Year: 2006

Globe King 500 restoration project…

Screenshot 01-1Restoration of a HUGE AM/CW transmitter from the 50’s – “This article describes my restoration effort of a Globe King 500. I estimate that I expended about 100 hours on this project. It took a lot of tenacity, it was at times tedious and frustrating, but overall it was a very rewarding as well as an educational endeavor. I have included many pictures of the project at different stages. I hope you find it interesting but more importantly, I hope you can learn from my mistakes and newly gained experience.” Link.

ScienceBlogs!

ScienceBlogs!

Logo BetaWow, the folks at Seed magazine are cooking! New science blog network and a combined RSS feed for all of them, nicely done! – “ScienceBlogs is the web’s largest conversation about science. It features blogs from a wide array of scientific disciplines, with new voices coming on board regularly. It is a global, digital science salon.” [via] Link.

HOW TO – DS eReader modification

HOW TO – DS eReader modification

100 0077eReader for the DS hack! “As can be seen in the following pictures, the eReader will not fit into the Nintendo DS due to the way the linkport connector is arranged, for the original Gameboy advance system. You will need the following tools to disassemble and modify the eReader. Tri-Wing driver (It is also possible to use a precision slotted driver to remove the screws). #0 philips driver (Again, a precision slotted driver can be used here.). Some form of cutting tool. (xacto knife, rotary tool) (only if you need the eReader link port connector for the original gameboy advance.)” [via] Link.

Building a 50,000 gallon monster mega fish tank

Building a 50,000 gallon monster mega fish tank

MegaArapaimag built a 50,000 gallon tank at his house. He writes – “I built my mega and mini mega tanks in the 1994 to 1997 period. I built the tank as an addition to the home and then joined it by putting doors through the basement and upstairs through the bedroom. You can see the excavator removing the soil on the first week of construction. You can see the doors cut through my walls in the 3rd picture.” Link.

Flash Bulbs and Artifact Preservation: Myth Debunked!

Camera
I’ve been to a ton of museums that have said flash photography damages the works, but it seems like it’s not exactly true. “300 amateur flashes a day is equivalent to adding five minutes to the display day. In order to actually increase damage by 10% on a ten hour day, one would need to experience 3600 flashes per day. Two large professional flashes would raise the ante a little, they would need 225 flashes a day to add 10%. For museums at 150 lux (15 footcandles) these numbers become 10,000 amateurs, or 700 pros, every day. To actually double fading would need 100,000 amateurs a day. Most museums would kill for those attendance figures!” Sounds like a good MythBusters thing too, Full story here – Link.

Make a BigBrother Traffic Light

Make a BigBrother Traffic Light

Lightcomplete1Green is good! – “Network Operations Centers and Help Desks all over monitor their systems and networks with a somewhat open source product called Big Brother. Here’s how to add a traffic light to indicate network status. Big Brother provides a web interface that shows the status of the network, and systems. The web interface allows you to drill down and see the status of any device monitored. It does all this in a very simple and elegant way, by providing color indications, red, yellow, and green to tell you how things are going. Well all of this really can put the idea of traffic lights into your head if you like to “repurpose” consumer electronics like I do. So lets get to task and use our desktop computer, running Java to monitor a BigBrother web page and change a faux traffic light to match the color-status of our network.” Thanks Victor! Link.