This one isn’t one of my projects, but it was cool enough to share. My wife sent me this picture of the inside of a Grocery Scanner that was setup at the Children’s Museum.
Let’s Play Kerbal!
My brother and I love to play video and computer games together. Usually it’s Halo, Sins of a Solar Empire, or more recently Kerbal Space Program. Tonight we decided to see how many big screens we could play it on.
It worked out pretty well. Oh, and how do you play a single player game with two people? You take turns.
Blue Screen of Death At the Pump
This was just too funny. Apparently these additive fuel system are running windows. I don’t know of any other OS that has the Blue Screen of Death.
Mini Iron Man Arc Reactor
This was a costume prop my brother and I made for our nephew Carter.
Nothing special, just soldered a ring of white LED lights into a transparent 3D printed ring, and powered it all with a couple coin cells. Somehow we missed an LED and couldn’t get it working. And since we welded the LEDs between the ABS printed parts. We would have to destroy it and start over to try and fix it.
I wish I had taken more pictures early during the build.
Toothless Wings
Nothing much to this costume. I just cut up a black fleece blanket into the general shape of toothless wings. Then used a sowing machine to sow the ridges.
I was very lazy with the lights. I hot-glued some RGB LED strips to the wings, one on each side of the center ridge. Then wired the blue lights to a 9V battery plug. Then hot glued a Velcro cable tie to the back side of the wings to hold the 9V battery.
Free Xbox Games with Gold workaround
EDIT: Now you can start building your Xbox One games library from your Xbox 360. Just go to “Games with Gold” from the Gold tile on Home.
For a while now Microsoft has been giving away free games to their Xbox live gold members twice a month. When the Xbox One came out they included the same deal. You can get Xbox One games for free as a gold member. Originally I thought that you had to own a Xbox One to use this benefit. But one day I discovered that you can “purchase” these free games through their website (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/games-with-gold).
This is awesome because I don’t own the Xbox One, yet. So Twice a month I visit xbox.com and claim my free games for the Xbox One. This way when I finally have enough saved up enough to buy it, I’ll already have plenty of games to enjoy. I just wish I discovered this sooner, because I haven’t found a way to go back and claim the free offers I missed.
Note: This also works for those that don’t have enough hard drive space for all their games. You can still claim your free game and just wait to download it.
Here are instructions on re-downloading online purchases content. (http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/downloadable-content/redownload-content)
Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset Hack
I’ve been using this headset with my Xbox 360 for a while now. But I always found it so cumbersome to use by running an extension from the end of the cable up to where I hold my controller. So about 3 months ago I modified them to be the perfect Xbox headset.
I realize that many of my posts would be much more helpful if they had detailed instructions on how I was able to do what I did. This is one of those times where I wish I had taken more pictures while working on them, instead of just afterwards. I don’t even have a decent before picture.
Essentially, I removed the mic plug and cable and soldered it directly into the volume/mic control
The silver adapter, in the right photo above the mic plug, makes it so I can plug it directly into my Xbox 360 controller.
Now the distance from the headset to my controller is perfect with no more extra cables. So much nicer than what I was doing before.
If I ever get my hand on another one I’ll be sure to do a How-To step-by-step guide. And if anyone would like me to mod theirs I’ll do it for free. Just shoot me an email and we can work out the details.
Pinewood Derby – Propeller powered
A week ago my brother invited me to join him for an Anything Goes pinewood derby race. I have great memories of building these cars with my Dad and wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to relive those moments.
First I designed my car in Sketch-Up, and then built the car from a standard derby kit. (see image below)
The hardest part was building the propeller motor stand. I made that part separately and the glued it into place. Before I could glue it I had to drill holes and feed the wires for the motor through the holes.
Then to power the motor I used an old iPhone 4 battery I had laying around. To make the battery easier to use I soldered a new connector on the battery so I could easily plug it into the car and the battery charger. To finish the simple circuit, I added a switch so I wouldn’t have to disconnect the battery to turn it off.
And finally, to finish things off I added some tungsten weights to a cardboard cover painted to match the car.
I say the finished product always looks better than the sketch.
No place like localhost
This just made me laugh. And I thought it was worth sharing.
Dell Laptop Puzzle
Before I became a network administrator assistant at my high school I had a reputation among my peers that I could fix anything. So when the IT crew ran into a problem they would usually ask for my help.
In this case, they had to completely disassemble this Dell laptop to reset the bios. For whatever reason, the IT crew couldn’t figure out or didn’t care to put the laptop back together. So one of them approached me and told me that I could have the laptop if I could put it back together. In just over 30min I had it back together and booting.
The best part is that I have never taken a laptop apart before and had to figure it out on my own. Just like a jigsaw puzzle except I didn’t have a picture to look at. The hardest part was figuring out where all the screws went. So of course, there were a few left over.
Note: This great guide wasn’t available until 2010. Trust me I tried google first, It is amazing how far the internet has come in the last 10 years.