life
Newfoundland
I spent the last week (Aug 7-14) in Newfoundland, Canada. We stayed with non-biological family in Point May, on the Burin peninsula, for the first 5 days, then spent the last 3 days in St John’s, checking out places like Signal Hill, the harbour, Quidi Vidi Village, and doing the touristy thing, checking out all the shops on Water Street.
We were lucky to have excellent (and uncommon) sunny/cloudy weather, didn’t get much fog, and didn’t see any moose. This province has the best driving roads I’ve ever seen, long and winding, with excellently steep drops. The wide open space and relaxed environment also makes this one of the most peaceful places I’ve been.
Beach we went to the second day in Newfoundland, located between St Laurence and Lord’s Cove if I remember correctly.
What have I been doing?
Well, last week I began my new summer job at the school I attend, Heritage College. I am an Electronics Technician, in a manner, in charge of preparing the electronics labs for next semesters students. I am setting up a computer systems class’ components, as well as a networking lab, and various other organization and preparation tasks. Cool!
It also means I have less time to work on certain projects and music, but it also means that my off-time will be better spent doing these things I enjoy. Today I went to Allan’s house, a former band mate, and we jammed all day, and his father, someone I would consider a seasoned musician, gave me motivation to get much more involved in my music again. As a result, I’ve got several new song ideas and projects I’m excited to work on. Expect new posts on that soon!
I also ordered and received a battery desulfator, which is designed to revive batteries that no longer hold a charge as a result of sulfation on the plates. I have many batteries I suspect of having this problem, and tonight I have just begun revival attempts. From what I understand, it can take several weeks to fully revive a battery, so I won’t know if it worked for another while, but naturally updates will follow!
Telescope (moon)
My dad acquired a telescope gratuitously from someone he knew, who had made adjustments to the mirrors that made the images unclear. Our neighbour George was kind enough to find manuals for a similar type telescope, and using the calibration instructions, we were able to calibrate the mirrors again. That night, we tried it out on the moon, and were glad to see it worked quite well! A normally $200+ priced telescope for free!
This would have to be the best shot I got using my digital camera stuck in the eyehole.
The camera has a hard time focusing on targets that are 384,400 km away, however in this shot you can sort of make out the crater edges that were much clearer to our eyes than the camera.
Another pretty good shot.
A not so great close up.
You truly could spend hours exploring all the different craters and edges and details of the moon…
Where have I been?
It has been a long time. I suppose I lost some interest in the blog. Well, here is the tale of the last two months.
School
Plenty of it. Lots of homework, lots of labs and assignments. But it’s all getting done, piece by piece. We made a function generator in Analog Circuits, and in Digital Circuits we are having plenty of fun with boolean algebra and combinatorial logic!
Pinball
I repaired part of the issue with Gorgar. A bad 7408 chip caused the smaller transistor to stay on, thus keeping the large transistor locked on, thus keeping the solenoid on. The current drain damaged the solenoid, and destroyed both transistors. After replacing the transistors and the logic chip, it fires properly now, but the solenoid is having issues kicking the targets back up (perhaps it melted inside the shaft), and the drop targets aren’t scoring points (perhaps dirty contacts, or they are bent a bit too far back).
My dad has shuffled around the machines in the garage, and we’ve got a nice new solid state machine, Comet, and another project machine we grabbed for $160, I believe it’s called Gold Rush.
Music
Allan and I are starting to work on music as a band together, we will see where it goes. So far, one piece is based off the theme music for the Comet pinball machine, and the other is an acoustic sounding song. Hopefully this takes off!
Perhaps a more detailed post of the pinball machines is to come!
Winter Break: Projects
Over the break I’ve got a few projects on the go. Whether I finish any/all is another story, but at least, I don’t have an excuse if I find myself bored. I hope that all of your Christmases were enjoyable. My mom got me the following, which I had mentioned I wanted not too long ago:
A wire tracker. Perfect for checking phones lines, network cables, car wiring, coax cabling, and, most importantly, following wiring in pinball machines!
There are giant harnesses of wires in pinball machines that make it very difficult to track individual wires. This will make it so much easier for me to track where they go, rather than dealing with the two-colour wire coding system.
Another neat tool I got for Christmas was the following. Can you guess what it is (after the jump)?
Obligatory Christmas Post
Alright, so it isn’t really obligatory. Merry Christmas to you, reader, and a happy new year to you as well. Next semester starts January 18th, 2010, so there should be plenty of new projects. In fact, we are apparently building a robot!
During the break, I should be getting around to photographing and making posts for all my projects this semester (that I’ve not yet covered).
Oh, and as for Gorgar, I’ve located the triac responsible for the second drop-target solenoid not firing. (Notice to missing one above, 3rd row of triacs, 3rd triac in: right in the center!)
Now to locate a replacement. Shouldn’t be too hard. The way I located the defective triac was pretty awesome. I put the multimeter on continuity, and put one probe on the pin that triggers the malfunctioning solenoid, then, with the other probe, I touched the back-plate of all the triac, under the hopes that it was the pin attached to the back-plate (I assume ground, or perhaps the base, of the triac) would be the same pin that provides the power to the solenoid. Well, I was lucky, and found continuity between one of the triacs.
I checked on the intertubes for how to test a transistor/triac, and went about checking the hi-lo values on this one. Nothing. As a control group, I tested all the other triacs on the board, and all of those ones were fine, this was the only one that had no continuity anywhere. Safe to say, she has blown.