• Installing an Ammo Counter

    This is a small walk through of installing one of my ammo counters available in the store. I am need of pictures, please send me pictures of your install, thanks! :) Tools Required Solder Iron (I bought mine for $5 at menards) Solder (I use 60/40, 0.032″ diameter) Wire Cutter / Stripper Tape Pregame: For quick start and demonstration of the counter. Connect the battery to the circuit. Use the red and black wires labeled BATT or BATTERY. Connect black to black, red to red. No need to solder at this point, just twist the wires together and maybe use some tape so the red bare wire doesn’t touch the…

  • Rockband Stage & Light Kit Mod

    Sorry, I do not have full writeup for this project. Here is a photostream of the mod. Rock Band Mod on Flickr Pretty much what I did was take an off the shelf strobe light and swap it for the one built into the fog machine. Re-wired a ps/2 keyboard cable connecting it to the liberated rock band strobe light. Now I can use the strobe light with the game without dragging out the fog machine. Also added override switches on the fog machine so I could activate both the strobe and fog machine outside the game.

  • Hosting Fees

    I thought it would be interesting to figure out my hosting fees for the last few years. My awesome host is NFSN. Hit More Info to see the cost table. 2007 was a seven month year. Year Deposit Fee Registration & Renewal Bandwidth Charge Storage Charge MySQL Charge 2007 $1.00 $7.50 $1.18 $1.02   2008 $1.30 $15.98 $2.73 $4.68 $1.47 2009 $2.15   $5.26 $15.17 $3.65 Looking at the data, I notice that my storage fees have taken a sharp increase. In two years the physical size has more than tripled to 225MB. Then if I plot my storage fees divided by my physical size, I find the prices have…

  • Avatar Sequel Scripts

    I had some ideas for the avatar sequel and wanted to write it down. Turns out, I guess it was a fully developed idea because it turned into 5 pages. Click ‘More Info’ to enjoy! Movie #2[Due to science reasons the 2nd movie must take place ten years after the first.] The camera opens on pandora and Jake giving us a montage recap of the past ten years. He took his place as the leader omaticaya and replanted hometree. With Eywa’s help, hometree has now grown almost a hundred feet. It will still take many generations before they can live there. In the mean time they have created themselves a…

  • Presenting the Halo Energy Sword~!

    I knew what I wanted to do was design a circuit that would be similar in function to the star wars sabers that fans build. That meant animated lights running the length of the twin blades, an accelerometer to gather motion data, and sound playback for startup and swing sounds. What I ended up doing was designing a circuit around an ATMEGA32 controller chip. Hit more info for details. This is a summary page, additional notes are on the forum. Original Project Page Design I knew what I wanted to do was design a circuit that would be similar in function to the star wars sabers that fans build. That…

  • Rotory Tools

    I doubt there is any usefulness in cordless dremel tools. I bought a store brand cordless rotary tool from Menards a year ago and I knew immediately that it would be trouble. After the first charge, each battery would run for about 5 minutes on high speed. The highest speed setting was as fast as a corded version’s lowest speed. It did however come with a full accessory pack; lots and lots of cutting/sanding bits plus a flex extension tool. Yesterday, I bought a Black and Decker corded rotary tool. The same $20 that bought me the cordless crap tool, bought me this wonderful tool. The black and decker tool…

  • Halo Energy Sword

    If you read about that sort of thing, you may remember last fall Master Replicas announced a Halo Energy Sword that would feature similar functions as their ForceFX Lightsabers (powerup/down sounds, motion activated sound, animated lights). The promised release date was the holiday season 2008.There is another company that makes realistic Halo toys, this is the same company that made a plasma pistol and plasma rifle that are superb. They also announced an energy sword in 2007 with a 2008 release.Here we are in 2009 with no product from either company. I had to do some major digging to learn both these products were canceled and will never be released.…

  • New Front Page

    The main pages are now powered by blogger.com and will make post management easier for me. Previously, I was editing all affected html pages by hand every time I wrote a new post. Site should look pretty much the same as before. There is a new archive section on the sidebar and a rss feed available in the header. For comparison I am hosting the old index page for a short time.

  • Published

    I am excited that one of my pictures has been published. My brother works at a print shop and submitted several photos for his company’s calendar. We both got a picture in, May and August.I don’t have a copy of either exact picture available at the moment, but I did find one from the gallery that is similar to one picture in the calendar. Old Man Fishing, Rice Lake, WI, Dustin WestabyHay Bales, West Salem, WI, Dale Westaby