As I am an expert on all things internet-y, it should come as no surprise that I am a proponent of online shopping. A staunch proponent, in fact. Don’t get me wrong…I am all about grocery shopping. One of my dream jobs is to work in a butcher shop; maybe I can make that happen when I retire from this code stuff. If I ever hit the lottery, it will be a tough call as to whether or not I drop of an application at Orange Julius or the Meat Shop. Time will tell. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Tracking down items online. It really isn’t that hard. One of my daily rituals on the webs is to check the deals at Savings.com. For those not in the know, Savings is sort of a hybrid between Woot and Amazon. Good stuff. Instead of offering a limited deal of the day, a la woot, or a selection that is somewhat static, a la Amazon, Savings.com is an aggregate of deals from all over the place. Mothers Day flowers…you bet. JCP and Target…you also bet. The cool part of this is being able to associate a store’s deal with what you need. Take my t-shirt wardrobe for instance. If J C Penny’s is having 25 percent off of men’s ware, I can snag those suckers for two bucks per unit. Not too bad, right. Hit that link up there to see what is available. Tell them Joe sent you.

My light needs were not being met in the lab. Garage, lab, whatever. Anyhow, I picked up a halogen work light at the hardware store, thinking that the base dimensions and output would make for a perfect movable lab light source. This thing is a monster. Check this out. Reference voltage: Reference tempurature Voltage with 40W light bulb: Voltage with Man-Lamp: (maxed out) Wait for it…wait for it…wait for it…TEMP NEAR MAN-LAMP Incredible. I guess this could double as a goddamned heater. My digital thermo was still climbing at 145. FWIW, it is perfect for the lab. Just sort of confusing how brutish it is. Impressive.

Before you try to dr this, I have included a video to combat the tl crowd. You’re quite welcome. See below. Now I’ll explain. I may even toss in a snippet…who knows. Basically, I found myself with a few free hours, an Arduino, a bunch of random components in my lab (read: garage) at my disposal, and no real plan of attack. Result? Arduino/servo motor controlled fan. Jump off component…silver spray painted Altoids can. Nice…chop that sucker up so I can smash a servo motor in there. Well done. See… Lady Ada uses these for some random projects. If you can stomach a whole bunch of crappy mints, you have a nice little Arduino-sized metal casing. Of course, it poses a grounding threat, which I experienced working with my motor shield a while back. That said…keep a few around. I have put this one to use before. Next step…testing the servo For this, I broke out my motor shield. It doesn’t have any features that would benefit this project…the servo areas are basically just power, ground, and control. Control pumps into the 16B 10 port, like a jumper…that works for my debug. Next, implement a fan. I snagged this fan from an old tower, I think. I really don’t know. It seemed to react well to a 9V battery, so I tried it with a 5V source…same deal. Awesome. I used a zip tie to fasten this to that, that being the Altoids enclosure. This thing needs a base…man-clamp to the rescue: I picked this up, to use it as a soldering base. That ‘x-tra’ hands piece of shit that I have previously posted in pictures didn’t cut it. This is the manly version. And, it works great for this project, I believe…you can decide based upon the vid. Here is what it looks like, with some more detail. Let’s add some code…oh no…sounds like we’ve reached the BALLIN ASS SNIPPET ZONE

#include <servo.h> Servo myservo; // servo opbect int pos = 0; // initialize void setup() { myservo.attach(10); // digi pin 10 void loop() { for(pos = 0; pos < 180; pos += 1) // from 1 to 180 { myservo.write(pos); // moves servo delay(20); // waits 20 ms } for(pos = 180; pos>=1; pos-=1) // sweeps span between 180 and 1 { myservo.write(pos); // moves servo delay(20); // waits 20 ms } } </servo.h>

If that looks familiar, it is because it pretty much the sweep example from the Arduino IDE. No changes necessary…I like when that happens. Here is the final product: Not bad, for a quick slam-together exercise. It isn’t really robotic, since it has no sensors. I could bump this up a notch with some IR LEDs, or my PIR sensor, but that is for another time. Blah blah blah, stay tuned, blah blah. Until then.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle should have ran this story on a full front page spread. Instead, they chose to obscure evidence of alien existence in Montana, placing this item in the police reports… Too late, cops. They got him. Watch your brain waves.

I’m mid update…son of a bitch If things appear to be off, that is why. I won’t have time to QA this beeyotch until tomorrow, midday at the earliest. Many apologies.

I suppose I should add a few words. I placed the images in an empty post several days ago, and sort of forgot to update the text on mi telephono. Dios mio! Well, long story short. I put together the little POC using my PIR sensor a while back. The shit deal, is that the sucker only writes high and low. Easy, for the win. Limited, for the loss. I may or may not have (I did) disassembled a few CRT TVs last month. Hence, have all sorts of components, such as small sub 9V speakers… I’m trying to do something with a dual speaker setup, in order to shine up my bugler alarm project. The code is boring…stay tuned…I might be able to come up with something amusing.

So there I am, eating Cool Ranch Doritos at work… …noticing there is a correlation between “blue-ness” and “delicious-ness” Wait, blue is a color and a flavor? Yep. That blue stuff is awesome. Imagine how amazing this would taste: I bet it would destroy your taste buds. Like looking at a laser…do not recommend.

I shall call this “The Triple Threat”

Done, done, and done. All systems go. I dropped Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on the 17" Dell, via an old image-having CD I had in the man-lab. Updated via the manager to 10.10, on my makeshift table: No problem what-so-ever. Works like a champ. I snagged the 10.10 image from Ubuntu, and created a bootable USB. I backed up my photos on said drive…so that sucker is one sweet USB. I have been packing it in my pocket, in case anyone needs some Linux on the fly…not holding my breath however. Anyhow, my wireless card needed some update action…had to go manual on the little guy: So the secret is out…I keep my modem and router in a wire-jumble behind the TV. It works. As does Meerkat on my Mini 9…with which I’m posting this tale at this moment. So, I have a Ubuntu trifecta going on right now. Seems like they should have me on the payroll or something. Free shirt, or something. Not having Windows is prize enough.

I’m averaging somewhere around two pounds per week… Sort of gross; sort of impressive.