Painting my Escort (Part 1)
Summer is here! And, I have plenty of little projects lined up. Right now? Painting my car. No, this definitely doesn’t count as a little project. The rust has come back after I painted it last year, and I realized that the Duplicolor/Canadian Tire paint/primer doesn’t last at all. However, I realized that the section of my car I painted using Tremclad is in the same condition as it was last year!
This is the repair with the Duplicolor. Didn’t last so long.
This is the Tremclad job: not too bad!
I have been wanting to paint my car Yellow for the longest time. Now, having realized the rust is back, and will continue costing me money, I decided I’m going to paint the whole car!
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!
SoundCloud
Through a friend’s MSN name I discovered SoundCloud. Essentially what it is is a system allowing registered users to share their own songs on the Internet, in order to promote themselves. I figured, what the heck, and I posted a couple of songs there, with plans to put more up. Check it out, the songs load a bunch faster than from this server.
My profile can be found at http://soundcloud.com/danjoannis/.
DIY: UPS
March break has found me a project! Here is a little background. My friend’s dad gave me an old Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) he had at home, but that the battery was no good. I have plenty of batteries, so this was a non-issue. The UPS was a godsend because that same day I had gone shopping for one, but not found one suitable for the server.
When I took this used UPS home, and hooked up all the batteries in my arsenal, I discovered that it was too weak to power the server for more than 2 seconds. Bummer. Even for power flickers that was not suitable, as there is a 5 second delay after the power returns before it switches back to mains power. What to do, what to do…
Oh, I know. Make my own!
Update: My testing proceedures blocked me from finding one critical fault with the design. As you will notice, I am using a resistor in order to short the capacitor from the AC-DC adapter, in order to more quickly de-energize the relays. Unfortunately, it still isn’t fast enough. My testing involved simply unplugging the adapter, and checking for any flickering in the devices. However, this testing does not remove mains power. Thus, the slight lag time for switch over does not affect the device, as it is has power on both relay positions. However, in a real situation, the power fails, both on input power and the adapter, and I’ve tested that my switch over time in this case is too great for most devices.
Fix to come…
Moved, new song!!!
The move is now complete. The server is back up and running, and hopefully there won’t be any issues for the next long while, thought if I move the server around in the room it may go down for a couple minutes. Good news: the internet here is faster than the last neighbourhood! Upload is around 540kbps, vs. the 280kbps I got at the last place. Upload is now 4.5mbps, vs. 1.8mbps. Nice!
I recently began a new song, and it has evolved into something of intricate instrumental interaction that is enjoyable to listen to. It is long, however I have always been a fan of long songs with many faces. My music, being instrumental, does not follow a pattern such as radio-bound music. A pattern of intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus simply becomes too boring in an instrumental. Therefore, the music I write often does not have such defined sections, and instead takes advantage of multiple alterations of notes and instruments in order to keep it interesting and enjoyable.
Head on down to the music section to hear the new song!
Hard at Work
“DJ Dan” is back: after getting myself a beautiful M-Audio Axiom 61 keyboard, I’ve returned to recording music.
After the move, I will be organizing my room such that it is a studio before anything else, so that I can truly focus on making music, without clutter and distraction.
These are the results of my hard labour: a full 19″ screen worth of tracks.
Note: Server Downtime
Just a note: the server will be down, likely beginning sometime Saturday afternoon, though possibly either sooner, or later, than that. Once down, it will not be back until AT LEAST Tuesday, Feb 22. Reason: I’m moving, and as such, so is the server. The Internet connection will need to be transferred to the new house, and though we’ve notified them already in advance, well, I will never be one to vouch for quick response time from any of the involved companies…
Thanks in advanced for the patience, and hopefully the connection will be faster at the new place!
Update: it is.
Home Device Repair
Hello again, it has been a little bit. College has picked up, and as I am moving in a little over a week, most of my projects have been packed. However, I’ve worked on a few things in the past little while.
Remember my half-repaired LCD monitor? Well recently I obtained yet another defective LCD monitor. Symptoms: no power, no lights, no noise. I may or may not post photos about this one, because I did all repairs without taking photos, and it was a pain to take it apart, and I wish not to do so again, hehe. Basically, the cause was 4 blown caps in on the circuit board, which I’ve replaced and it now functions fully, aside from a little squealing when in stand-by or turned off (I believe due to a capacitor that started blowing but that I measured to be within proper values.)
A few months ago, however, I did document a repair project I undertook. I have two home theatre amps at home that I’ve had problems with. At one point, both had stopped functioning properly. So, naturally, I decided to set to fixing them.
Pinball: Meet the Machines
A very basic photo post: all sorts of photos of my dad’s pinball collection. Awesome 😀
Left of garage
Right of garage
Nostalgia: Windows 98
Last weekend I tried to install Windows 98 on the oldest laptop of mine. It didn’t work, it gave an error, “Insufficient system memory”. Funny, I had 2GB of RAM…
After all, it is a laptop. Why doesn’t Windows XP ask these questions? Maybe it just knows.
I wonder if it’s any better than Justin TV?
Dial-up server!!!
23 minutes remaining, no, I mean, 14 minutes, no, I mean, 3 hours 27 minutes!
I miss this… Sort of, not really. It’s so much nicer to have it all shut down on its own.
I’ve got a video of it trying, and failing, to boot, however, bad quality, and not all that important.