Long time no update. I've pretty much decided I'm not going to put my inane day-to-day life in my LJ. I'm only going to put interesting stuff in. So, I'm staying with drakkor in Swiss-choc-o-land. I've been spending the last few days hanging out with the dolphins. I haven't been taking too many pictures or video, but I did film one of the dolphins playing ( Read more... )

Was watching Futurama on Comedy Central a couple nights ago, and they played this bumper. I had to rip it immediately and post it on YouTube. Enjoy:

So, tonight we produced the show "Cinema Insomniac" with Mr. Lobo at KTEH in San Jose, CA -- LIVE. I was the technical director, and got to use all sorts of cheesy wipes! It was such a blast! Here's a picture of me at work:

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I finished getting photos of the new solar electric system. You can see them at:

House pics

So, with some help from flipperanubi, we managed to sit on the RS-485 bus from the hot tub controller and look at it. Hooked up the 'scope to the bus, and measured the interval of the bits. Running at 9600 bits/s. Wired up the Maxim RS-485 convertor, fed that to a Maxim RS-232 converter, fed that to a PC, and watched the data dribble by. Fired up the hand held ( Read more... )

So, today I'm going to replace one of the attic fans with a solar one (Currently, the wired ones draw like 300 Watts - Yikes!). I'm also going to do some yard work, and then work some on the Hot tub controller project - see if I can get anything out of their bus...

More to come if I'm successful! :)

I've been working on a few more projects around the house. I wanted to get an interface from my hot tub controller to serial, so I could build a web interface to control and monitor the hot tub remotely. The system uses a RS-485 bus for it's peripherals, and the manufacturer makes an adapter that goes on the bus to convert it. It's really expensive ( Read more... )

Not a whole lot new to report. I'm kinda spending some of my spare time relaxing. Since so much of my spare time earlier this year was over-subscribed, I'm enjoying relaxing. Been doing odds and ends. I'm working on a plugin for Trillian to manage groups & metacontacts. Not sure if their API will let me do what I want yet, but that's the last thing ( Read more... )

Yay - So I completed the last 2 open water dives. On dive 3, we had to do the mask flood and clear, and then mask removal and clear. It is so hard when you take that mask off your face, and the 53°F water hits your face. As hard as you try to breathe, you just lock up. You know there's a regulator in your mouth, and you can suck air off it, but ( Read more... )

I have been very busy since I last updated my journal. After I was done with the hot tub plubming project, I then decided that I needed to update the control system for the hot tub. I wanted a method of controlling the new water heater for the hot tub with a digital control. The cheapest way of doing this ended up being a wireless waterproof remote ( Read more... )