A futon? Nah, just some benches.

I recently moved into a bigger house to accommodate the fact that I know have a roommate (buddy from high school). Whilst moving everything into the new house, we quickly realized that my futon frame stood no chance against the corner at the top of the staircase. Ted was instantly struck by a genius idea, dismantle the frame and turn the two halves into benches for the porch. Now, while this was a great idea, it would also leave me without a frame for my mattress. Ultimately the prospect of a new project outweighed a bed frame, and so began the transformation!

We started off by dismantling the frame, which was nothing more than removing a few carriage bolts. The first issue we ran into was that the two pieces were far to wide/deep, as seen below...

A quick visit from the jigsaw and we had the length issue taken care of...

After some wood glue and sitting overnight to let the glue set, we were in business.

The legs were also a fairly straightforward endeavor. Just a few planks of wood cut to size and secured in place with a carriage bolt. I'm starting to realize this isn't the most exciting project ever... :P

Legs attached, we have a bench!

Problem is that the bench wasn't all too comfortable, which we somewhat anticipated, as it is just solid wood. Originally the plan was to buy some foam of some sort and rig up padding, but while enjoying our work, Ted was struck with the 2nd great idea. He noticed my old area rug sitting in the corner and out of sheer curiosity, sized it up against the bench. By some miracle, the rug fit PERFECTLY across the bench. We sprang into action without a moments hesitation.

And just like that, the benches were complete! The rug could use a cleaning, and we are thinking of adding some cardboard underneath to sturdy it up a bit, but other than that, they came out quite well!

Oh oh oh I forgot!

That $0.50 Sports Illustrated camera? The roll was pretty much a total bust, with the exception of 3 pictures found here. Also, I apparently bought slide film, $20 bucks to develop!? I really should just buy a DSLR...

Photo update!

Random side note before we get going here. I've decided making 'promised' updates just isn't working out. So no more 'check back next week for this and that', I'm just not that organized :P

ANYWAY! Finally got around to not only taking pictures, but getting the roll developed. It's pretty clear I still don't fully get ISO and aperture and whatever crap goes into taking photos, but hey, I like to just wing it and see what happens. With that said, these B+Ws came out much darker than I thought they would, but with the effect of the lens, I'd say it worked out pretty well. These were taken with the lens from the last post...

Side rant, WHY IN THE WORLD DO PICTURES I ADD APPEAR ABOVE WHAT I'VE ALREADY TYPED!? Seriously Blogger, amateur.

Anyway, full gallery can be found here.

In the pipeline...

Suitcase guitar amp, which has been on hold for nearly 4 years

Tear down and cleaning of the 750 (finally got my 350, and after sitting for about 3 years, started right up!)

Benches for the porch made from my old futon frame

Curtains for the porch

Maybe some sort of microcontroller project?

We'll see if I can finally get back into the swing of things...

Yet Another Camera Lens...

These may very well become a trend on here. Not only are they easy (generally) to slap together, but they are a blast to goof around with and see what kind of pictures you can produce. This lens is the 'child' of the first lens I put together. I say this because it's simply the front half of the first one. It has a somewhat macro-ish but not really with some neat blurs kind of effect to it, which I'm sure you all know exactly what I mean by that. Sadly no pictures yet, but I'm aiming to get a roll down sometime this week.

So to start, we had the usual drilling of the body cap.

I had some decently thick poster board from a failed Halloween endeavor, and made a sleave to fit around the lens. I also cut small slits into it to serve as guides for the two screws that protrude from the lens.

This seemed to be the final step and all was good, until I accidentally pulled the lens out of the sleeve, and tore the paper while attempting to fit it back in. Annoyed, I opted for a much simpler approach. I fit the sleeve to the cap, not the lens. This left a decent amount of room for the lens to slide in and out of, so I padded the lens with a few rounds of electrical tape.

All said and done...

Hopefully I'll have some pictures up next weekend. Trying to get back into the swing of things now that winter is dying down.

That flavored cider...

After letting it sit for a while, hoping that it would age a little and perhaps the cinnamon taste would dwindle, I was met with the same crappy taste.

Officially marking the flavored cider as a failure!

Mini update!

The winter blues have been hitting pretty hard. IE I get home and put sweats on and all motivation flies out the window :P. But there's been some progress.

First mini project, whiteboard! I was sitting at work, discussing who knows what with a co-worker, and he was frantically drawing diagrams, code samples, arrows all which ways, and who knows what else on the whiteboard when it hit me. What kind of hobbyist am I, without a dry erase board! So no way am I going to pay the money for a legit board, so I sought out alternatives. As always, Goodwill swoops in to the rescue!

I found a nice little picture frame...

Cut a piece of standard printer paper to match the backplate...

Tada!

Ok, so not really impressive at all, but I'll take anything at this point.

And for my second lame project, I took a $0.50 sports illustrated camera I bought at WHO WOULDA GUESSED IT Goodwill.

A little muscle and a quick visit with the Dremel tool, and I had the lens removed and sanded down so that it would fit over a Nikon lens cap.

Slap it on the body and there we have it. Not so impressive, and sadly no pictures yet. I'm hoping to take some in the following week and get those posted ASAP!

ALSO! The NES synth is probably 75% breadboarded. Woohoo! I'm hoping to have it fully boarded by this weekend, and have microcontroller code written by next weekend. Fingers crossed!

Ohhhh almost forgot, I also kind of blew up a TV. Sorry, no pictures :(

Time for something a little more ambitious...

So I've been knocking some relatively small projects as of recent, and I figured it was time to tackle something that will require a decent bit of effort. A few weeks ago I found a guy on Hackaday that had interfaced a microcontroller to the sound chip in an NES to create a hardware based synth, as opposed to the software/cartridge method many other people take. So I'm rolling up my sleeves and attempting to follow in his footsteps.

Before any action can happen, I had to gather up the necessary components. Thankfully all of the heavy hitter components, and by 'all' I mean the 2A03 sound chip. So I pulled out the trusty NES...

I made quick work of the top case...

And removed the board from the bottom half...

I then desoldered the chip from the board, which took a painstaking 30 minutes, and I didn't even do a good job! But in the end, I did extract the single most important component of this entire project, so hoorah! Below you can see the details of my shitty desoldering.

More to come...

Flavoring the cider...

After trying a delicious local brewed cider while back in Ohio for the holidays, I decided I would put the adventure pants on and try to flavor my own. The main ingredients listed were vanilla and cinnamon (clearly a holiday brew, yes im aware im late). Acquiring these was as simple as a trip to the local Marsh.

I poured about 1/8 of the cider into a pot and added about 2 Tbsp cinnamon and 1 1/2 Tbsp of vanilla (complete guesses). I simmered for roughly 10 min, added it back to the main batch, gave it a good shake, and tossed it back into the fridge. The next day I came to find something somewhat unsettling...floaties. And not just a few little things here and there, but it appeared as though I had added a large amount of brown pond algae to the batch. But it couldn't be anything of that sort, and clearly THAT much mold wouldn't grow overnight, and especially not in an alcoholic environment!

I've managed to separate out the cider from the unknown substance, and when I did, it looked very similar to cinnamon roll icing, and absolutely stunk of cinnamon. I'm guessing the cinnamon I added absorbed some cider and formed a gel like substance? Either way, it's been disposed of. I've got the cider chilling in the fridge, and will give it a try shortly. Hopefully no floaties appear this time!

The booze post!

PART 1: Hard Cider

Mmmmmmmm home brewing. So delicious, when it turns out right. Last year around this time I had given home brewing a try and attempted to conjure up some hard cider. Long story short, I immediately dumped it out after trying it. Realizing I made a very simple mistake (who knew the type of yeast mattered?), I decided to give it another go.

First step was to buy a gallon of cider, ensuring that there were no preservatives used. Easy enough. Next, the cider is simmered for about a half hour to kill off any wild yeast that may be present. During this process, I also dissolved in a half pound of brown sugar (I have no idea what differences white/brown sugar have on the final product).

Once all simmered up, I added the cider back to it's original container, and let it sit overnight to cool down to room temp. The following morning, I simply added the yeast to the mix, and put a balloon (which I poked a few holes in) over the mouth of the jug. The balloon acts as an airlock. As the yeast devours sugar and poops alcohol, gas is produced. The balloon allows this gas to escape without letting much air back in.

After the first night, we can see the yeast is quite active!

After a solid 3 weeks of waiting, the cider was ready to go! Compared to my first failed batch, this was delicious! Compared to other brand name ciders, it wasn't bad :P. It's not at all carbonated, so it turns out tasting a bit more like a wine than a cider. But either way, it's quite tasty and packs a bit of a punch!

PART 2: Skittles Vodka

A college favorite! As you may of guessed it, this is nothing more than the fusion of skittles and vodka. All you need is a bottle of vodka (750ml) and a bag of skittles (14oz). Start off by separating them by color, or you can try a mix of flavors if you're feeling dangerous. As you can see, I'm getting prepped for my Ugly Christmas Sweater party.

Before you add the skittles you're gonna have to pour out a bit of the vodka. I just added it to another bottle that I had. Once you've made room, add the skittles.

In the past I used to let this sit hours before I attempted to strain, which I realize now, was completely retarded. All we want is the outer most coating of the skittle. What I found in making this batch is that you just need a few minutes. So I continues sorting the other skittles, and gave the bottles a good shake in between each color. As you can see the skittles are practically solid white, and have expelled their flavor into the vodka.

Next we must strain the vodka, as we don't want the skittles to continue dissolving. I just placed a fork over the mouth of the bottle and poured into another container. Pretty simple!

Dump out the skittles, add the vodka back into it's bottle, and that's it! Easy and delicious!

PRO TIP: The grape skittles, while hands down the best flavor of skittles, makes an AWFUL skittles vodka. It's pretty much cough medicine.

Another Arcade Machine!

Praises be to Goodwill! That's where I found this awesome homemade arcade cabinet, complete with Neo-Geo tagged on it for a whopping $20!

The best part of this build was that the vast majority of the work was already done for, and I simply reaped the rewards of someone else's hard work :). All that was left to do was acquire an old PC and slap XP on there and MAME, find a TV, and install some controls.

Again, praise be to Goodwill! I came across an RCA Colortrak 2000, which is as cool as it sounds. This TV not only fit within 1/4" of the cabinet, but had a built in receiver, and a glass panel that protected the actual screen. Almost looks like something out of a studio of sorts?

With the TV and computer taken care of, I hopped onto my favorite website for arcade parts, happcontrols.com. I snagged a pair of joysticks and 12 pushbuttons, and after only 2 days, had the parts in hand and was ready to go. I made quick work of the previously existing front panel with some hole saws...

Then I mounted the controls...

(hah I thought I had a picture of the controls mounted, guess not :P)

And then, the worst part, I had to wire all the controls. I went with the same approach as I did on the Donkey Kong machine, strip the board from a keyboard, trace back the flex circuits to the board, and then wire the switch directly across the two points. This is the mess that ensued...Why I bought solid wire I have no idea, didn't think that one through. Either way, after a few touch ups, the control panel was ready to go. This was as simple as plugging the usb cable back into the controller board, and then into the computer, and then...

METAL SLUG BITCHES!!!

Homemade Bacon!

After reading another post online about homemade bacon, I knew I had to give it a spin. After a quick trip to the local butcher shop, I came home with 3 1/4 pounds of pork belly, not prettiest cut of meat by any means...

Apparently all there is to do is load it up with kosher salt and some spices. I went with black pepper corns and garlic, as I read it would give the bacon a more "savory" flavor. The reason it's sitting in a drying rack is because as the salt draws out the moisture, it will begin to drip delicious pork juice, mmmmmm, and at the low low price of $4, it was perfect for the job!

And that's it! I popped that bad boy in the fridge and added some more salt each day. I had taken pictures each day to show it's progress, but the meat itself really didn't change at all. So five days later, I ended up with a nice chunk of cured pork belly!

Now you might be thinking, hmmmm, that darkened up a bit...That's exactly what I thought too, and after poking around a bit and finding that some of the thinner areas were a little tough, I made a realization. I almost made beef jerky instead of bacon. Looking back I'm pretty confident that I was a bit heavy on the salt following the initial application. This pulled TOO much moisture out, and caused the meat to somewhat shrivel and dry. But no worries, this only applied to about 35-40 % of the meat.

Next was to smoke the cured belly for about 3-4 hours. Slight problem, I don't own a smoker, but who cares, I'll just broil it! After a solid 3 hours on a low heat in the oven, I pulled it out and carved off the layer of skin, and behold, bacon!

I sliced it up into the thinnest slices I could manage, which was not thin at all in terms of bacon... (The tiny strips on the left are the result of the over salting)

A sample strip on the skillet...

So how'd it taste? Great! But there was a slight problem...Much like the salt, I had gone overboard on the seasoning, which the fatty parts of the bacon really soaked up. So if you got a leaner slice (lol lean slice of bacon, yeah...), it was pretty awesome, but the fatty bits had a real punch of pepper.

Overall, I'm glad I undertook the task, but all in all I can really only call this a moderate success due to my spice overkill. But hey, now I've got 3 pounds of homemade, sometimes super peppery bacon :)

Homemade lens (fisheye/tilt shift?)

Finding myself with some free time before Friday night festivities, I set out to do SOMETHING with this Nikon I had purchased a while ago. I originally wanted to do a tilt shift lens, but with the huge telescoping lens that came with the camera, it wasn't exactly ideal for such a mod. I really had no idea where to start, so I kind of man handled the lens a bit and managed to separate it into 2 different pieces. Again, not really knowing what to do, I messed around with looking through the lenses, holding them at different distances, hoping to find something that looked cool, and I did. By taking the top cap of the lens and flipping it, I was able to create an effect similar to a fisheye, but instead of giving that bubble feel, it would increasingly blur. I also noticed that the closer the cap was to the lens, the sharped the image got.

Here's the cap sitting on top of the lens...

At this point it only made sense to bust out the dremel and get manly on it.

The end result was that I could now place the cap directly against the lens, giving me a fairly crisp shot.Now it was just a matter of attaching the cap to the lens, which clearly was done the only way that made sense, tons of tape. Not just any old tape though, this was the perfect opportunity to use teflon tape! For those unaware, I'm bat shit crazy for this stuff. If there is one thing you should always have handy, it's teflon tape. Now my original intent was to simply hold the cap down, nothing more, but thankfully the wonders of teflon tape presented me with something much more amazing...A tilt shift lens! Now it doesn't allow for too much of an angle, but I get a solid tilt for not intending on even have it as an option. I tore out this morning and took a quick stroll around town just burning the leftover film I had and here is what we got.


This one was taken pre lens modding, tossed it in for comparison.