Magazine for McGuyvers

Make magazine is a wonderful resource for McGuyver wanna-bees and budding artists. If you cannot find a copy at your local bookstore, you can visit the website:- Here.

Issue 12 has has CandyFab - a 3D freeform sugar printer, infrared photography with a cheap digital camera, and ladies shoes with video player and alarm in the heel. But there are many more cool projects.

Toronto Beauty

A beautiful Hindu temple opened this year in Toronto. A Toronto Star article describes how the pieces were carved by artisans in India and shipped to Toronto for assembly. It sounds wonderful. The temple is open daily for visitors but one should check the web site first.

300 [2006]

Watched the Spartan 300 recently. Apparently, those warriors followed a 'Spartan' diet and spent much time at the gym doing crunches for the Abs and bench presses for the pecs to build 'bods that your average Bowflex buyer could only dream of... just kidding.

There is a detailed review over at IMDB. This movie presents a black-and-white world... Greeks good, Persians bad. Of course, there is plenty of violence but it seems abstract rather than horrific.

The Spartans valued loyalty, courage, and a never,never quit attitude. I suppose that counts for something.

Excellent Lisp Book

Peter Seibel has written an excellent book also available online.. Common Lisp tutorial

Quality Keyboards, Efficient Typing

Most people who learned to type on old-school computers with clicky keyboards realize that those discrete keyboard switches were more ergonomic than the cheap rubber membrane keyboards commonly used today. There is a vast selection of keyboards now available but there is little difference in feel between the pricey "ergonomic" ones and the bottom feeders.

Finding a good mechanical keyboard requires searching. I have already found and purchased a pleasing unit. And I describe a few choices here.

See the bold keyboard at DasKeyboard. The inventor of ''Das Keyboard'' must think that the letters on a keyboard are like training wheels on a bike. Just as those training wheels slow you down, so too will looking at a keyboard. So the keys are unlabelled. I can type normally on this unit provided I don't think about typing. It has an excellent feel with switches made by Cherry Corp. Canadians order it from Tek Gear

Those who don't care for the minimalist, all black, ''Das Keyboard'' might love the ''Tactile Pro 2'' originally for the Mac, but also for the PC. This board is all white with extra lettering on the keys. See it at Matias. The first production run is already sold out so you must wait with $150USD in hand.

The original Tactile Pro keyboard won a Macworld Editors' Choice Award for "Best Old-School Keyboard", and rave reviews from keyboard connoisseurs. The new Tactile Pro 2.0 builds on the best features of the original, and adds a few more.

Other Keyboards

Google "cherry keyboard mechanical" or "alps keyboard" will lead to a selection of sturdy keyboards.

I Don't Like 'Like'

Tonight I stopped at Timmy's for a snack while reading the daily paper. Three young ladies were at the table next to me. Usually, I can tune out the buzz in a public place but soon I noticed 'like....like....like....'

It was like.. distracting. This gal had like.. a one hundred word vocabulary that was totally challenged to effectively express the unbroken stream of approvals, similes, and metaphors. Strange how those with the least to say talk the most.

• It was like.. verbal diarrhea
• It was like.. mental constipation
• It was like.. please shut up and read a book

The Urban Dictionary has some amusing definitions.

A Really Lucky Bamboo

Brownie the cat chewed all the leaves from the Lucky Bamboo plants however they grew back and flourished. Now they live on a narrow bookshelf where there is no room for climbing cats.

I flush and refill the vase whenever the water level drops to 30 percent. And add a few drops of miracle grow.

More about Dracena

Hacking the Honda Civic Stereo - Part 3

Part 1 explained how to replace the noname factory speakers with better quality Pioneer units while making the modifications to the Honda invisible. This produced a pleasant improvement to sound quality and inspired further enhancements.

The Steve Lucas debut album has an electic mix of Jazz-Fusion styling backed by his sophisticated riffs on six-string electric bass. I wanted to hear the real thing in the car. Fusion not to your liking? Well visit Featuring Bass and find some other samples. You might enjoy Gordon McGhie which has some extra punch

The plastic and metal panels found in the modern automobile are designed to save cost and provide safety. They are not rigid enough for music. Also, there are holes everywhere that cancel out the sound pressure created by speakers in the doors and trunk. So when listening to any music with bass instruments, you also hear rattling panels and strange resonances.

These rattling acoustics can be fixed by using a powered subwoofer in a tuned enclosure. In addition, this fixes a problem with the bass boost control of the factory radio. Without a sub, you also boost the midrange when boosting the bass because it has a simple rising response curve. But the powered sub has it's own boost so the door speakers can be driven from a flat amplifier that causes no panel rattling. Now you have more flexibility in creating good sound.

You have many options when shopping for a car subwoofer. It seems to me that Rockford Fosgate is the "WooferMeister" so I tried a P210S4. Smaller, cheaper units are available but I prefer to buy a little extra rather than not enough which would be a total waste.

Enclosure choice is not so easy. Stereo stores usually sell these small, square boxes which are intended for cheap, generic speakers. They will not provide the best performance for a particular unit. Just as your car needs tuned suspension components, your woofer needs a particular box designed for it's personality.

The two most common enclosure types are sealed and vented. The vented ones are more efficient and are commonly used in home theatre systems to save cost. But a vented unit is more difficult to design so that it does not become a "boom box".

Fosgate sells these nifty vented enclosures with woofers. But they double the cost of your purchase and sealed enclosures are not offered. Moreover, vented enclosures are larger than the sealed versions for Fosgate woofers. Enclosure specifications are provided with Fosgate woofers so I opted to design my own.

Unfortunately, I don't have fancy-schmancy table saws and other tools for cabinet making so "creative carpentry" was needed. I purchased three 10" x 24" black, multipurpose shelves and one 12" x 36". I cut the 12x36 in half to get two 12x18. I cut one 10x24 in half to get two 10x12. The 10 inch pieces became the sides of a box, the 18 inch became the front and back. It just happened to work out with two cuts.

I made the cuts with a handsaw guided by a straight wood scrap. The 24" inch cut in half was slightly larger than the 12" inch so I trimmed them with the jig saw and a rasp to make them equal and just a hair less than 12". Remember, creative carpentry.

The high-density particle board shelves are held together with wood screws but this is only for a start. Bracing material must be added and screws inserted through the particle board so that the sides are pulled together. This bracing can consist of strips of pine or even old hockey stick handles. These braces are hidden inside. Later, thermal glue or silicone rubber will be added around all seams for airtight operation.

Note that the top and bottom boards extend over the sides. This is better for three reasons.

• There is something to hold onto when carrying a 50lb box.
• It looks better than trying to perfectly align two boards at right angles
• It leaves a space for attaching the power amplifier

The Jansen JPA260 power amp can drive 180watts RMS when bridged into the woofer (and set to 11 like Spinal Tap. It also has bridged inputs for connecting to the existing Honda rear speaker wires. A switched low pass filter, a variable boost, and input level complete the requirements. The case of this amp is also the heat sink which gets very warm to the touch. It cools better when installed as shown since air naturally rises up over the case.

The final prototype is placed on the floor and fits snugly behind the passenger seat. The woofer is facing the seat but this is ok for low frequency operation. Note that the box is partially blocking the sliding console cover. Later a small storage box will be placed under the woofer to adjust the height as a pedestal.

The enclosure must have at least 0.65 cubic feet for the Fosgate woofer. My simple box is .85 which is within specification. Anyone with good tools can make a slightly smaller box.

* Part 1 of 3 *      * Part 2 of 3 *

Blogs Vs Email

What are the pros and cons of Blogs and Emails?

Everyone knows how to use email so we tend to do that automatically even when email may not be the best tool for the job.

Email is good for notifying everybody but often there is a broadcast which includes people who may not need or want to know. Knowlege workers face a deluge of email. Business documents must be sorted into folders. Each recipient must duplicate the time and effort of the others.

Email is mature technology with plenty of features and options but the easiest choice is often not the best choice. Email was once the only option but with the growth of the WWW, there are a variety of services which can complement or replace email depending upon what needs to be done.

A Web log, or Blog for short, provides new and interesting possibilities. A Blog is a journal with the most recent entry, or post, at the top of the page. There are now millions of Blogs on the WWW. Most are banal experiments but many contain interesting and valuable material. So how Blogs help the over-emailed knowlege worker.

The first step is better teamwork. Get together and brainstorm when information is best emailed or put in managed documents. Look for items that require notification and those that can be read when it is convenient. Here are suggestions for items that can be Blogged:-

• minutes of meetings for a project
• list of persons not at work today
• progess reports for a project
• reports of visits to customer sites by a service person
• what I learned this week
• ideas: how can we be more efficient?
• write about anything that happens in a sequence

Unlike Email, a Blog does not pester anyone. A person who is interested in the content of a Blog can read it at his convenience. Moreover, if he wishes to be notified of an update, he can subscribe using RSS, known as real simple syndication, which gives automatic notification. If he grows bored with the Blog, deleting the RSS link will terminate the nuisance.

Conclusion: Some combination of Email, Wikis, Blogs, and other services can reduce the information overload of knowlege workers. Managing information flow results in less work than using Email alone.

Possible Credit Card Risk With PayPal

I had my first encounter with PayPal today but not by choice. I was attempting to purchase a magazine online and was redirected to PayPal which captured my credit card and mailed a receipt. But the download of the magazine did not work. Here's where it all falls apart.

None of the published email addresses for the vendor worked so I intended to file a complaint with PayPal. But this is only possible if one has a PayPal account. My attempt to create an account was rejected because my credit card was already attached to an account.

After several useless emails, I phoned PayPal for help. The support lady told me that I was supposed to click "Save My Info" in the email receipt so that the transaction info would be pasted into the account application. She resent the receipt.

My computer has remote images in email disabled for security. Links to remote images are a favourite of spammers for bypassing spam filters. PayPal hides information in remote images so I did not see any links in the email receipt.

After disabling security, I see the PayPal logo but it only has a link to the main PayPal page. I still cannot create an account.

Now my emails are ignored so I phone PayPal again. This time the support guy says my visa account has another name. If that is true, how could I use it for purchase? Don't they check that the person name matches the card number? I ask if my card is compromised, he says no. But I later call visa and cancel the card anyway.

The first problem here is the email receipt is comprised of two pieces of information. One part is just text from the email server, the other is a link to a remote graphic on the web server. I suspect that the email programmer changed his part but the webserver guy did not update the other part to match. So the customer bears the confusion.

The other problem is customer support. They know how the system is supposed to work but are not aware of it's quirks and bugs. Successful problem resolution depends upon which support persons one happens to contact.

Finally, enter into Google "security remote images email" and see 49 million links. Many of these warn against allowing remote links in emails. Given this common wisdom, it is quite surprising and disturbing that PayPal, who is supposed to provide ultimate security, sends email with remote images.

Rambo Storms Quiet Condo

A peaceful Saturday evening was disrupted by the sudden appearance of six patrol cars, two ambulances, two fire trucks, two special forces vans, air support on standby, and two TV station crews smelling a story. The news report at Pulse24 understates the amount of manpower deployed for a hostage situation.

After negotiation, a man was arrested and charged with forcible confinement

New Options For AirMiles

Which would you prefer, a 3.8 hour flight on an an Air Canada A320, or a 4.3 hour flight on a lumbering A340? They have the same cruising speed but the A340 has 120 more passengers to lift while the cruise control is tweaked to save fuel. When travelling between Toronto and Calgary, I think the extra $20 is worth the faster trip on the smaller jet.

Of course, you could always try Westjet if you don't mind helping...

CALGARY, Alberta. April 1, 2006. WestJet announced today that it will be launching a new program where guests can assist the airline in realizing fuel efficiencies. Help Westjet

Hacking the Honda Civic Stereo - Part 2

Assuming you wish to install better speakers as explained in Part one, Part 2 explains how to remove the factory speakers. The photo shows one rear speaker being removed as follows. Use a blunt screwdriver to pop the speaker grill from inside the trunk. Next enter the backseat with a Phillips screwdriver to remove one retaining screw. Finally, pry gently to lift the speaker.
I don't have an image for the front door speakers. First remove a Phillips screw from inside the door handle. Then pry gently around the lower part of the door to pop the friction fit plastic pins. Next, lift slightly to free the door covering from the plastic lip along the glass. Be careful with the wiring harness which attaches to the door handle switch assembly. The switch cover has a retaining screw. Perhaps you can adjust the door cover to allow access to the speaker without removing the switches. Good Luck!

* Part 1 of 3 *     * Part 3 of 3 *