Ebay score. A set of drifts, punches and chisels. Also a small block plane.

I've got myself a freshly imported Rigol DS1052E! It's got a Chinese manual, but meh. There is a PDF version of the manual in English if I really want it. I guess watching Dave play with all his scopes over at EEVBlog convinced me to get one.

The thing is awesome! I love it. DSO is entirely new to me. I've currently got a Dick Smith 60MHz CRO. I think my favorite thing so far is the single shot triggering and the timebase zoom it has, where you can show a magnified (by time) view of the triggered waveform below the normal display.

The new CRO (er, DSO) is great! I am using it while I design a circuit to help promote our range of 12V hallogen replacement LED downlights. They look damn boring in white boxes. My idea is to have a strip of aluminium angle with 10 MR16 porcelain sockets fitted to it. Each lamp will have it's own transistor to turn it on, mounted next to the socket on the strip. The circuit will serve as a test bed for new lamps that we get. It will have a PWM based dimmer and a voltage control. Each down light will be lit for a second or two (adjustable) and then the one after, down the line.

This should add some interactivity for customers, as well as some animation to catch the eye. I think having all of them lit at once would not only be blinding, but just as boring as white boxes.

So far my design is going to incorporate two 555s, an LM350 and a handfull of 8A transistors in TO220s. To do the stepping between globes I am going to use a 4017 decade counter.

I mostly camped out in the shed today. It was too wet for the kids to play outside. Got lots done - Finished bits and pieces on my router table. Built a push block and box joint jig for the router.

Christmas was good. We went over to Mum and Dad's for Lunch.

Today was great. Kel cooked a nice lunch for us with ham and potato salad and green salad.

I passed a big milestone today in getting organised in the shed. I finished my drill press bench. I can now go back to using the table that the drill press was on...

I got lots done this weekend.

I bought a lot of 6 used power tools, two extension cords and an RCD (earth leakage safety switch) for $130. I'm pretty happy with that. It's not crap either. A mixture of Bosch, Makita and Ryobi with a GMC plunge router too. I vacuumed them all out and tested them. They are all good.

Sunday I went with my Dad to pick up 4 lengths of 50 x 200 x 2400 treated pine for the kids sandpit. Dad gave me some black PVC to put down. We also picked up the galvanised screws and washers that we'd need. While at Bunnings I also bought some supplies for the new tools, some sanding belts and sanding discs as well as a few jigsaw blades and quick-clamps.

So far it's just tooling up for woodwork. Sunday I also built a sawhorse and 3/7 of a saw horse. I had to make a tricky jig to cut the angle on the feet because I couldn't use the saw to directly cut the angle on the legs (70mm x 20mm) sideways. The max cut depth is about 50mm. I clamped each leg to my saw extension table at 14 degrees and cut it tat way. There are photos in my gallery under woodwork.