We’ve run Fujitsu scanners at work (the 1500 series) for some time, so when I decided to pick one up for home, Fujitsu seemed the natural choice. I ordered the ScanSnap S1300 from Amazon for around $250, which was a good deal compared to other places online. Overall, I’m very impressed by the quality of [...]

Back in the day, I had a bunch of Pentium-class CPUs laying around, and figured that they had good thermal properties and would make good coasters. Below are some (quite crappy in retrospect) photos I took at the time. The coasters themselves are long gone, but I’ve noticed lately that this page is particularly popular, [...]

I’ve wondered about the strange outlets in my grandparents house since I was a kid.  The house was built in the 60s, back before grounding was a big deal, which explains the lack of a 3rd pin on the outlets, though they are new enough to be polarized. I was trying to tell someone about [...]

For a while now, the spare bathroom faucet has been a source of frustration to me. We hardly ever use the shower in that bathroom (I count just four people and one dog), so I was sort of surprised when it started dripping a while back.    Last weekend, I decided that I was sick [...]

I’ve been in to painting miniatures (minis, figurines, figs, etc) for some time, and have a handful of minis that I use for D&D.  Recently, Richard was lamenting his boring gray pieces for his Last Night on Earth game.  I volunteered to paint them in batches for him.  The process I use is pretty straight forward: Base [...]

With my audio input converter stashed in the rear CD changer compartment and no immediate plans for a Carputer, I figured I should have a way to feed sound from my phone, MP3 player, laptop, etc. I found a discussion on the ‘Tex about putting an iPod in one’s armrest, and thought that sounded like [...]

For our recent trip to San Francisco, I needed a new set of rechargeable batteries for my camera.  I’d previously had a few sets of the Duracell2650mah AAs which worked great while they lasted, but were sadly eaten by an overzealous charge setting. I decided to replace them with an “Energizer® Exceptional Value Charger” SKU 039800077226, which [...]

Sulfation  is the buildup of a sulfur compound on the lead plates of a lead acid battery. (Those of you who know anything about batteries are probably appalled by this description, but it’s adequate for our purposes). A desulfator, then, is a device for reversing this process, putting the sulfur back into solution with the [...]

I was just browsing my Reader and happened upon the MAKE Magazine post about the winner of their Robo-Mower contest.  I was just skimming the article when they mentioned “A dog park in Omaha”, which started me wondering what the chances were that they meant Omaha, Nebraska. Just FYI, Google Maps says the only “Omaha” [...]

This is something I’d been looking at for some time, and my mom finally gifted me one for my birthday last year. Probably some mothering instinct or something, making sure your kids are staying warm… The TDIs (even the old ALHs, as long as your glow system is sound) are great during the winter, but [...]