Cleaned out and tested my mates tropical fish tank light. These are really nice. You can adjust blue / white proportions of lights.

eBay score - direct from China of course. Got a bunch of jumpers and also matching 2,3,4 and 5 way connectors.

I bought a few of these cheap ESP8266-12 modules from eBay. I'm pretty impressed so far with how easy it is to get a simple web server up and running.

Key learnings:

• The module has a number of IO pins which must have set state to run and another state to flash. GPIO0 needs to be tied low to flash.
• Needs hundreds of mA - can't run from USB->RS232 converter power.
• minicom (linux) doesn't send the required CRLF to the module. Have to manually use CTRL+M, CTRL+J
• Needs to be flashed with NodeMCU firmware to use LUA

python esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash 0x00000 ../Downloads/nodemcu_integer_0.9.6-dev_20150704.bin

The log and is in and the Anubias are moved onto it. Looks OK I reckon. The tank was looking barron after all the Giant Ambulias died (how?!) and the amazon sword is entirely gone so I put some fake plants in. If those fake plants die then I know I should definitely stop.

Mini Sausage Rolls! =)

I was given this interesting tube. The Philips DLS10. It's a thermal delay tube designed to delay the switch on of the HT (High Tension) section so that tubes are at temperature before HT is applied. This one is operational.

I created this Bluetooth FM tranmitter thingy from two cheap eBay items. Combining them reduces the crap hanging around in the car and means just one cord freeing the USB socket for charging.

Cleaned out the throttle body. It's pretty gross. The crankcase breather behind the butterfly was totally clogged.

Finished the air compressor manifold bracked. It's much better now that the manifold is not floating around. Click the image for more images.

Yup. Thanks again Australia Post. These are United Electric UE-468 triodes.

I started pulling apart this Ferguson PF181 transformer in preparation for use. It has old material based sheathing on the flyleads which I plan to replace with spagetti (PVC though). Unfortunately I didn't finish this off. I will have to continue later. It also looks like some kind of bug has made a house at some point in there.

I fired up the filaments on the two 813 Beam Pentodes that I scored. They both work. One 813 is RCA, the other is Radiotron. I'm going to have to track down a microwave transformer to feed the plate on this thing. It wants ~2kV. Will have to rethink a project now, because the 304T is dead. I'm pretty sure people have built amps with 813s.

Well that sucks =( I can't see myself getting hold of another one of them in Aus any time soon...

The tube was actually packed very very well, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Thanks Australia Post. 

Spicey Baked Sausages (not my recipe). Normally you'd do this in the oven. I was a little bored of sausages. You cut the sausages down the middle once they are cooked a little and put in a BBQ / Tomato / Worcestershire / brown sugar sauce with onions in there too. They work a little better in the oven because the sauce caramelises. Still tasty though!

This is how you do breakfast correctly =) (This was not all for me btw =P )

Today I had a little time to fire up the TRS-80 to see if it was alive or not. Turns out it's in great condition. I opened the main unit to check the capacitors and they are very close to spec still. To check the capacitors I desoldered the ground lead (so they were out of circuit) and checked them with the ESR meter. I bodged together a DIN->RCA lead for the video, then realised that my DIN connector was 7 pin not 5 pin. So I ended up further bodging by removing the pins from the plug and sticking them directly in the back of the TRS-80.

This is what the tank looks like now. Unfortunately the Guppies did not like their environment at all and carked it. The Tetras and Rainbow Shark are doing well. On Sunday we went out again, this time to another shop to get some more fish for the kids. We ended up with a Scissor Tail, More Tetras, An Albino Rainbow Shark and also two Coloured Widows - one blue and one pink. Kel also talked me into getting a bridge. Since the last lot of plants died, I got some more. I got some Ambulia and some Anubias. The Amazon sword is still there in the back, but it's not looking great.

BBQ Beef Ribs =)

The fishless cycle has now happened and the Nitrite and Amonia levels have bottomed out. This means that the bacteria has been established in the filter media which take care of the Nitrogen cycle for us and make sure our water doesn't get toxic. The kids got some guppies. Kel got a rainbow shark and I got myself some tetras.

The pressure switch and manifold turned up from eBay =) It's now fitted and wired, set to go off at 100PSI.