The Battle Chair is complete.

Chair Open

How great is this? Whatever computing you want to do, you can do it from the comfort of the recliner. (more…)

Front View

When used for gaming, laptops tend to over heat, and eventually they destroy their video cards. My Alienware m15x laptop, while it seems to have good cooling, has had 4 new video cards in the last 3 years. I have wanted to use a desktop for gaming, but prefer to do most of my playing from the comfort of my recliner. Here is the start of an idea to accomplish that. Missing from the renderings are the arm that holds the monitor from the case to the right of the recliner to the monitor in front of me. As  you can see the computer case is very large. I’ve provided for a UPS in the cabinet since in my area all my computers require a UPS due to frequent power glitches that would cause an unprotected computer to reboot. Click on pictures for larger views. (more…)

I like to decorate for the Holidays, but I’m a lazy decorator. I’d like to have a single yard ornament to put up before Halloween and remove after new years. I’ve designed the perfect thing. You might call it one of several things and you might make it in various ways.

TurPunkenClaus

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I got my XTerra in the fall of 2005. I only have 36K miles, and the tires aren’t bald, but I didn’t feel comfortable in the snow with the original tires. For some odd reason, probably to save money, the original tires were not really suitable for Oregon in the first place. I’m much happier with my new tires. They have an aggressive tread and are “siped” to increase traction in the rain. Siping [Seyeping] is a pattern of small slits in the tread.

One of the pictures below is a demo of siping at the tire store where two samples of rubber, one siped and one smooth, are dragged across a smooth surface that has water on it. It take much more force to pull the siped sample across the surface. Siping is not a new process and you can see some very minor sniping in the original tires, some of which is picking up gravel chips. But you can see the new tires are much more aggressively siped.

Click on a picture for a larger view.

For years I’ve had fans in the back of the audio cabinet to keep my stereo stuff cool. Even modern equipment generates a lot of heat, esp the Receiver or any Amps you have.

When I got this audio cabinet about 8 years ago I put 3 fans in it. I got the best fans that I could find to reduce the hum that fans all make – Vantec Stealth 5″, and a Vantec Stealth 3″ for the center bay. There is a small transformer hooked up to the Aux power of the receiver so that the fans turn on whenever the receiver is on.

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I’m getting a new pair of hi-fi audio speakers.

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The wireless-G connection to the computer in the back room was flaky. A large wall mounted mirror on a wall between the office router and the back room reduced the signal strength. Using a cantenna on each end helped the signal strength, but did not eliminate the flaky connection. Using one cantenna was better, but was still not reliable, and there was message loss.

In a completely different direction, its time for a new satellite TV service [Dish] and the DVR requires a phone connection – Dish charges another $5 a month if there’s no connection. They are probably harvesting viewing habits with the phone line, in addition to allowing PPV ordering.

These two issues have created a project to wire a set of CAT5 cables around the house. The rear of the house has no crawl space and no attic, so the wiring is external on the outside of the house. The best and simplest method appears to be to use outdoor CAT5 cable with UV coating and silicon gel for direct burial. Oregon is wet, so while not used for direct burial, the cable is likely to be wet for much of the year.
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Seems like I never have enough printers. An old Deskjet 855 is hanging around until I use up the last ink cartridge. Then I’ll recycle it. Hard to get carts for it these days. And an HP 7550 is my photo printer. Great colors on photo paper. And recently an Epson R200 as a solution to write labels on CDs and DVDs. See this article: Print labels on your DVDs and CDs…

I needed a printer cabinet. So I slapped one together from stuff I had around the house. 1/2″ OSB and 1/4″ oak plywood. I may get around to painting it, but for now it’s a natural. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Construction is routed dados for shelves with glue and staples.