An Atypical Life

Tonight I had to repair my own dishwasher. After weeks of dishes coming out dirty, and after reviewing some references, I decided I probably had a bunged up inlet valve. After much disassembly, reassembly, and testing, I discovered:

• that even modern dishwashers still come with service technician notes behind the kickplate, though they no longer include exploded parts diagrams,
• that, if a chopstick breaks in half in the washer, it will melt partially, then drop into the chopper assembly, further mangling things,
• that rocks in the chopper assembly are also bad things, though the built-in plastic guard prevents them from becoming horrible things,
• that the rubber valve assembly in the tube that feeds the middle and upper spin arms is horribly specified, and easily sticks open,
• that by turning said valve assembly upside down, you can prevent a large leak (by mating the stuck-open hole with the normal position of the upper drawer - high or low),
• that increasing numbers of parts inside dishwashers are now plastic, grrrr,
• that plastic inlet valves are fragile, and moving them even the slighest bit for purposes of service can cause them to start leaking a bit during inrush of fluids (fixed for now with old absorbant facerag on floor),
• that someone had rearranged most of the hand tools in the basement (shakes fist), and
• that the built-in diagnostic mode for the dishwasher is fun to use.

I am waiting for the Good News that should come when the dishwasher ends its normal cycle in about 90 minutes, I open the door, and the dishes and utensils are actually clean.

i am participating in this year’s thing-a-day exercise - to stimulate my creative juices.

Others I know or have just met who I will be following for thing-a-day:

• nyar
• dyslexia
• mithril
• …maybe you? Sign up today - last day to sign up!

There’s been a lot of blog linkage recently to steampunk computing modifications - steampunk keyboard one-offs, commercial keyboard offerings, laptops, R2-D2s, etc. I love the aesthetic, but I don’t really have the time (or cash) to fully modify my computing setup. Instead, when it came time to soundproof my 2nd story home office, and I had to remount my Ergotron laptop/monitor/keyboard arms, I decided to add some “steampunk” appointments.

Behold the steampunk Ergotron pole mounts:

More pre-construction, fabrication and glamour shots are available. Details after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

some neat tidbits from the past 24h:

• the geminid meteors are coming:

  

• this week’s This American Life had a great bit on Nauru, an island I keep forgetting about.
• by 2100, North American Great Lakes “…water levels are expected to fall by 1.5 to 8 feet…because of the higher temperatures.”
• The Depreciation Guild is a neat 2-guitar and 1-Famicom (8 bit chip music) band. You can download their entire album, encoded at a very high bit rate, gratis. (Give them money anyway!) You can also read about the NES-Shoegazer genre.
• oh, did I mention? chumby is way cool.

Earlier this week I finally received my Chumby, a small soft hardware device with a color touch-screen, speakers, an accelerometer sensor and squeeze switch (amongst other features). It took until this weekend for me to unwrap it and hook it up.

There are plenty of other blogs describing the out-of-the-box experience, so I’ll just briefly mention my first impressions:

1. The device’s build quality is good, but I had been hoping for more out of the squeeze sensor than what’s built in.
2. Just in case you didn’t pick it up from other posts, this is a tethered device - requires a “wall-wart” power adapter. I may look into short-life-span battery power for the thing, primarily because I see this developing into an audience-interactive MIDI controller (assuming I ever perform live again).
3. It was very, very simple to get up and running.
4. If you have a full-length WPA2 password on your wireless, be prepared to “type blind”. The entry box isn’t large enough to display every character. On the confirmation screen it will display the entire password for you.
5. Yay Linux.
6. Yay SSHD built right into the control panel (through a hidden screen).
7. I need to re-study ActionScript. At least there is an open-source flash development alternative. The last place I used this stuff would have been for former employer DentsuFUSE and the Dentsu Ad Museum (anyone in Tokyo know if the exhibit is still running?)

The following picture should say it all (yes, that’s ICHC on the chumby) :

If Ecchi approves, it’s a guaranteed hit.

And EDN agrees. I don’t build equipment to last 2-3 years, I build it to last 200-300 years, at least.  I rely on lead to make that happen reliably and cost-effectively. And, I ensure that any electronics I stop using is recycled appropriately. It just makes sense. EDN further proves that RoHS legislation is actually going to have a worse environmental impact than the way we have been doing things.

Join the fight @ RoHSUSA to free us from ridiculous lead-free requirements in electronics.

Anyone out there know anything about linux-raid (md) and support for sata (libata) hotplug? I’ve got access to this machine that has an external 4-bay SATA enclosure that has smart trays. Pull the lever, the drive spins down, you swap it out. (This avoids having to implement what the libata guys are talking about, though I’d like to see this support added as well.)

I’d like to, in the event of drive failure, just pull the drive and replace it, without monkeying around at the CLI. But even though libata supports hotplug, and the tray takes care of the details (no emergency head dumps, no drive wear, etc.) I don’t think md is happy about it. At the moment I think I’d have to remove the drive from the array, then pull it, then add a new one, then add the drive to the array.

The latest linux-raid post on it I could find is about a year old and shows no progress on a solution.

Thoughts?

Just go look: http://kasinik.livejournal.com/19137.html

The money shot is here:
http://www.users.on.net/~glenn.butcher/tape/100_0618.JPG

People seem to have gone nuts over this new phone thing from Apple. I am not really getting it - it’s a convergence device, sure, but I don’t see anything revolutionary, except perhaps the multifinger touchscreen, and the fact that it’s an ultraportable running OSX. I’ll avoid listing the positives and negatives in detail, because everyone else already has done….

I wanted to remind people of what innovation from Steve Jobs & his crew used to look like…and also a poignant reminder of the fact that these keynote addresses are about 20% technology, 80% showmanship.

Jump to Trunk Monkey’s copy of the Lost 1984 Mac Video. (And while you’re there, watch the trunk monkey videos!)

Oh, and Woz, if you’re out there reading this, Apple ][ Forever! ;)

I am now a fully-licensed motorcyclist, with a fully-licensed bike, a 1978 Honda CB750 Supersport (more pictures).  I’ve fixed up the bike a bunch since these photos were taken; expect new pictures by the end of today.
Big, big thanks to Cat, who taught me everything I know about wrenching bikes, and Chris, who helped us fix it and built the shed around it (and even made us cocoa at 2AM on a late Saturday night while we replaced the chain!)

Now, where should I ride to?  Any suggestions for good day-trips within reach of Toronto?

Also, seems Atlassian picked up my previous post about their awesome tools, JIRA and Confluence.  I’m just tickled pink about the functionality, as is everyone at my former employer.  Though they have their own free license, I’m pondering shelling out a bit for a 50-user license to run my own project sites, such as the ircd-hybrid stuff, and the Voyetra 8 and Andromeda A6 synthesizer sites.  It’d pay for itself in no time…maintaining HTML lists by hand is so early-1990s.  ;)