tweetin the watts…

Well, have ghetto-rigged the xbees I borrowed off Jon into a tweet-a-watt-alike which you can see at http://twitter.com/richms_WATTS - still some accuracy problems to look into but at least it seems to work. (edit - didnt know my own twitter url - doh!)

Am not powering it off the power meter at the moment because they are xbee pro’s that I have borrowed which suck too much power - but will try that a little later on once I have bought a few more parts and see how it goes.

read the thread here - http://ladyada.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=11088 on the adafruit forums…

At the moment its plugged-in in the garage with a heater plugged into it - only a weeny little oil heater since I only have a small isolating transformer, and since its hanging out of the elto power meter at the moment I dont want to blow myself up messing with it so am not plugging it straight in at the moment.

http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html

blackout

New Zealand's new Copyright Law presumes 'Guilt Upon Accusation' and will Cut Off Internet Connections without a trial. Join the black out protest against it!

Change your profile pics etc as outlined on the page everywhere.

Survey results

These are the files from survey money with just the question of the email addresses removed from it.

survey-1-about-your-dining-at-home-no-emails

survey-2-about-your-lighting-at-home-no-emails

survey-3-lighting-requirements-and-pricing-no-emails

Fence is complete(ish)

Well I finished the fence well enough today. Its not the best.

I didn’t use the wire tensioners that we got since i couldn’t figure out how to tie the wire off onto the tensioner. It is so springy that its impossible to bend! Instead I got it tight enough by leaning on the post to make it bend, and then pulling it as tight as possible and then hammering in the U staple all the way so that the wire wasn’t able to move, when the post sprang back to the original position it was pulling the wire moderately tight.

I still have to put some battens on parts of it to hold the windbreak, but thankfully that can wait a few weeks.

Luckily I don’t have to fence between the side of the house and the pool (yet) since its close enough to be immediate pool area (for now)

Apparently the oppressive pool fencing act of 1987 is getting overhauled and will be even more onerous and restrictive on my freedom to use the property as I like sometime soon. It seems that majority rule sucks when there are more breeders then pool owners. I don’t see what the big deal with pools is, there are roads which are more dangerous and they don’t make them fence those. Some massive number of kids are run over on their own driveways so I think it would be a good idea that parents are made to look after their own safety problems before laws are made affecting other people.

I still have to put the bolts on the gates to stop them opening inwards since that’s apparently a big problem. One of them I cant turn around since the ground slopes the wrong way and it would open into the path, so it will be closed till I get the time to chip the path up and relay it straight or something. Its that pink 80’s concrete so it will look better re-done anyway.

So once the council guy has being and said its ok I can start to worry about cleaning it up, since it has a winters worth of leaves in it at the moment.

Pics will be up tomorrow.

Summer is almost here

Well, the final project for tech is taking up most of my time now, and I am about a week or three behind where I would like to be at 1 week before mid semester break, which isnt really at the middle of semester anyway.

Pool fence is almost complete so that should have the counsil off my case for some time which will be good to have…

Ok, its being some time since an update.

Nothing much happening around the house. Waiting on a second quote for a replacement door where the crappy old one has leaked. Bloody tradesmen. I also need to get the internal stairs in the garage done and the door on it swapped over to open inwards. Who the hell puts an exterior door on a small porch that opens outwards? WTF!!

Had a meeting with martin today at tech, Looks positive to proceed despite not completing the second half of last semester. I am a bit pissed at myself since I was actually happy with where it was going, and it would be a usable idea DM or not with the integrated charger etc in it, but I will still be taking it thru to completion for DM.

Still have to clean the pool and sort out the poolside area before its really usable. The pile of rubble is still there.

Personal projects are all on hold at the moment because tech is the #1 priority, but I may get some stuff done along the way.

The tech blog is still at richms.vox.com - I really hate vox but its forced upon us.

It seems that every time I get a working Epson printer, it stops working soon after I start using it. The C65 I got is now having major errors, and likes to move the head along and smack it into the end really hard. Lack the motivation to look into it at the moment. Pulling these to bits really is a good insight into the manufacturing process for a cheap mass made consumer goods, and some of the mechanics are really clever inside it.

Not feeling too bad since taking the steps that the specialist said to, the no caffeine after midday is the hardest, so I have being having a lot of juice instead.

The fish are still all OK, I am going to at some stage get to a plumbing place and get the fittings to put an overflow and a proper spray bar onto the tank. This will at a later stage be hooked up to a sump, but for now I will just put the canister filter onto the hoses with some ghetto engineering. I should also see about solving the 30mm drop in the floor along the length of the tank.

On the cat front, its a bit sad, Steph had to get Amin put down since he had a paralyzed anus and tail, its also why he walked funny. Shame because he as actually a really nice cat, and his niceness is the only reason he didn’t disappear soon after they got him with the pooping problem.

I have being neglecting the myminicity a great deal. I have put the link into a few forum sigs and that’s about it. Try to visit myself on the PC and the N95 everyday but forget often.

This blog has being totally neglected unfortunately with me having better things to do, but I will be seeing about doing lots of my research to the tech one on here and importing it to vox since the only way of posting a proper post (the web editor) is so horrid to use.

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Posted by ShoZu

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Posted by ShoZu

Part 3?? On the inkjet/circuitboard situation

Picked up another printer off trademe

I havent documented all that has happened yet, but lets just say I broke the first printer, bought another one. Turns out it didnt use the right inks so it was just washing off whatever I printed onto despite heatgunning it to hell and back.

So I have another C63. I will probabrly use parts from this one to fix up the one I broke, But its at tech at the moment since I was getting sick of going to the labs to print and it fits into my desks cabinet (just)

I am waiting on a render for a tech presenetaion at the moment, and wont really have any free time till after monday.

09042008026

Posted by ShoZu

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