Solo"s, leg for betraying him! Hrm.... Darren's character "Drink Solo" who smuggles with his ship the "Y2K Falcon" hrmmmm... 
I had a crazy techie I believe. Or was it a droid. I did have a droid character at one stage called LE-37 He was a gun turret on treads basically! I used to mod myself!
Other news: I have re-stocked my supply of yummy V8 juice. That tropical yumminnessssss!
Yay. A quiz. I am a Topaz. Joy.
 | You scored as Topaz. Not like any other, topaz-types love to stick out from the crowd! They tend to have their own style and make their own decisions and they're rarely afraid to show it. They tend to have many successes because of their own ingenuity and most show their feelings on the outside. They are their own person and many have great imaginations.
Which Mystic Gem Stone Relates To You? |
Written on Sept. 18, 2005 .
Sunday! Work tomorrow =( Well I got two days weekend, not like some of my staff (Lynx!). Man they really need to sort out that other store. It's a staff-sucking black hole.
Reading Fark.Com today. Lots of interesting stuff:
PLANET-DISSOLVING DUST CLOUD IS HEADED TOWARD EARTH! Yay... It's a "theory" so far and "we shouldn't panic until all the facts are known". 2014... 
WORLD'S FASTEST: Bugatti Veyron Busts Out With 1,000-hp and $1.3 Million Price Tag A new VW monster. 1001HP, 0->60Mph in 3 sec, 252Mph Top speed! Incredible. It is now the top speed and highest power production car out. VW bought Bugatti and this is it's first finished product after reviving the dieing company. They have orders for 30 already!
New NINTENDO controller... I think they stuffed it...
The worlds Smallest Robots.... Nanobots anyone?
Written on Sept. 17, 2005 .
Saturday!
Today I am going to try to make some triggers for different conditions; Lightning, Sound and Beam-Interupt. They will aid in special photography sessions for storms, broken lightglobes, bursting baloons etc. Cool.
In other news I put together one of my metal-halide lights today. Damn they are bright! 150W Floods. They are going to be very helpfull. I modified my old tripod to mount the fixture (lighting terms - the enclosure for the lamp) on the tripod and hang it's ballast from the bottom centre of the tripod. This particular tripod has a rubber plug in the base of the vertical slide. I took this out, drilled a hole, inserted a screw + bolt and cable harness.
Screw->Flat Washer->Cable Harness->Plug->Shakeproof Washer->Nut
This is re-inserted into the vertical's base and the screw tightened so the plug is compressed, securing it very firmly. This was required because the ballast weighs about 2Kg. The ballast was hung from the cable harness using two cable ties.
Pictures Later.
With all this experimenting and no breakfast of coffee, it has occured to me that I am hungry. The cripping imploding stomach feeling also indicates this. Hrm... I really should have a rest and eat something =) But there's so much more experimenting to go today! I need to get my breadboard out and a PC powersupply.
Another thought. BUGGER! I didn't buy any 7809s (9V Regulator IC). I hope I have some in my semis box. All the circuits run off 9V and I don't have my Lab Powersupply yet.
More thoughts. I need a CRO.
2:49 PM:
Finished off the light. The method seems OK. I need to purchase some cheap-arse tripods to put lamps on.
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It works quite well. Bloody bright! I want to get some 5000K globes for them now, the ones in there are 4200K which is just under daylight. About time something worked out in this shit-house week. 
7:31 PM:
I took some shots lit with my new light staring my new pint mug =)
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Written on Sept. 16, 2005 .
Written on Sept. 15, 2005 .
Work.
I'm not a massive fan on Limp Bizket but their lyrics from "Break Stuff" are rather appropriate today:
It's just one of those days,
When you don't wanna wake up,
Everything is fucked,
Everybody sux,
You don't really know why,
But want justify,
Rippin' someone's head off.
No human contact,
And if you interact,
Your life is on contract....
Big resounding un-enthused "meh" to today.
Written on Sept. 14, 2005 .
Work.
I may be running a city store for 2 weeks. Hrm. It seems, according to the area manager and the store manager from that store, that I have a big "challenge". If there's not enough staff there, they can go jump off something. If the store is shit or there's stuff I have to fix, they can go jump off something. I am relief managing, why should I have to fix the store that I am in? Grrrrrr. Deep sense of forboding. I really don't need to get screwed with, there is a lot of stuff that I need to fix in my own store.
10:36 PM:
Hrm, heated 'discussion' with my area manager re: Pay. Foreboding was right. It seems there are also a few other managers that have joined the bandwagon too. Others also being roughted sideways. Big can of worms. They tell us to communicate with our surrounding stores! Well. I did. I have MUD on my mind.
>look
You are in an office at the back of a retail outlet.
There is a desk up against one wall. Above the desk is a window opening onto the shop floor. Just below the window there are two telephones mounted on the wall labelled ‘Line 1’ and ‘Line 2’. On the desk is a myriad of paperwork and different coloured stationary. There is a keyboard, a monitor, a mouse, a stapler, a tape dispenser, an orange A4 envelope addressed to you and a selection of stock items that shouldn't be there. In front of the desk is an office gas lift swivel chair. You see various scattered notes on the wall behind the desk reminding you and others to complete various tasks. Under the desk is a safe, the computer's CPU a filing cabinet and a vacuum cleaner. On the floor there is a can and some screwed up paper.
> get envelope from desk
You pick up an orange A4 envelope [closed].
> use envelope
Nothing happens. Perhaps if you opened the envelope.
> open envelope
You open the envelope [open]
> look envelope
The envelope [open] contains a letter of offer.
> get letter from envelope
You slide the letter out from the envelope. It is a letter of offer addressed to you.
> use letter
Nothing happens. Perhaps if you read the letter.
> read letter
Letter of offer. You. Position. Salary: $[not enough]
You are pissed off.
> get can opener from desk
You pick up a can opener.
> look can opener
This is a shiny new Stabco can opener. It is an old style manual can opener. The brand Stabco is embossed along the small green plastic handle.
> get all from floor
You pick up a ball of paper.
You pick up a can.
> dest ball of paper
You destroy a ball of paper using your Zapper[1].
> look can
Writhetech Can 'o Worms. Once this shit starts, it’s not going to be contained easily, guaranteed. On the back of the can there is a small blurb: Writhetech pride themselves on creating situations that can’t be easily resolved. Our research and development team are always adding new features to our series of Can ‘o’ Worms. Using parallel processing and a number of random number generators this product continually adds elements to the situation as time progresses guaranteeing you long lasting chaos and a shit storm you can be proud of! Shake before use.
> use can
Nothing happens. Perhaps if you opened the can or shook the can something might happen.
> open can
You can not open the can without some sort of tool.
> shake can
The can starts to violently shake in your hand and works it’s way out of your grip. The can drops to the floor still shaking violently. After about 10 seconds pass, the shaking settles down to a dull rumble.
> get can
You pick up a can [rumbling].
> use can opener with can
At arms length you begin to open your Writhetech Can ‘o’ Worms. I guess you want to start some major shit! The can hisses as you break the seal. You start working your way around the edge of the can using a levering action. You progress to three quarters the way around and the lid leaps off explosively. Using all your strength you maintain your grip on the can as it unleashes nothing less than an earthquaketyphoonocane! Stock is falling off shelves, paper is blowing around your office wildly. Phones, faxes printers are all operating at random. Your computer monitor explodes. Silence. You peer over the steaming mouth of the can read on the bottom inside face: Consider your shit started.
Written on Sept. 13, 2005 .
A wholly un-fun week, feeling rather unstable at the moment, job/pay wise and very under-valued. The whole cap on my salary when I had my own little store was understandable. NOW, however, I am in a store that is currently running second in the COMPANY (Australia AND New Zealand). Where's my frakking payrise you tightarsed bastards. Written on Sept. 10, 2005 .
1:23 AM:
Home! Sleep time! I got myself a pair of OLD pint mugs. I had to drink 10 pints of OLD to get them!well in reality, I only had 5 pints and employed a dubious method of duplicating the stamps on my card but that's a secret !
What a terrific night! Plenty of OLD and Sourcream, Chilli Sauce and Wedges and also Nachos.
7:17 AM:
Kel off to work. Back to sleep for me in a minute!
11:47 AM:
That chicken from the fridge was bloody YUMMY! Off for more Sleep.
5:02 PM:
Woken up because Kel got home from work
7:34 PM:
Tomorrow will be my 100th Blog! (If I do one...) Time for some dinner!
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