I’ve been spending most of the last week reaquainting myself with all the knowledge I’ve lost on electronic circuits since college. I ordered a copy of “Practical Electronics for Inventors” using an Amazon gift certificate I got for my birthday, and I have found it to be a very good reference. You can get as [...]

Well, once again I am thwarted by the annoying restrictions of WordPress.com and its blogosphere. I cannot directly upload my proof-of-concept video for that grant here, so I am hosting it over on Microsoft Live spaces in my SkyDrive. I wish it weren’t necessary, but apparently you get what you pay for - and since [...]

As I indicated in my previous post, I was somewhat concerned whether the VAA505 component was going to be stable enough and adequate to power my PICAXE. Over and over I have heard that one of the most important aspects of designing and coding your own microcontroller circuits is a stable power supply - and [...]

I am just so damn excited… I got a bunch of new toys to play with in the mail today, and I couldn’t contain myself - I had to come here and write about them. I suppose I *should* be downstairs in the basement playing with them, but I’m holding off until tomorrow to do [...]

Donna took her welder out for a test drive today. No electrical problems - she arc welded a few test pieces of metal, and is planning on spending more time tonight doing more beads as practice. First order of business after her test run was to get a floor fan or something to blow the [...]

I feel like I was moving non-stop all weekend. Between activities in the garage, activities in the yard, and everything between I didn’t get much downtime… but I actually prefer that, even though the weekend goes by fast.
One thing I did was rack my 10 gallons of wheat to secondaries. 5 gallons of it was [...]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been struggling with details for my sculpture design. One such detail is the mounting and orientation for the grant and pumps. After a few failed iterations of mounting things on the main frame, I had an epiphany - I didn’t really want that stuff attached to the [...]

For days now I’ve been working on getting Donna’s welding area ready for her. This means hanging the dry wall, taping, mudding, spackling… It’s a never-ending and extremely dusty process. Things are turning out pretty good, and I hope that we’ll have things ready and painted for her by this Sunday. The receptacles (both the [...]

… as in worn out, not visited the kegerator too many times this evening (which may be true too).
Last few days have been really busy - Saturday I hung drywall in the garage, so all that remains is taping, priming and painting. It was exhausting work, and I certainly learned some good “Dos” and [...]

Today I racked the Oktoberfest and the California Commonfest over to secondaries. They’ve been on the yeast for about 2 1/2 weeks, have fallen crystal clear, and had very little yeast activity, so I figured it was time. The process was very uneventful, and I didn’t get any yeast in the secondaries at all. I [...]