Author Archives: Waterppk

42″ Plasma Screen!

My brother is a Craigslist hawk and e-mailed me a plasma screen monitor in need of some love. As it turned out, the screen had been at a repair place that went out of business and this guy picked it up from a friend of his who worked there. The flat flex cable that ran from the front panel to the remote IR pickup was destroyed at some point when it was apart and he didn’t know how to fix it – so he wanted $100 and his garage space back.

Turns out the cable is a 1mm pitch 12 position flat flex cable, something that Digikey sells for $4.18. There is of course a new cable in the mail and I should have it fixed by this next weekend 🙂

$42\" NEC Plasmasync Monitor$

Finally Gave Up on My Nexus Jaguar Amplifier

. . . from 6 years ago

I bought a “stereo” from another guy at high school composed of a Digital Designs 15″ subwoofer and a Nexus Jaguar 1100 watt amplifier when I was a sophomore in high school. I’ve been digging through the electronics off and on for the last couple of years. I finally got it out again yesterday and immediately noticed that the bank of 6 power filter capacitors in the center were pretty bulgy. I tried desoldering them (with the aid of a 1500W heat gun to “preheat”) and to no avail, I got a single capacitor out with the through hole plating still stuck to the legs – so that pad is dead. . . I took a look online to find the cheapest substitute was about $35/each and quickly realized that this wasn’t worth it at all.

So the former neighborhood terrorizer will be surrendered into the “spare parts bin” to live on in whatever may need parts off of it.

Mountain Bike!

I finally got myself a mountain bike. It’s of course tossed together from the several other discarded bicycles, but it’ll work for now. . . The rear rim was about 4″ out of true, Justin straightened that up for me, and I ended up running into a few guys from Budget Bicycle who validated the beat it on the ground until it’s pretty straight and true it straighter from there method 🙂

So I headed out to find Quarry Park and try hitting some Madison trails on the mountain bike (rather than the 20″ BMX with no suspension. . .). I figured I’d just ride west of Resurrection Cemetary and I should run right into it. Of course it turns out that Hoyt Park (that I didn’t know existed) is actually closer west than Quarry Park.

View Larger Map

I found some cools trails in Hoyt, but of course when I got into the park from the trail I turned around to see a big “NO BICYCLES” sign – sigh -. While I was riding the gravel path I decided to take one of the periodic offshoots and see where it went. It looked like the perfect path, it was straight downhill, lots of trees and logs. I got about 100 feet and I nearly ran into a fence, so I hung a right and followed the path along the fence. It just kept getting narrower and narrower until I couldn’t ride the bicycle anymore. I figured I’d try dragging it though this section until it got better again – but it never did. Turns out the trail was a deer trail that looked like a people trail. By the time I realized it I was so far along that it would be less work to keep dragging the bike out.

This of course wasn’t bad, until I broke out of the woods and into a small clearing, and looked up to see a large brick wall with several people staring at me like I was bigfoot bursting out of the woods!

So it Begins

A friend of mine (and the rest of the internet) is using WordPress so I thought that I would give it a try. I had been intending to hand write all of my online content, however college dictates otherwise and I’m hoping that sacrificing some personalization (that I don’t have time to do) will allow me to increase content that I will be able to post, which is ultimately more important!

Stay tuned for updates. . .

First Posts

Trivia!

Why are automobile radiators painted black?

Automobile radiators are painted black because black has the highest coefficient
of emissivity. This means that black radiates heat most effectively of any color.
You may have heard of a black body radiator, the coefficient of emissivity is unrelated
to this phenomena so don’t get confused!

Why shouldn’t you store leftovers in the “tin” can that they came in?

The cans that you purchase your fruit/beans/etc in are actually made of steel which
has been tin plated. The problem is that the steel and tin are electrochemically
active, this means that the tin and steel will exchange electrons, causing rust!
The reason that the cans don’t rust before you get them is that the inside of the
can is oxygen free (otherwise there would be lots of botulism). The reduction reaction on the steel requires
oxygen, so if you pop open your can of fruit and toss the remainder in the fridge,
when you get it back out to finish it you’ll be eating the iron atoms (rust) that
have started to form in solution!

Before you ask, soda cans are also painted on the inside to prevent oxidation from the acids and carbonation present in soda water.