Making a simple Savonius wind turbine by Lance Turner There are many situations where you might need a small amount of electricity, for instance running gate openers, safety lights, water level indicators and other low-power devices. While solar would seem like the ideal solution, quite often this is not possible due to location and shading problems. Why have automatic gates anyway? Anyway, I decided to provide power to the electric gate openers from a small wind turbine. The gate opener system itself is a home-made job, using car windscreen wiper motors driving long brass threaded shafts. Too much turbulence I briefly thought about what type of turbine I could install and how it would look. This type of vertical axis rotor is very robust and durable if built correctly, is relatively slow turning and can be easily built at home, without the hassles of aerofoil blade design and other problems associated with horizontal axis ‘propeller’ type turbines. Making the turbine Generating the power The mast Voltage matching Final assembly
Upside-Down-Ternet My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun. I'm starting here by splitting the network into two parts, the trusted half and the untrusted half. The trusted half has one netblock, the untrusted a different netblock. We use the DHCP server to identify mac addresses to give out the relevant addresses. /etc/dhcpd.conf IPtables is Fun! Suddenly everything is kittens! /sbin/iptables -A PREROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -p tcp -j DNAT --to-destination 64.111.96.38 For the uninitiated, this redirects all traffic to kittenwar. For more fun, we set iptables to forward everything to a transparent squid proxy running on port 80 on the machine. /sbin/iptables -A PREROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1 That machine runs squid with a trivial redirector that downloads images, uses mogrify to turn them upside down and serves them out of its local webserver. The redirection script
About Us – What is SparkFun? SparkFun is an online retail store that sells the bits and pieces to make your electronics projects possible. No matter what your vision is, our products and resources are designed to make the world of electronics more accessible to the average person. SparkFun and Open Source SparkFun is a firm believer in the ideology of open source technology. SparkFun CEO Nathan Seidle recently presented at TEDx Boulder about the power of open source and how it has helped SparkFun succeed. You can read more about Nate’s presentation and SparkFun’s open source philosophy here. – Who Are We? SparkFun employees exist in the same group as our customers - curious students, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists who love to create. To find out some specifics about the SparkFun employees, you can find an incomplete list of current employees here. Meet Nathan Seidle Nathan Seidle is SparkFun’s Founder and CEO. To read more about Nathan, check out a brief biography here. – Behind-the-Scenes
Scott H Young » The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Ac Today I have a treat for you. Cal Newport from Study Hacks is going to share some of his insights on productivity. Cal is also the author of How to Become a Straight-A Student and How to Win at College. He is currently studying for a PhD at MIT. Last August, I published an essay on my blog, Study Hacks, that was titled: Productivity is Overrated. The basic idea: productivity systems, like Getting Things Done, reduce stress and help you keep track of your obligations, they do not, however, make you accomplished. Productivity is Overrated That is, the two don’t need to go together. What Accomplished People Do Differently From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is an obsession with completion. It’s this constant stream of finishing that begins, over time, to unlock more and more interesting opportunities and eventually leads to their big scores. Introducing Completion-Centric Planning Completion-centric planning rectifies this problem.
Orange Crate Art NeonString EL Wire Electroluminescent Wire and Drivers Evidence Based Scheduling Evidence Based Scheduling by Joel Spolsky Friday, October 26, 2007 Software developers don’t really like to make schedules. Most of the schedules you do see are halfhearted attempts. Hilarious! You want to be spending your time on things that get the most bang for the buck. Why won’t developers make schedules? Over the last year or so at Fog Creek we’ve been developing a system that’s so easy even our grouchiest developers are willing to go along with it. The steeper the curve, the more confident you are that the ship date is real. Here’s how you do it. 1) Break ‘er down When I see a schedule measured in days, or even weeks, I know it’s not going to work. This forces you to actually figure out what you are going to do. If you are sloppy, and pick big three-week tasks (e.g., “Implement Ajax photo editor”), then you haven’t thought about what you are going to do. Setting a 16-hour maximum forces you to design the damn feature. 2) Track elapsed time You can’t, really. So, keep timesheets. Summary
The storm inside I know all about the "whats" of depression. I'm alert to the mundane side effects of medications and put up with them, mostly. Sometimes I can predict trajectories and undulations and happy breakthroughs. Without the hindrances of happiness or hedonistic temptation your concentration allegedly improves. The depressed mind is a locus stubbornly resistant to free-thinking or the expansion of ideas. Depression is a state of lovelessness. EFFECTIVE treatment and understanding of depression is to some extent mired in the '60s. The issue of stigma, I believe, is over-inflated. I'm quite well at the moment and think I may be for a while. A lot of people reading this will be doing so while very unwell. For those living with depression and their friends and family, I would recommend two books. Ironically, it's sad that fewer people need to read about depression to try to understand it these days because so many are experiencing it or know someone who is. Depression is a state of lovelessness.
Cool Neon Wire Our thickest and most durable wire, with the same core as High Bright Standard (2.6mm) and a PVC coating as thick as a pencil. The frosted PVC coating diffuses the light, making the light seem wide at a distance. Hella Phat (5.0mm) is about 150% brighter than Angel Hair (1.2mm), Standard (2.3mm), Phat (3.2mm), and Tail wire. Its High Bright core glows bright for almost twice as many hours of use (it's half its original brightness after about 3,000 hours). It can safely be curled around the radius of a nickel but needs to be tacked down to hold its shape. Highly recommended for solid surfaces or applications (e.g. hats, bikes, signs) that don't involve repeated bending like clothing does. Visit here for our Color Chart. Cool Neon Wire is sold by the foot; ordering a quantity of 17 will ship a 17-ft section of wire. Base Price: $1.40
Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More It’s something we’re all looking for – the perfect solution that will minimize our work life while still getting the stuff done that we need to get done. Well, that one solution doesn’t exist, but with a combination of strategies, you can get to where you want to be. Now, none of these tips will turn your life around. But they can make a big difference, and when used together, your work life might just be enjoyable, productive, low-stress and high fun. And these tips won’t work for everyone. One goal.
» 55 Ways to Get More Energy Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Greg Go, co-author of Wise Bread‘s new book, 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget. Buy the book today (by Monday 11:59pm PDT) and get a $15 Ebates bonus and a chance to win a brand new Flip Cam. If you’re tired all the time, a change in what you eat (diet) or what you do all day (activity pattern) may be all you need to turn things around 180°. You won’t be able to do everything on this list all the time — you’d tire yourself out trying to get more energy — but do try them all to see which ones work for you and your schedule. Add a few of these tips to your regular routine. 1. It’s an amazing trick. 2. Whether you work alone or in a room with coworkers, a quick one-song rock out loud session is an effective way to beat back exhaustion. In a cube farm? 3. If allergies have your sinuses blocked, you may be feeling more tired and cranky. 4. There is a natural ebb and flow of energy throughout the day. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
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