Less Stuff, More Fun

It started with a brief conversation with my buddy regarding my desire to de-clutter my abode. You see, some might say I'm a bit of a hoarder; to which I typically reply "I'm not a hoarder, I'm a pack-rat who happens to be a slob". Yea, that's how it started.

Anyway, I decided that it would be really good to do a few of the following things:

• get rid of some stuff
• clean up a bit
• make a place for stuff that doesn't have a place
• put stuff where it belongs

In this regard, I felt it would be a really good thing if my musical instruments could be put in a place that would keep them out of the way, but still make it really easy to pick up an instrument for playing.

One Man's Trash

Me: I really need to make a wall mount for my bagpipes
Buddy: you can use the drop bars I ran over with a lawn mower
Me: shit yea!
Buddy: reduce, reuse, recycle
(events may not have been exactly as described)

...and after today's coffee, armed with a few brackets and screws that were lying about, I soon had a nice wall mounted bagpipe holder. aaaaaalright!

Next up, a banjo holder.

Now quit reading, and go put stuff out of the way.

After re-purposing a larger case with more storage for the server on my home network and filling the server with my ripped DVDs, I figured it was about time to replace my media playback machine with a machine that was actually capable of decoding my rips without running the CPU at 100%.

Gather Some Components

The case for the new machine is box that was part of a Wild Turkey holiday gift set: a cheaply crafted piece of crap made of low grade wood, with a clear plastic cover.

The Electronics

• Dual core 1.8Ghz Atom processor on a mini-itx motherboard
• 2 x 2Gb RAM
• A far too powerful power supply
• 80Gb SATA laptop hard-drive that I pulled out of a busted laptop

Because this machine is going to be fanless, I decided to layout the components in a way that would maximize convection cooling. What this means, is that the component that generates the most heat needs to be closest to the exhaust and the most temperature sensitive component needs to be located by the air intake.

Cutting, Drilling, Bending, JB-Welding

First things first: the hinged lid needed to be removed so I could muck with the inside of the box more easily.

1. After aligning all of the internals, I traced where the metal port plate is supposed to go and then cut... not a bad fit.
2. A lot of small holes where drilled on both sided of the box. Technically, it was the top and bottom that were drilled ( the machine is going to be on end so as to provide the best convection airflow.
3. Those metal things with the points are my component stand offs and I bent the points down before using JB-weld to attach them to the inside of the box.

Fire Up the Soldering Iron

• That two pronged thing-a-ma-bobber is my power switch. Because it consists of two switches in series, both switches must be pressed in order to power the machine on and (most importantly) power off the machine. The last switch I put in/on a machine has a tendency to accidentally get pressed when I least expect it; like when I open my scanner.
• A red LED was soldered to some wire and wrapped with electrical tape. This is the Power On indicator and bit a sandpaper helped diffuse the light coming out of the LED.

Put It All Together

This is the mostly finished machine with the lid put back on. The locking clasp on the side had to be moved, but it still functions perfectly.

At this point, everything was going extremely well and the computer looked absolutely fantastic, so I figured something was terribly wrong. After connecting everything and pressing the power buttons .... nothing happened. Bummer.

Note to self: when powering up a computer, make sure it is plugged in properly.

After properly plugging in my power converter, the machine booted and I installed (Arch Linux)[http://www.archlinux.org/].

Installed

The final resting place for the machine is on the wall next to the TV.

• Don't be afraid of the dark
• Computers are just fancy clocks
• The two power switches are just barely visible on the right side of the machine.

Still to do: The audio out can use a smaller adapter and the current external USB wireless adapter needs to be replaced by an internal PCI-Express mini card. I need to either hack the XMBC to properly handle my NES controller, or I need to write my own software for browsing and playing media from my collection.

Due to the lack of a fan, this computer is silent; therefor, I have named it Wind.

Now quit reading, and think of wind related things.

like:

• What's next? A computer named Earth and a computer named Fire?
• Make 3 more, and Crom will laugh at them.

While copying large files across computers on my network, I became rather frustrated with the amount of time it was taking. So I did a bit of research on ways to speed up my wireless network and performed a not quite scientific experiment to measure the fruits of my labor.

The Nerdoleum

In case you were wondering, my network is the Nerdoleum. It's kind of like a mausoleum, but more nerdy and less dead.

Oh damn look at that! 77% is a crying shame. I'm getting a better signal from my neighbor's network. How is that even possible? Copying my 491 Megabyte test file in this state took 6 minutes 15 seconds

Surely I can do something to change the situation

What can't cheap beer fix?

1. drink two cans of cheap beer
2. use some crappy right-handed scissors to cut off the bottom of the can
3. slice open the can and pretend to bend into some sort of parabola
4. throw those cans over the wireless routers antennas to direct wasted signal energy in an appropriate direction
5. ?
6. be thirsty

Oh hay! That seems to be a bit better.

Copying the file across the network again took 5 minutes 29 seconds. That's about a 12% increase in speed. WOOHOO! It's not much, but it's not too shabby for two cans of beer and one minute of work.

Now quite reading, and go drink a cheap beer.

The Problem

Let me start by saying that I hate little earbud headphones. Sure they may send music to my ears but they do absolutely nothing to block ambient noise and I am forced to increase my volume to ear damaging levels in order to hear my audio above all of the crappy-ass racket I'm forced to endure on a daily basis. Having tried very expensive "active noise canceling" headphones that didn't work, I decided to make a cheap pair of passive noise canceling headphones that actually work as expected.

The Pieces

My new headphones would be made out of some cheap headphones that I bought for $6 at Ross and a pair of $20 Peltor Optime 105 earmuffs from Amazon which reduce ambient sound by 29dB. (That's about the difference between a telephone dial tone and a power saw )

Take Stuff Apart

There is a certain amount of enjoyment I get from being able to take something apart. A few screws and a bit of snapped plastic later, I had a nice pile of crap to work with. Unfortunately, I managed to sever the cable leading to one of the speakers.

Put Stuff Together

One of the first times I used a soldering iron, I wasn't paying attention and I picked the iron up like a pencil and burned my fingers.

Nothing bad happened this time, unless you consider this crappy solder job to be bad. Hey, it works, so it is all good in my books. Besides, I simply covered the solder with some Gorilla tape and everything was pretty... pretty awesome!

Break Some More

Fortunately the remaining speaker pieces were too large to shove into the earmuffs so I started breaking off the plastic until the speakers were small enough to fit.

Throw Those Babies On!

Ohhhhh yeaaaaaaa! Looking sharp and working like a charm. After plugging the headphones into my portable music player, I sat in front of my home stereo speaker and I was extremely happy with the results. Seriously, these "under $30" homemade headphones cancel noise better than the $80 pair of active noise reducers that I had tried. D.I.Y. for the win!

Now quit reading, and go be quiet.

The Problem

My little home server, affectionately named miniserver is a mini-itx machine with a 400Mhz processor, 512MB of RAM and a 60G harddrive; all in a nice little case that sits on top of my bookshelf. Unfortunately, 60G isn't enough room for my purposes and the extra 250G drive I have won't fit within the slim case.

Fortunately, a new computer case is just $5 at the thrift store; which means I spent 5 bucks for a box that I was going to turn into a new computer case.

Get Hacking

In hindsight, I should have taken some measurements of the motherboard before I dropped my fiver on a box I thought I could stuff a computer into. Oh well, it all worked out.

Here is the new box next to the old case. Yea, that's a VHS tape for size comparison.

pull the guts out

After pulling all of the parts out of the original case, I had a decent collection of old slow gear on my floor.

smash!

All of the stand-offs from the original case were removed. This was the "point of no return" because I smashed them out with a hammer.

If you've never hit a computer component with a hammer, I highly suggest giving it a go. pure joy.

chop it up

With surgical precision, I cut a hole in the box so that the various ports of the motherboard can be accessed from the outside.

By "surgical precision" I mean that I drew some hasty lines and used a drill and the saw on my pocket knife to create the access hole.

drill baby drill (that's bad)

A couple of holes were drilled for the power switch, reset switch, and some status LEDs. So far, so good.

getting close

The interior of the box with the stand-offs hot glued into place and pairs of shims hot glued to the lid and wall of the box. The shims will be used for mounting the hard-drives.

mounting the hard-drives

Remember those cumbersome plastic cases that Video Rental stores kept their VHS tapes in? Well I chopped one up to get a few lengths of flexible durable plastic. The hard-drives were bolted to the plastic and the plastic was screwed to the shims. It's easier than bolting the drives directly to the case, and it leave a but of room for airflow.

all set and ready to go

Well looky looky; it's all of the components (minus two USB ports) in place and ready to be fired up.

Amazingly, everything worked just fine. It is also quite amazing that I didn't burn my fingers with the hot glue gun, or smash my fingers with the hammer, or cut my fingers with the saw, or damage myself in any way, shape, or form. weird.

sitting pretty

All closed up and sitting on the bookshelf next to the linksys router and DSL modem thingy.

what does it do?

It runs Ubuntu server edition and :

• it serves files via NFS and SSHFS, so I can access my music, movies, and pictures from any machine on my network
• it runs Apache webserver and MySQL database, which allow me to develop and test websites at home
• it is a backup for my various coding projects and has a centralized Bazaar repository

What the machine doesn't do is process a lot of data, so the 400Mhz processor is just fine (and quite energy efficient). Actually, this entire box could be replaced by a nice little plug computer.
Note to self: write a letter to the manufacturer of a plug computer.

Alright, quit reading, and go spend 5 dollars at the thrift store.

Due to an unfortunate series of events, Shemp ( my homemade banjo ) is out of commission. However, I recently purchased a used Sovereign banjo that needed a bit of work to get into a somewhat decent playing condition. One thing I really wanted for this banjo was a strap. You know, just in case I want to wander around the block while picking a tune.

For my banjo strap, I wanted something fairly easy to remove and very easy on the wallet. For two bucks spent at the thrift store, and bits of stuff lying around my home, I had a pretty sweet banjer strap in no time.

Four Bottle caps

Beer bottle caps, hot glue, and magnets make great bottle cap fridge magnets, but that's not what I'm making right now. From the bottle cap collection, I selected two Red Tails, a PBR, and a Highlife.

Gettin Hammered!

All four of the caps was hammered flat. The Red Tail caps flattened nice and clean, the other two.... well not so much. Notice that the PBR cap is a Jack of Diamonds? That was intentional.

Stuck Together

The flat caps where paired up and a hole what punched through their centers. To keep things neat and to cover any sharp edges, an eyelet was popped into the center of the stacked caps.

The actual "strap"

Two dollars at Sack's Thrift Avenue purchased a leather belt. Damn, I'm busting the bank on this one. A slit the length of the flat caps diameter was cut into each end of the belt and a small hole was punched for good measure.

Hold on

Some red leather cord was knotted at one end, fed through the cap eyelet, looped through the rim bolt and over the caps to secure the whole thing nicely. It's quite easy to remove and adjust. This was done twice.

Done

"Button" the caps through both ends of the belt, throw that baby over the shoulder and frail some Cripple Creek on the front porch!

It is really weird to play standing up, as I am so accustomed to easily seeing the strings and frets when sitting.

Now quit reading, and go parse the following with lilypond:

\version "2.12.2"
\header {
  title =   "~$ sudo modprobe" 
  composer =  "Fabian Scherschel & Dan Lynch"
  copyright = "Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0"
}
melody = \relative c' {
  \key e \minor
  \time 4/4
  \numericTimeSignature
  e4 d8 e4 d8 e[ fis] | % 1
  g2. b4 | % 2
  a2. r8 b8 ~ | % 3
  b8 a g a g a g fis | % 4
  e4 d8 e4 d8 e[ fis] | % 5
  g2. ~ g8 fis | % 6
  d1 ~ | % 7
  d2 r | % 8
  \bar "|."
}
\score {
  \transpose c' c
  \context TabStaff = "banjer" <<
    \set TabStaff.stringTunings = #banjo-open-g-tuning
    \set Staff.instrumentName = #"Banjo"
    \context TabVoice = "banjer" { \melody }
  >>
  \layout {}
}

...and thank you Dr. Kulp

Wow look at that! It appears to be a fully working cheap plastic faux rotary wall-mount phone that someone gave me as a gift!

Wait, faux rotary? What's the point? I know; I'll fix the phone!

Here is the same phone again in exploded view, and by "exploded", I mean I took it apart looking for usable components for other projects. The ringer might be useful, and there is a switch that can probably be used for something.

In reality, I just want the receiver.

Because the phone is so new, the speaker and microphone have very little power requirements and can easily be used with a computer. I thought there was a problem with the mic, so I broke the phone open and replaced the mic with a cheap computer mic.

why everything was glued together in a phone that was designed to be taken apart is beyond me.

After a little solder/hot glue/electrical tape magic, I had the receiver wired up for standard microphone and headphone jacks. It may not be pretty, but it is pretty functional and that's what counts.

Hey, not bad.

Now all I need to do is plug this thing into my computer and I can start making internet phone calls to um... uh.... someone on the internet?

If I've learned anything from spending a month focusing on writing a 100 page movie script, it is that time is precious and it should be spent doing things that one loves. That being said, I *don't* like cleaning my apartment; if I have the time to clean, then I have time to do something fun or at least something more interesting than pushing a vacuum cleaner.

Well eventually it was time to clean, and during the cleaning quite a bit of loose change was found. To keep the change in one place, I put it all into the cylinder that previously housed the scotch that my buddy gave me for helping him with his photography projects. Do you notice how there is no link to his photography blog? That's because he doesn't have one.

When I put change into the cylinder, I waste a lot of time taking the lid off, depositing the change, and then returning the lid. There must be an easier way......

I had big dreams of using my rotary-tool to cut a nice slot in the lid of cylinder, but that wouldn't be a good use of time. A pocket knife, hammer, and some files should do the trick.

In case you were wondering, that is $44.12 in change.

First things first, hammer the knife blade through the lid. Kids, don't try this at home.

Click the image and look at the big picture. See that notch on the knife edge? My buddy Caleb did that while hotwiring my 68 Plymouth.

The newly created slot in the lid was widened and the edges were folded and hammered flat to reduce the exposure of sharp edges.

Can't touch this. do do de do Can't touch this. Stop. Hammertime!

Done, done, and done.

The lid was put back on the cylinder and the project was finished.

For perspective, I have included a ¢50 piece, a dollar coin, and a quarter.