MaBeGroMo Rules

01-Nov-07

One of my good friends are starting the NaNoWriMo today so far hes gotten 457 words in. Not being a writer or wanting to be one I am effectively disqualified from the compaction.

So instead I am joining the MabeGroMo.

MaBeGroMo Rules

Rule 1: At some point between now and November 1, you take a “before” picture of yourself and put your razor away.
Rule 2: At some point after November 30, you take an “after” picture of yourself, and decide whether to reunite with your razor or renew your short-term contract with your newly found friend. You may then claim the title of “MaBeGroMo Member”
Rule 3: If you make it to February 14, you have beaten the extended challenge and can rightfully claim the title of “MaBeGroMo Champion.”
Rule 4: If you make it past February 14, step out of the Home Depot, put down the deer carcass, and shower well before signing up for several internet “dating” services. This is just a suggestion.

You’re thinking about it. I can see it. I’ve taken the liberty of answering some of your presented concerns to give you the encouragement to get started in The Beard FAQ. Good luck.

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Every Day Fiction dot com

29-Jul-07

book1.gifEvery day fiction dot com is a website that publishes a ultra short user submitted stories. Starting in September, each day a a new short story of a 1000 words or less will be released and sent to the subscribers via email, or RSS feed. Users can also read the story online at Every Day fiction dot com and make comments. A story that short you should be able to read on your lunch break or on the bus to work, it should take no longer then 20 mins to read. So you should have no excuse about not having enough time to read a ultra short fiction like this.

Go and read a story or two. Every day fiction dot com

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Internet explorer (IE) caching AJAX requests.

06-Jul-07

The project was to create a status web page that showed the temperature of a room. The temperature of the room changes rapidly and I wanted the changes to appear on the page without my users having to click refresh every time they wanted an updated value.The ideal solution was AJAX.
I would use a bit of JavaScript to query anther page for the temperature of a room and refresh a div on the status page every n seconds.

It worked fine in FireFox and opera but when I tried it in Internet Explorer (IE) I found that the value never refreshed.
Example: http://www.abluestar.com/dev/web/ajax/temperature/

It turns out that Internet explorer loves to cache everything even when it’s told that the data has expired. IE is happy to shows you the catches version.

The first thing I tried was to set the Last-Modified, Date, Cache-Control headers so that it shouldn’t cache anything. Of course Internet Explorer ignored these settings.

Then as a good internet enabled programmer I searched the internet for a solution and came across this page Ajax IE caching issue. His solution was to use a POST instead of a GET to retrieve the data but it didn’t work for me

After a bit of smashing my head up against the wall, cursing the devil that is internet explorer I finely found a working solution.
Added a parameter to the end of the URL with the time in Sec’s

So instead of requesting value.php I request value.php?s=1828399595. It worked flawlessly
Example: http://www.abluestar.com/dev/web/ajax/temperature/index2.htm


<html>
<head>
<title>Temperature</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
function GetXmlHttpObject() {
var objXMLHttp=null
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
objXMLHttp=new XMLHttpRequest()
} else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
objXMLHttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
}
return objXMLHttp
}
function RefreshData() {
// Get The value span
var value_span = document.getElementById("temperature_a") ;
if( value_span == null ) {
return ;
}
// Get XmlHttp Object
var xmlhttp=GetXmlHttpObject();
if (xmlhttp==null) {
alert ("Browser does not support HTTP Request")
return ;
}
// Create the request
xmlhttp.open("POST", "value.php" + "?ms=" + new Date().getTime() , true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4) {
if( xmlhttp.status==200 ) {
value_span.innerHTML = xmlhttp.responseText ;
} else {
// Error
value_span.innerHTML = 'Error loading data. Error=' + xmlhttp.status ;
}
}
}
// Set the request
try {
xmlhttp.send(null);
}
catch (E) { }
// Set a timer to call this function again in 1 sec
timerID = self.setTimeout("RefreshData( );", 1000 )
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload='RefreshData();' >
<strong>Temperature:</strong> <span id='temperature_a'>Loading</span>
</body>
</html>

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Where does this IP Address come from

19-Apr-07

A few days ago I was asked to find out where or close to where a user of ours was coming from. so i created this GEO location script Where does this IP Address come from

When ever a ISP buys a block of IP address they are entered in to a database. When a client of the ISP requests a new IP address the ISP gives them one from the block of IP address they they bought. With your IP address and the addressing information from your ISP I can look up the address of your ISP’s local router to get a general idea of where you are coming from (with in a few blocks in populated areas)

This information can be useful when generating ads for people from specific locations.
For example: I would want to show a red state something different the a blue state in a election year.

Try it out and tell me how close I got
Where does this IP Address come from

Google map via IP address

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My Ferrofluid Project

15-Apr-07

A few months ago I found a Youtube video of Sachiko Kodama ferrofluid sculpture. There are more then a few of them running around on you tube just search for Ferrofluid. There is also the snake oil project that I posted earlier.

They looked amazing and pretty simple too do, an electric magnet and iron core and a bunch of [tag]Ferrofluid[/tag]. I Could make one of these easily, it can not be that hard I said to myself.

So me and my artist friend decided to make our own. We choose to start small first, a glass dish with a iron bar glued to the center, and a electric magnet placed under the plate. If everything went well we would move on to more complex projects like a reverse water fall, or the jumping frog project.

At first we tried to make our own Ferrofluid but that didn’t work out too well. It turned out to be more of a brown mud that sort reacted to magnets but it wasn’t very impressive nothing like the videos that we had seen. After a few attempts at creating home made Ferrofluid we decided to buy some of the good stuff online. It was pretty expensive I think it was $230 CAN for a 1 liter bottle. I don’t remember where we bought it from.

fluid_demo.jpg

The stuff is messy very messy, it stained my skin for a good week and imposable to get out of anything fabric.

The first thing we did was to put about 20 ml in to a small glass jar and put a rare earth (Neodymium-Iron-Boron) magnet to it. It was fun to play around using 3 or 4 magnets and making it hop from one place to anther but spikes where small less then 5 mm tall and not very impressive. We spent the first few days just playing around with it trying to get the spikes taller and seeing what it could do.

We found out later that all the sculptures that Sachiki Kodama did where under huge magnification and there is no way to make 3 inch spikes no matter how much magnetic force you applied. This was very disappointing it would not make the grand center piece in my living room that I wanted it to be. We had already spent $230 of the Ferror fluid might as well complete the project.

The first step is to get a working electric magnet powerful enough to pull the fluid up and around the iron rod. This proved to be harder then expected. Again the first thing we tried was to build our own electric magnet. We used a speaker, a iron core with copper wire wrapped around it 1000s of times in many different configurations, a yoke from an old TV, a solenoid from a car door. Nothing was powerful enough to pull the Ferror fluid up the rod. Anther disappointment and i was getting pretty frustrated with the whole project.

I wasn’t about to say die yet, I started posting questions on hack forums like the MAKE forums for help with my project. The people on the forums where extremely helpful and informative. In the end I decided to buy a industrial grade electric magnet capable of holding 500LBs on 12 volts from ElectroMechanicsOnline.com. The magnet cost about $170 with shipping but I was determined to get this thing working no matter what. Now I had the power to force this Ferrofluid in any direction that I wanted or so I thought.

The electric magnet came in the mail and the magnet barely did anything more then the Neodymium magnets did. Disappointed I gave up.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Materials list

  • Ferrofluid 1 liter $230
  • Holding electric magnet 500 lb $170
  • Set of 30 different sized rare earth (Neodymium-Iron-Boron) magnet $50

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Project: The $5 Cracker Box IPod Amplifier

01-Apr-07

This weekend we built a IPod amplifier to power a small 8ohm speaker for an art project that one of my good friends was doing. Her project involved a metal sculpture that speak a manifiesto to anyone that walked in front of it.

I found the Amp Schematic in the latest MAKE magazine 09 - The $5 Cracker box amplifier.

It ended up costing closer to $20 CAN in parts because when you buy capacitor and resistor you have to buy them in bundles packages of 20 or so. In the end I have enough spare parts to build 5 of these amps for $20.

Good image of the Amp curuitThe directions where a little difficult to understand, they assumed that you have a good knowledge of circuit diagrams. With the help of of this diagram it should be too hard to figure out what to do. I probably would not have gotten it working with out that diagram.

Instead of using a 1/4 mono phone jack I used a mono head phone jack that connects easily to my IPod. I removed the potentiometer, it just isn’t needed for a IPod amp.

The $5 Cracker Box Amplifier circiut2

A full size schematic and directions can be downloaded from MAKE’s web page. If you run in to problems feel free to leave me a comment I might be able to help you or try the MAKE forums

(more…)

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Create a invisible book shelf

06-Mar-07

Create a invisible book shelf
By inserting a “L” bracket behind the bottom book.
Interesting if not absurdly simple.

invisible book shelf

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A mini hydroelectric damn that runs a LED inside your shower head.

02-Mar-07

I was browsing the Make Forums today when I ran across this post LED Shower Head/Faucet

Basically the guy wants to create a small turbine inside of his shower head that would spin and create a current powerful enough to run a LED.

Basically he wanted to create a DIY version of showerstar version

showerstar version

Here’s a quick peek inside: Water enters the shower head through the flow resrictor (1) then travels through the injector plate (2) which directs the water to the waterwheel (3). The water spins the magnetic waterwheel past the stator (4) of the field wincing (5). This hydroelectric generator develops the 2.5 volts at .31 amps which lights the PR-6 bulb.

Throwies
These fancy version would be possible if you had enough water pressure but it would be much cheaper and easier to use a Throwies. A disposable LED and Battery that lasts 2-3 weeks with a thick layer of silicone. Most of the parts can be bought for less then $1

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USB Powered Charger for Two AA NiMH/NiCd Cells

27-Feb-07

NiMH/NiCd Cells charger

The other day I was looking at a USB cell charger from ThinkGeek.
A battery that charges while it is connected to my USB port.
But I found most took to long to charge or they where expensive.

I found project started by Stefan Vorkoetter that shows up to create a fast charger for NiMH/NiCd Cells USB Powered Charger for Two AA NiMH/NiCd Cells

The project looks pretty simple and I plan on trying it out this weekend.

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Lego Ice cube Tray

21-Feb-07

Lego Ice cub tray
A tray made of silicone that can be used to make Lego shaped ice cubes.
And it only costs 7.99.
I found this nifty little item on freshfodder.wordpress.com
You can buy your own Lego Ice cub tray from Lego’s online store

NY make out of iceImagain creating a entire town or city or castle out of an unlimted supply of lego ice cube blocks, you could even use food colering to color the blocks any color you want. That would be an interesting project. I will post pictures if I ever get around to it.

Wiki artical on Ice_sculpture

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