Thursday, August 6, 2009

Winner Coolest Factoid of the Week: Raspberry filling at the center of the Milky Way

Found: The Galaxy’s Flavor

Astronomers detected the chemical responsible for raspberries’ flavor—and one of the largest molecules ever found in space—in a dust cloud at the center of the Milky Way.

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Chipped Tea Cup Changes

And for todays trick:

Apparently some folks have my chippedteacup.net as my contact web address. Actually they have it as chippedteacup.com so I had to address that kind of immediately.

A cracked tea cup from the cupboard,  a little photo shoot, a little photoshop, and a couple minutes on Dreamhost.com fixing up the DNS... voila!

A lovely one paged website. I don't want to even think about how many of these I have!

Here is the before and after of the photoshopping just for fun. I wanted the tone to be a bit of a homage to Polaroid, now that they are so scarce! (the link is to Newsweek's piece with some great photographers saying what Polaroid means/meant to them... although the word on the street is that there may be hope! http://www.the-impossible-project.com/ )


See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Fry's: Fountain Valley vs. Manhattan Beach

On Tuesday I stopped by the Fry's I see from off the 405 when I drive back north. It always looks so much bigger than the one in Manhattan Beach so I thought I should check it out. No need really. The one in Manhattan Beach has more of what I need, is closer and has a KOI POND!

 Fountain Valley, CA
10800 Kalama River Avenue
(714) 378-4400
FAX (714) 378-4418

 Manhattan Beach, CA
3600 Sepulveda Boulevard
(310) 364-3797
FAX (310) 364-3718

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Tree of Life Nursery / California Native Plants: Kill your lawn!

So on Monday I took a break from technology and went to check out the Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano. They not only focus on drought tolerant plants but ones that are actually from this area of the world. An incredibly helpful group of folks! They recommended the book California Native Plants for the Garden by Carol Bornstein, David Fross and Bart O'Brien

 Tree of Life Nursery
www.californianativeplants.com

 33201 Ortega Highway
San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675
(949) 728-0685

 I have a few favorites that I really liked, including some varieties of buckwheat that were beautiful and sculptural. However, I decided to make a little virtual sage garden from the 19, thats right NINETEEN different types of sage they had there. Enjoy!

  
Salvia Whirley Blue
Salvia Sonomensis, Creeping S age
Salvia Leucaphylla, Pt Sal, Purple Sage
Salvia Mellifera, Black sage
Salvia Munzii, Munz's Sage
Salvia Winifred Gilman
Salvia Skylark
Salvia Aromas
Salvia Desperado
Salvia Brandegei
Salvia "Allen Chickering"
Salvia Leucaphylla, Amathyst Bluff Sage
Salvia Clevelandii
Salvia Clevelandii Otay
Salvia Tera Seca
Salvia Clevelandii Baja
Salvia "Bees Bliss"
Slavia Dara's Choice
Slavia Apiana, White Sage

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Saturday, August 1, 2009

The video of the new and improved HL1606 Hello World and an Ant

This time the video is going through YouTube.

 

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So much better...

So, yes, the latch pin, the power pin, continuity all bad. So I clipped off an end and this time did what I should have done and tested for continuity all the way around just to know what I was dealing with and this is what I got:


The continuity reading I was getting between the latch and the 5V was not the same as what you are seeing here because what I was getting had no directionality. 

So I desoldered and resoldered what I had done for practice this time using about 120° more heat - about 610° F so I could go much faster. I had been try to use less heat to not stress the plastic, bu that had meant I was spending more time on each contact.

So the steps now:

  1. If it is a circut/IC you don't know well, do you continuity readings first so you know what to compare it to.
  2. Get your wires ready, both sides stripped, know what order they go in. I'VE CHANGED THEM by the way
  3. Apply solder to each of the pads
  4. Apply wires
  5. Test again
And they all checked out! Since they looked a bit fragile I mummied them up with masking tape. If you do that it is always a good idea to put the piece of tape of a piece of cotton clothing first to make it less sticky.

The new config (connections the same, wire colors different)

SI  to Ardunio DigitalPin/PWM pin 9 (white wire)
DI to Ardunio DigitalPin 3 (blue wire)
CI to to Ardunio DigitalPin 4 (yellow wire)
LI to Ardunio DigitalPin 5 (green wire)

Re-compiled and ran the code...

MUCH BETTER!

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