Ooo nice. I picked one up at Maker Faire. Was planning on going to the lab at work during lunch one day to make it but haven't got around to it yet. Gonna have to make sure I get on that especially before Friday so that my phone survives an entire day struggling to find signal in the Javitz. It will be nice not to have to go w/o screen brightness all day.
It's takes 2 x AA batteries and puts them in a tiny retro tin and charges your gadgets. It also gets around Apple product's aversion to being charged by things that aren't overpriced.
Still got the parts for mine, one of these days I'll try and work out what went wrong and re-solder it. In the meanwhile, I use this beast: 4 AA batteries or 2 AAA, 2 solar panels, USB Power IN, not so great battery tester.
While we're on the subjects, the charger (Right, Energizer Quatro) is one of the good ones that will charge any random mix of batteries as it has 4 separate channels, as opposed to most which use 2 dual channels.
It cost me $20 for the parts kit, which was way overpriced being I have a PCB milling machine at work as well as an endless components, but I figured between my money spent at the MakerShed going to a good cause (the support of an awesome organization) and it saving me a decent chunk of time, it was worth it. I also like that i can swap it out with new rechargeables. If my AA batters ever start to lose their ability to hold a good charge, I can put new ones in. This should make this little gadget useful for many, many years as opposed to something with an internal battery pack as long as I take good care of it.
In other new I finally wrote and posted my review of Twilight Struggle. This ends some some major long-standing shit talk on my part, as I accepted a stack of free review copies from GMT Games way back in July, while knowing full well their games where complex and I was already backlogged with games to review. Phew, it's done!
After I publicly announced that I would post articles often on the Modern Day Pirates website, it took me a long time to get around doing it (mostly because of a small dilemma I had with embedding video), I finally just submitted my first article today. As of this moment, I am waiting for it to (hopefully) get published on the site. I'll link to it, should it get published, in the future.
I ordered light panels for Project ST from the Jews. They will be here Wednesday. I expect to use them the weekend after NYAF/NYCC to begin our project in earnest.
Also did our Kinokuniya event with Scott, and continued paperwork for the business side of GeekNights.
Today: Moved couch from summer living room into winter living room (normally the dining room) Stole the wood from outside and now have an awesome desk/table in the winter office (normally the other side of the dining room. Carried the door up from the cellar and hung it on the frame, ready to help keep heat in. Re-fitted the carpet around the door so I could close it. Dismantled old shelves I don't need. Filled my juggling studio with furniture and crap people are storing at my home, then carried loads down into the cellar. Avoided making up my mind about what to do with all the rest of the furniture in my juggling studio. Cleared and cleaned the old art studio. Now I have a lot space to park my bike.
Also: Took photos of my old paintings and posted them online. Juggling practice session (very much needed after a month off).
I think there was a bit more, but I can't remember now.
Today, I brewed beer. 10 gallons of pumpkin Oktoberfest. 5 gallons of this beer is going to be gluten free, provided the enzymes that I bought do what they say they do.
That's not non-shit-talking, because it's something we all know you can do, and you do it by default. Non-shit-talking for you would be to get a hair cut.
Man, you people are sort of cheating. I mean, renovating a guest bedroom, that definitely counts as not shit-talking. But cleaning up your house? That's just your every day responsibility. If cleaning, laundry, paying bills, etc. counts as not shit-talking then that makes it too easy.
Yesterday I think counts as a shit-talk day. I was going to do Scott's Box, but UPS screwed up. I watched some anime to discuss on the show tonight, but that's not productive. I played some video games, also doesn't count. I was going to use the time to finish a project I have that's almost done. I spent time thinking about it, but I didn't actually write any codes, so it hasn't actually advanced. Today: podcast at the very least.
- Paid off my car! Decided I had enough in savings now to pay off my car w/o running too thin on emergency cash - Completed application for a fat check from the gov't. I have major heating & cooling issues in my house, and NJ is offering up $3,000 rebate plus a $10,000, 10-year 0% interest loan if you can retrofit your house's HVAC and reduce energy consumption by at least 25% (read: free money after inflation and savings on energy bills) - Started review for Tomb: Cryptmaster - Registered for Toy Fair 2011. Rym and Scott, if you guys can get into this as podcasters, I would highly recommend it. If you have never been, then picute every hall on BOTH floors of the Javitz center filled with booths. Never seen an expo hall quite like it. It's no gencon/origins but there's a decent number of strategy board game companies there too.
Registered for Toy Fair 2011. Rym and Scott, if you guys can get into this as podcasters, I would highly recommend it. If you have never been, then picute every hall on BOTH floors of the Javitz center filled with booths. Never seen an expo hall quite like it. It's no gencon/origins but there's a decent number of strategy board game companies there too.
I've known about Toy Fair, but I never really cared about it. Toys are fun to look at for about a second. I was into them for a very short amount of time, but now I really don't care. I still like models, to build, but once they are built, kinda meh. While there might be some gaming there, it's booths of people selling games, not tables of people playing games.
Registered for Toy Fair 2011. Rym and Scott, if you guys can get into this as podcasters, I would highly recommend it. If you have never been, then picute every hall on BOTH floors of the Javitz center filled with booths. Never seen an expo hall quite like it. It's no gencon/origins but there's a decent number of strategy board game companies there too.
I've known about Toy Fair, but I never really cared about it. Toys are fun to look at for about a second. I was into them for a very short amount of time, but now I really don't care. I still like models, to build, but once they are built, kinda meh. While there might be some gaming there, it's booths of people selling games, not tables of people playing games.
To each their own. I don't spend my weekends playing with action figures either but there's something awesome about seeing all that stuff crammed into one place.
I'm usually not pumped up to see unreleased stuff like video games or movie trailers cause I'm just going to play/watch all that stuff anyway, but odds are I wouldn't come across most of the interesting stuff at Toy Fair because I don't shop at Toys R Us or read toy blogs on a regular basis.
I washed almost every dish, piece of cookware, and cooking or eating utensil I own. I washed almost all the clothing I own. It's midnight and I'm still going; still time to study.
7/4 is going to be a little more difficult.
VSnares's turf? Nice. I wrote a piece for violin and oboe in 7/4 once for a high school music theory class. It was built almost entirely around triplets and idiosyncratic rest patterns. The best oboe and violin players in the school found it unplayable. So we tracked it out and had a computer play it in the auditorium.
I listed my influences as "Aaron Funk, Phillip Glass, Frank Zappa."
Let's see Thursday I didn't get anything done except laundry. Friday I did my thing at NYCC, so that counts. Saturday I ran Freemarket at 101010. Sunday I ate, played a game, and slept. Yesterday (Monday) I went to work and also to hackandtell, but didn't make anything. Today, a podcast.
Saturday: Housework of the non-standard type. The girlfriend and I washed all of the windows in the house, inside and out. I repaired the screen on our front storm door that had been torn open many moons ago but summarily ignored by the both of us for the summer season. Sunday: Grill-a-palooza. I grilled chicken, beef, and turkey as food for the coming week instead of doing the normal "cook a bunch of pasta-type dishes that we use as leftovers". Monday: Spent the day researching proper methods of using WAIK to build a WinPE disc capable of ripping a .WIM image, and then built the thing. My company is going to be using these to deploy recovery images to our field staff for 12 different models of computers and yours truly gets to spearhead the project. Sadly, I'm less than enthused, because that means I have to set up virgin images of all 12 hardware variations in addition to my normal duties. Oh well, it's job security I guess.
Money by Pink Floyd is probably the most famous piece in 7/4 timing.
I've been looking around at music in 7/4 for inspiration and I was surprised to see that come up. I never really got into Pink Floyd, and I've only recently been dissecting music like this, so I never noticed that Money was in such a weird time signature. The difference between their use of it and Aaron Funk's is that Pink Floyd set their sound apart and really made it groove, whereas Funk mainly uses it to fuck with your head. I'm going to try and do something between the two; rhythm and lyrics like El-P on cocaine and vodka, but with some sort of discernible groove so I can actually keep up with it while I rap.
This might not be the thing to post in the non-shit-talk thread, though. I'm probably pretty far over my head with that concept, but nobody learns to swim without swallowing the pool water.
Comments
http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/solder.html
Works perfectly on the first try.
Still got the parts for mine, one of these days I'll try and work out what went wrong and re-solder it. In the meanwhile, I use this beast:
4 AA batteries or 2 AAA, 2 solar panels, USB Power IN, not so great battery tester.
While we're on the subjects, the charger (Right, Energizer Quatro) is one of the good ones that will charge any random mix of batteries as it has 4 separate channels, as opposed to most which use 2 dual channels.
In other new I finally wrote and posted my review of Twilight Struggle. This ends some some major long-standing shit talk on my part, as I accepted a stack of free review copies from GMT Games way back in July, while knowing full well their games where complex and I was already backlogged with games to review. Phew, it's done!
Also did our Kinokuniya event with Scott, and continued paperwork for the business side of GeekNights.
Moved couch from summer living room into winter living room (normally the dining room)
Stole the wood from outside and now have an awesome desk/table in the winter office (normally the other side of the dining room.
Carried the door up from the cellar and hung it on the frame, ready to help keep heat in.
Re-fitted the carpet around the door so I could close it.
Dismantled old shelves I don't need.
Filled my juggling studio with furniture and crap people are storing at my home, then carried loads down into the cellar.
Avoided making up my mind about what to do with all the rest of the furniture in my juggling studio.
Cleared and cleaned the old art studio. Now I have a lot space to park my bike.
Also:
Took photos of my old paintings and posted them online.
Juggling practice session (very much needed after a month off).
I think there was a bit more, but I can't remember now.
Unfortunately, I can't put it off any longer, and I have to sort through a year's worth of receipts and expenses. Yay, self-employment.
Ehhhh, Clean up the second floor of my house.
- Paid off my car! Decided I had enough in savings now to pay off my car w/o running too thin on emergency cash
- Completed application for a fat check from the gov't. I have major heating & cooling issues in my house, and NJ is offering up $3,000 rebate plus a $10,000, 10-year 0% interest loan if you can retrofit your house's HVAC and reduce energy consumption by at least 25% (read: free money after inflation and savings on energy bills)
- Started review for Tomb: Cryptmaster
- Registered for Toy Fair 2011. Rym and Scott, if you guys can get into this as podcasters, I would highly recommend it. If you have never been, then picute every hall on BOTH floors of the Javitz center filled with booths. Never seen an expo hall quite like it. It's no gencon/origins but there's a decent number of strategy board game companies there too.
I'm usually not pumped up to see unreleased stuff like video games or movie trailers cause I'm just going to play/watch all that stuff anyway, but odds are I wouldn't come across most of the interesting stuff at Toy Fair because I don't shop at Toys R Us or read toy blogs on a regular basis.
Even so, the last 24 hours have been pretty tedious.
I listed my influences as "Aaron Funk, Phillip Glass, Frank Zappa."
Sunday: Grill-a-palooza. I grilled chicken, beef, and turkey as food for the coming week instead of doing the normal "cook a bunch of pasta-type dishes that we use as leftovers".
Monday: Spent the day researching proper methods of using WAIK to build a WinPE disc capable of ripping a .WIM image, and then built the thing. My company is going to be using these to deploy recovery images to our field staff for 12 different models of computers and yours truly gets to spearhead the project. Sadly, I'm less than enthused, because that means I have to set up virgin images of all 12 hardware variations in addition to my normal duties. Oh well, it's job security I guess.
This might not be the thing to post in the non-shit-talk thread, though. I'm probably pretty far over my head with that concept, but nobody learns to swim without swallowing the pool water.