Lee.org

Hey, I’ve got a software localization issue… ie translating software into other languages. If you’re a friend of mine and you have any experience with such things, could you give me a buzz. Thanks!

I just won an ebay auction for 3 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwe notes. That’s 100,000,000,000,000.00 dollars.

If those were US dollars, I’d be able to buy every human on the planet a used 2006 Chrysler Sebring Convertible in excellent condition with the sporty 2.7 liter V-6, A/C and alloy wheels. I’d have enough left over to chip in to cover the insurance, gas, and basic maintenance of those 6.7 billion vehicles for 3 years.

But I’m just going to buy a mansion and a yacht.

On Thursday the mouse….

• worked on electronics all day, filling the kitchen–>dining room table with electronics. And I didn’t clean it up!
• Made scalloped Russett potatoes in porcini and (macaroni and cheese) cheese sauce. And I (dare I say) boiled them! And they were fantastic
• Cleaned up the kitchen and it stayed clean. I used 1 fork, 1 spoon, 1 plate, 1 bowl like a true bachelor. And they got cleaned when I finished.
• I ate 1/2 of lunch and 1/2 of dinner standing up in the kitchen :-)
• Went to bed after 3, when I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Got up at 9:30 the next day
• Scheduled to go out to dinner on Friday and to a rockin NIMBY party on Saturday
• Played the music I wanted as long as I wanted all night
• Put together a RBBB Arduino and Serial Display LCD board

• Went to the Box Shop to pick up some things
• Had lunch with Kurt to tell him about SWARM’s experience at Coachella (Papalote on him!)
• Went back to the Box Shop to pick up some things (oops!)
• Finally installed electric outlet in garage so I can charge my car battery. I hadn’t run the car in a week and I couldn’t start it because the battery was low. :-((. So, after considering it for more than a year, I installed an electric outlet so I could use this fancy desulphating battery charger (BatteryMINDer BM12248)  that SWARM owns.
• Bed time: 5:30am :-)

Saturday…

     

• Went to NIMBY 5 Year Anniversary Party (note in the photo the metal tracked robot trouncing over the heap of wooden pallets, with large multi-colored flames dripping a flammable liquid onto the fire-ball and onto the pile of tinder. SQEEEEEE!) See the Life Size Mousetrap drop a safe on a cake (3mb AVI file)
• Tried to make a case for the T. Pen with plastic. Failed (so far)
• Bed time: 5:30am :-)

 

And then Charlotte came back.

More on the “Gah!”…

So a friend of mine twot an interesting question. Is there any way I can read the read the responses he received? I’m pretty sure the answer is “No, because Twitter is stupid. He should be using a better, more popular social networking site like maybe Xanga, Imeem, Skyrock, Wasabi, or Viadeco”

Here is the interesting question he posted, “With Hex or Grey Code optical encoders, can varying resistors be assigned to the pins to allow position to be read as an analog value?”

Several of my friends apparently use, in addition to blogging, Twitter AND Facebook to tell their friends about… I don’t know… whatever people can tell their friends in a tiny window.

WHY?

I can imagine READING many sources both because some of your friends might like one format and other friends like the other but… Gah!

Advice to my friends: You’re missing out! If you’re going to sign up for 2, you might as well sign up for all of the social networking sites, just to make sure.

I’ve never owned a soldering iron with such a complete instruction manual

(local copy of WES51 Operating Instructions)

You’ll be there, won’t you?

Come celebrate NIMBY’s 5 Year Anniversary in our new 64,000 square foot location.
Who can believe we have been doing it wrong for 5 years running?

March 28th
9pm
$10 ‘donation’ to enter

The line-up:
Life Size Mouse Trap
Esmerelda Strange
Rose Harden
Wink and Yoni
Fatwater
Live art by Jordan Fillers
Art by the Museum of Unnatural Selection Brian Kenny Fresno The Therm robots Glen Meadmore Disgusting Spectacle Art by Orion Fredricks DJ Big Daddy DJ Zeljko Matt Wirth’s Popcorn Booth Art by Janine Miller …….and more

8410 Amelia Sreet, E. Oakland
info and directions can be found:
www.nimbyspace.org

Why does windows do this? This is dumb. I want to view folders in the left window and files in the right. A .zip file is a FILE for a reason. I don’t want to see the compressed files inside it unless… unless I want to see them.

Here’s how to disable this “feature” in Windows.  

Go to a command prompt and type:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

You can undo this with the following command
 

regsvr32 zipfldr.dll

More on the subject

I have a DLink DSB-R100 USB Radio. It uses Gemtek drivers and such under the hood.

I’ve been frustrated because it crashes my computer with a blue screen of death (BSOD) whenever I wake the computer from Sleep mode. On another computer I used to have, it Blue-Screened at random times. That’s no good. I solved the problem on that old computer but I didn’t write down how I solved it. :-(   The radio has been sitting in my  pile-o-junk for a long time because of this.

Ed Maher wrote a driver to fix the problem :-))). Here is how to make your radio work!

1. (I’ll assume you already installed the radio) Rename your old  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\USBRADIO.sys to something like  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\USBRADIO.sys.original (just in case)
2. Fetch  usbradio.sys and and put it here:  C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers
3. Reboot your computer
4. Enjoy the lack of Blue Screens of Death

Just in case you need it, here are the USBRADIO.Inf and USBRADIO.sys I use.

Here is the original info on Ed Maher’s website

USB Radio Driver
The D-Link DRU-R100 USB Radio is a small USB controlled FM radio, also manufactured by GemTek as ‘Radio 21’. Unfortunately the device is no longer supported by D-Link and the driver causes a system crash (BSOD) under Windows 2000. As the device is fairly straightforward device, I was able re-write the driver using information from Linux drivers, and a Microsoft DDK sample device driver. The driver is not yet packaged, but the  usbradio.sys file is available to manually replace the one in the system32 directory. Please let me know if you are using the driver successfully or having problems.

Oh and you’ll want to get Radiator for the PC to control your radio. It works WONDERFULLY!

I own a few halogen bulb light fixtures. My favorite is this one desk lamp. It casts an excellent light  One is this desk lamp that I’ve had for  

I’ve used it most every day for 8+ hours a day for the last 8 years… something like 15 thousand hours and I’m still using the original halogen light bulb.

I’ve asked myself “Self, how can this be? These bulbs are supposed to be rated for 3,000 hours!”

The lamp has a dual power switch. The low power setting casts a slightly warmer, yellower, dimmer light than the high power setting. I like that setting much more than the high power setting. Ladyada pointed out  page 8 of this GE Lighting Technical Catalog. Simplified, it reads, “If you turn the brightness down a little, the bulb will last a whole lot longer”. So there. :-)

After much looking, I found replacements for my halogen bulbs online but of course there are so many different bulbs it can be hard to find the right replacement. I had initially bought them in a lighting store in a strip mall in Cupertino. They charged $20+ per bulb. I was so angry when I found them online for $3 per bulb that I returned the store bought ones. With shipping, I bought 3 bulbs online for the price of 1 in the store. The shipping cost more than the bulbs.

PS. No, it’s not actually a Babylon 5 lamp. I put that there, off some B5 Action Figures I bought :-)