A fair amount of meandering is about to take place.

Like the Star Trek episode that starts out with the Enterprise being destroyed after slamming into another starship, captained by Frasier incidentally, this should begin to make sense somewhere toward the end.

It was just a 20 minute side project; maybe half an hour, tops. Three hours later you’re reseeding a squid-shaped spot on the lawn that was incinerated after you tightened the truck’s oil plug, dropped the wrench, and accidentally sent a spark into the drip pan that ignited a fire three inches from your nose. Mysteriously, the truck was parked in the driveway, a good 20 yards from the burnt spot. More mysteriously, you hadn’t intended to change the oil at all. You just wanted to play your MP3 player through the auxiliary channel on the stereo.

Things started off fine. You pulled the stereo, installed a new cable, and everything worked great. After reassembling the dashboard, you decided to get the dust wipes and do a little cleaning. Then out came the window cleaner, the vacuum, and before long you were detailing the center column with a Q-tip.

It wasn’t until hours later, at the end of an unintentionally productive afternoon, that you ignited the drip pan. You kicked it out from under the engine compartment, but it caught a basketball unawares and stopped just out of reach where the flames began licking a tire.

You somehow scrambled out from under the truck without leaving too much of your scalp behind, raced around the front, and with the grace and agility of the most accomplished NFL kicker, launched the whole boiling conflagration out into the yard where it exploded on impact like a cartoon appendix.

While your heart pounded out a drum solo, unplayable by any percussionist who has never changed his own oil or been accidentally locked in a closet with a curious bat, you stood at the edge of your driveway and watched the burning mass melt into an enchilada shape and slowly expel the last of its contents onto the turf. You were reminded of a documentary about Hawaiian volcanoes that periodically belch liquefied rock into the frothy blue ocean, thus slowly and impressively adding to the island’s size. Your frothy lump of petrochemicals produced an impressive billowing cloud of noxious blue smoke.

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Not being overly shy, your old pal Spook will, from time to time, take a few minutes to review a product or service in the interests of growing the pool of honest and independent consumer opinion. Few things are as annoying as reading obviously counterfeit product reviews that carefully balance between the optimum number of spelling mistakes and subtly phrased company-speak.

I was into the third page of my Kenwood CA-C2AX – Audio Cable review before I heard that little voice say, “Whoa, horse. Pull it back.” Below is the abridged review without (as many) of the oblique meanderings (above).

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A hardcore propeller-head or audiophile probably already has the bits and pieces needed to make his own auxiliary cable. However, if he’s that obsessive, then his car audio equipment is probably more up to date. In fact, his stereo and speakers are easily five to 10 years newer than that smoking Festiva or Subaru Justy he’s driving. And by smoking, I mean the blue clouds of carbon monoxide following him around are lowering his IQ bit by bit each day and altering his DNA.

Perhaps you’re not an engineering nerd. If you’re not interested in downloading pin-out diagrams, if you’re doing well just to pull your car stereo out of the dash without starting a fire, if circuit breakers pop in salute when you walk by, then this is a quick and easy little upgrade that will allow your compatible Kenwood boat anchor to play audio from your portable MP3 player.

Installation…
• Step 1: Remove stereo from dash.
• Step 2: Treat electrical burns, replace blown fuses.
• Step 3: Plug cable into CD changer/Aux receptacle.
• Step 4: Route the other end under the dash somewhere. Mine’s in the glove box.
• Step 5: Plug the audio jack into your MP3 player and switch the stereo to AUX.

The first thing you’ll notice is that your MP3 player probably won’t produce the volume that you want even at maximum. The second thing you’ll notice is that all those crappy MP3 files you’ve collected from gawd knows where over the years need to be normalized to a single volume.

Don’t be smug. You know what I’m talking about. Or, you will when you crank the head unit to 35 to rock some old “Apollo 100”, but forget to turn it back down and blow your ears off with the next “Freezepop” song. Even worse is leaving for work in the morning, turning on the radio for some news, taking a sip of coffee, then slinging it out the sun roof, cup and all, as the local weatherman BLASTS YOU INTO THE BACK SEAT. You forgot to turn the volume back down the night before. This is a cycle that repeats and feeds on itself as you grow older, more forgetful, and steadily become stone deaf.

But the cable works fine.

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Cause And Effect – Season 5, ep. 18 (Star Trek: TNG)
On Youtube…

Category: Stuff   Tags: Kenwood CA-C2AX - Audio Cable, oil change fire, product reviews

Last night, whilst stumbling, tripping, crashing through the pitch dark garage on my way to the broken breaker box, I encountered a flashlight-lit terror that evoked a (manly baritone) scream, and flashed me back to my most frightening Doom3 nightmares.  It was just a flash, a brief peripheral glance at an odd something that pulled my Maglite back for a second look. And then, “YAAaaa!!”

Under normal circumstances the average person gets one or two really good scares a year.  I don’t mean forgetting your wife’s birthday, or that brief windup before your wet dog lets loose with a room-showering shake.  I’m talking about the type of scare that punches you right in the chest and laughs.  Stripped of reason, your humanity dives for cover as feral you screams (in a manly baritone), and for a split second you’re stuck in a latent subroutine that was originally written to prevent your ancient ancestors from getting squished by Woolly Mammoth.

Twice in as many months I’ve experienced that level of scare.  This was the second. The first occurred soon after a troupe of antique canvas mannequins came home from an auction to live with us.  They’re six original occupants of “The White House” department store in New Albany, closed some thirty years now.

The mannequin “Dad”, possibly angered over what may have appeared to him as an indiscretion shared by his wife and I as I brought her in off the truck, but was in fact purely innocent and the result of me attempting to juggle too many 40lb antique mannequins at once, lay in wait behind the living room recliner.

Being something of a night owl, it’s not uncommon to find me rummaging through the pantry at 4:00am in search of a monster chomp.  I was on just such an expedition, and in the throes of rummaging, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone leering from behind the recliner.  Now, I had seen my wife put that mannequin there not 12 hours earlier, but that didn’t silence my (manly baritone) shriek, nor did it prevent my sideways leap directly into the pantry. The crash of collapsing shelves and foodstuffs set off a collateral panic through the rest of the household.

All members of the Mannequin family now live in the basement where they have lately formed a jazz group and seem to be happy.  Especially the “Dad” who I swear appears smug, as if to say, “Touch my wife again, pal, and I’ll rip my arm off and beat you with it.”

In any case, below is the essential tableau that sent me vaulting sideways over the lawnmower in my garage last night.

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If you’ve never played Doom3 before, then you should get a copy and set aside a Saturday very soon to have some really scary fun.

Category: Halloween   Tags: doom3, scream in a manly baritone, The art of the scare

“When will the SPZBGV2.0 be posted?” We’ve fielded this question a dozen or so times (this week), and the simple answer is, “when it’s done.”

In all honesty, it turns out that we either forgot how to take pictures last year, or we misplaced the memory card that held all the good photographs that were intended for the new guide. You would think that, out of 200 odd images, someone would have noticed that the auto-focus was having a bad week.

In any case, and being the do-it-yourself types, manual focus is SOP these days. We’re slowly rebuilding the ZBG media library, and even toying with adding video clips. So, thanks go out to the die-hards for reminding us (often) that time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future. We’re on it, and confidence is high that the SPZBGV2.0 will almost certainly be finished at some point.

An addition that wasn’t in our original version is the evolution of realistic skeleton hands. These are made of individual wrist and finger bones, constructed from -what else- newspaper and duct tape. Here’s a sneak peek.

Category: Halloween   Tags: realistic skeleton hands, Zombie Builder's Guide V2.0

In a comfortably cobwebby place there hangs a cork-board. And pinned to it, amidst a camp of construction-paper bats, Count Chocula’s signed mini-poster, and a drawing of the Mach 5, is a crumpled piece of notebook paper. Smudged pencil scribblings cover both sides in an apparently continuous scrawl, but look closer and you’ll see it’s a list; a catalog of sorts.

It’s late August, Labor Day is coming, and I’m staring at a project list that has burst out the garage door and plowed through the overgrown hedge at the end of the driveway. As I stand here watching, it’s roughing up a rabbit in the neighbor’s yard.

Still, if I’ve learned anything from Kristy McNichol and a herd of ABC After School Specials, it’s that you have to stand up to a bully. Don’t let him spoil your fun because the only real power he has over you is what you give him. Oh, and never ever let the ranger dart the baby deer you’re nursing back to health.

In other words, sometimes you’ve just gotta chuck the plan and follow your nose. To illustrate the point, I present a note we received this morning.

Our friend Wlbrid writes, “I was looking at your SpookyFire flashing LED project and I was wondering, wouldn’t all the LEDs flash simultaneously (instead of being out of synch / semi-random) because they will all be turned on at the same time?”

What follows is an excellent example of dropping everything, tearing across the room, yelling “squirrel!”, and jumping out the window.

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Dear Wlbrid,

Excellent question! A flashing LED contains a very tiny integrated circuit called a multivibrator. A multivibrator circuit is used in a variety of applications that require switching between two states, and there are three distinct types: astable, monostable, and bistable.

The astable multivibrator is stable in neither state (states are “on” and “off”) so it oscillates back and forth continuously. The period of oscillation (frequency of change) is determined by a built-in capacitor/resistor network. A monostable multivibrator, or “one-shot”, is only stable in one state for a period of time. After it is triggered, it will eventually return to its stable state, which makes it really handy as a programmable timing circuit. A bistable multivibrator, or “flip-flop” is equally stable in both states. When it’s triggered, it will flip states and stay there.

All of this can be accomplished in the astable circuit with a pair of transistors, two capacitors, and four resistors -discrete components that only the very very nerdy, old-style Radio Shack types (cough) have squirreled away in their garages and shops in neat rows of little plastic bins.

The first vacuum tube multivibrator circuit was completed in 1919 by radio and electronics pioneer William H. Eccles and his trusty side-kick Frank Jordan.¹ Jordan had a side-business in thermogalvanometers², but… well, he got really into the 20s, and no one ever saw him again.

But a flip-flop isn’t what’s inside a flashing LED, so once again Mr. Jordan is relegated to the mists of obscurity. Your garden variety Spookyfire Blob flashing LED has built into it a tiny little astable multivibrator circuit. The thing about these guys is that whether they’re constructed out of massive discrete components or microscopic little doo-hickeys, they’re not very accurate. I mentioned earlier that the duty cycle can be changed by varying the resistance and/or capacitance values in the circuit. If these components vary in the least bit from one circuit to another (or one LED to another), their frequency relative to one another will be slightly different.

Since these components (both big and little) often have 5%, 10%, and even 20% tolerances (the % difference between the stated and actual value of a component), you now have your answer.

Why don’t all the LEDs in a Spookyfire Blob just blink on and off together? Blame F.W. Jordan.

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1 wikipedia – multivibrators
2 wikipedia – F.W. Jordan

Category: Stuff   Tags: flashing leds, leds, spookyfire blob, squirrel