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Congratulations! Being "free" at last is one of the greatest feelings a person can have, even if in a case like mine it's going from working for someone else to working for myself. It's nice not living by the clock anymore. I long for the time when I can only pick just the projects which...

It's not of the same magnitude as the mistakes you three made but one time a potential customer asked me for a data sheet for some component I was considering using in a project for them. At the time I had the hard drive from my sister's PC in my machine to scan it for malware. Her PC was...

My experience is the same. I never spin down drives, and I've yet to have a drive fail on me. Once my machines only use SSDs, I'll consider powering them down if I'm away for more than an hour or two but I would consider this practice very harmful to mechanical disks.

Here is an interesting read of the subject. Of note here is this: Zone III, is termed the Wearout period and is characterized by an increasing failure rate as a result of equipment aging and deterioration. Because modern electronic equipment is largely made up of semiconductor devices that have...

Just a suggestion here in case you haven't tried it-boot using the Ubuntu disk you created when your machine had problems a few months ago. Try sleep mode in Ubuntu. If you have problems using sleep mode in Ubuntu then we can assume this is a hardware problem, not a software problem. The PC has...

Polycarbonate with UV stabilizers added is highly resistant to UV as well as virtually unbreakable. For the gasket, maybe some type of silicone?

$280 for that kind of capability isn't bad. I would ultimately like to both scan and make items. My larger concern was actually being able to scan things because I know eventually 3D printers will be mainstream. Seeing what you can do with less than $300 worth of hardware sets those worries to rest.

OK, I think I have a set of suitable drivers. 15-LED string 5-LED string (will work with 2 and 3 LED strings if I add extra LEDs to bring the output voltage past 12V)

I found a better driver. This one works with standard triac dimmers. It should work fine for all of the strings except the one with 2 LEDs. For that I could just add an extra LED in series with the string to get the string voltage past 8V. Edit: I just noticed minimum order quantity is 50...

This looks like it might work on the larger chain. I think 350 mA will give enough light. Unfortunately, the driver uses 1-10V dimming, not triac dimming. The dimmer would be wired to the module, so it could be wall mounted same as a triac dimmer.

3D scanning and printing is something I can see myself getting into in a big way once the cost of the hardware drops a bit. I love the idea of being able to either design a part and print it, or scan an existing part, modify it if necessary, and then make as many as I need. I think 3D...

Probably but some people like overkill. 100,000 cd will ensure they won't see much for a while even if they quickly blink their eyes shut. That said, I personally think small form factor lights are better as defensive weapons. If an attacker sees you whipping out a big light, they'll probably...

Blinding potential attackers. If you shine a 100,000 cd flashlight in someone's eyes, especially at night when their eyes are dark adjusted, they won't be able to see a thing for at least 20-30 seconds. That gives you time to either escape, or if the light is heavy enough, use it to beat the...

That's really the part which has me worried. The predicted temperature rise due to CO2 is bad enough, but if the methane in the methane hydrates is released, we could be looking at a Venus scenario.

Australia is just getting the kind of temperatures much of the rest of the world will be seeing by mid-century. I read somewhere that by 2050 an average July or August day in NYC will be upwards of 50°C. I hate to think what a heat wave will be but you'll probably have thousands dying. I'm...

I could grind down the MCPCBs a bit to ensure they would be under 0.315". A near perfect fit is obviously better thermally here. When all is said and done I'm pretty sure the LED will be close to whatever temperature the ground is.

LED drivers typically have an output voltage range over which they operate. There has to be a range because Vf of white LEDs can vary from 2.8 volts up to as much as 4 volts. This built-in compliance voltage range will take care of any variations in wire length. Electronically, constant current...

I just checked Mouser. A 5000K XP-G2 in the top bin (139 lm @ 350 mA and Tj=85°C) is under $5 in the quantities we'll need.

That would make the most sense. All I would be doing with the LED units is gluing the LED in with thermal paste and running the wires outside the unit somehow. Those things are all easily within your capabilities. I can solder short wires to the LED boards which you can splice to the longer ones...

A brace soldered to the pipe is fine both mechanically and thermally. The long pipe is good because it adds stability when buried and also increases heat dissipation abilities a bit. The main issue I'm seeing with that is the fact the one side of the wire will be against bare metal (and hence...

One issue I'm seeing with your idea is physically mounting the LED into the finished assembly. It's a long way down that pipe without much room to work with. And it's hard/impossible to see what's going on at the bottom while you're putting the LED in. You need a platform of some sort closer to...

They're using degrees F. -135.8°C would be -212.4°F. It's never gotten this cold on Earth's surface during recorded history. I agree they should have mentioned the scale.

Be glad we don't have this kind of cold.

And that's exactly why it bothers me personally when companies use my personal info to do "targeted advertising". They may not intentionally want to use my data in a manner which can cause me harm but by the same token their bottom line dictates they're not going to take all measures to keep it...

I still don't care for anything other than 4:3, even with modern PCs. I'm using an LG 20" 1600x1200 for my main monitor and a Viewera 19" 1280x1024 for my secondary monitor. The Viewera is actually 5:4 but that's close enough to 4:3 for me not to care. That said, I'll gladly join the 16:9 crowd...

It sounds like all of these drives stand a good chance of making past the 1 petabyte mark with flying colors. This test puts to rest any lingering worries I might have had about SSDs not being reliable. I already felt they were more reliable than spinning disks, but I had lingering worries about...

6.5°F and steady. Perfect day for the beach! I actually wished it would have dropped a few more degrees just to get below zero. When it's already way too cold to do much outside, a few degrees colder makes no difference.

13°F and windy as hell. That's a 10°F drop in under 2.5 hours. If it keeps falling this fast it'll be below zero by daybreak.

I hope there wasn't snow in New Delhi. That wouldn't be a very good sign. Temps are plummeting like a rock. It was in the mid 50s earlier today. Now it's down to 23°F and still falling fast.

Where I notice pixelation the most is when reading text. I often print out any .pdfs I read or refer to frequently simply because it causes eyestrain trying to read them on my monitor. When monitors get to the point that I can size a page to fit the screen, and read the smallest size text on the...

No thanks. That's even worse to me than the kind of weather Coug is having right now. Whatever minor complaints I may have when it gets colder outside than I find comfortable pale next to my complaints when it gets too hot. I can always add layers, but when it's hot I could run around stark...

So much for 4K not being available in smaller size monitors for a while! To say I'm thrilled is an understatement. It all depends on how close you sit to the monitor. I'm near-sighted and absolutely can't work at a monitor while wearing my glasses. Therefore, I typically sit about 15 or 16...

Same here. As much as I love colder weather, once you start getting into the teens or lower °F it starts to get brutal, especially the extremities. It's easy to keep your core warm, but fingers, toes, and ears are another story. My fingers are numb after riding 30 minutes once temps get into the...

First major winter storm here in the Northeast. Temps are supposed to be in the single digits F later. They're actually closing the Long Island Expressway and parts of the NYS Thruway.

The correct term is self-discharge. In general, li-ion cells don't self-discharge much, perhaps about 5% per month. Note that self-discharge is exponential. That means if a cell loses 5% a month, it will have 95% charge after a month, (0.95)² after two months, and (0.95)^12 = 54% after a year...

That's because 18650s are commonly used in laptops where both size and energy density matter. 26650s and larger cells are often used in applications where weight is the deciding factor (i.e. electric vehicles). A higher energy density 26650 will weigh proportionately more and therefore not...

LiFePO4 123s will work in any flashlight which uses primary 123s. The voltages are more or less the same. You lose about half the capacity compared to primary 123s, but you save a ton of money. Li-ion use a completely different charge algorithm-namely constant current/constant voltage. You...

Flashlights for the most part really aren't a great use of LiFePO4. The exceptions might be lights which use either AAs or 123s. Provided the light is compatible with higher voltage, a LiFePO4 AA (14500 size) usually offers more runtime even if it has less energy than AA cell. The reason is most...

Actually the larger sizes (i.e. 26650) have about 2/3rds the energy of state-of-the art li-ion. I have 26650s which are 3300 mAh @ 3.2V. The best LiCo 26650s I've seen are around 4400 mAh @ 3.7V. Granted, they don't work many standard li-ion chargers but I am seeing more and more chargers with...

You might get more cycles out of the cell but practically speaking most of the time Li-ion cells die from age, not cycling. Most decent li-ion cells are good for at least 500 cycles and/or 5 to 7 years, whichever comes first. Unless you cycle your cells every few days, you won't come anywhere...

Maybe it's just me, but it certainly doesn't seem to be an insurmountable issue to mount a supercap on the SSD controller board to power the SSD for the few seconds it might take to complete write operations after a power loss.

It seems that way with us also. We have Thanksgiving, my birthday (November 30), Christmas, New Year's, mom's birthday (January 20), brother's birthday (January 29), Valentine's Day (for those of us with a SO anyway). When dad was alive his birthday was October 2, which was close to everything...

Happy Holidays everyone! Best of all, now there's not one but two Santa trackers!

I question these numbers because they don't take into account the increased solar radiation pressure which would tend to push the planets away from the sun. The question is whether or not that will happen fast enough to keep the planet from warming appreciably. For what it's worth it wouldn't...

I had Windows '98 SE running on an old Pentium II motherboard upgraded with a 1.4 GHz slotkit and 1 GB of RAM. 1 GB is about the limit of what '98 can handle without issues. If I recall, I didn't need to patch anything to get it to use all that RAM but I may have needed to change some registry...

Actually, remembering things more clearly this was the early or mid 2000s right before he moved to Florida, not the mid 1990s. I already had several much better PCs when I got this museum piece, so it had to have been early to mid 2000s, not mid 1990s.

Buying a PC back in 1995. Yes, a 386 was considered obsolete back then as far as getting a new system, the 486 was the most popular CPU, and the Pentium was latest and greatest. I would imagine in 1998 a 386 might start to be consider somewhat dated, but it was still viable for lots of people...

The dates are accurate because the computers were all obtained second hand. I recall not having a whole lot of interest getting a PC back in the late 1980s when they were going for well over $3000 (that's probably well over $6000 in today's dollars). Just the RAM I put in the 386 would have cost...

I should also add that I have about a dozen other boxes ranging from 286s all the way up to circa 2006 stuff which I found dumpster diving. I don't use any of these boxes regularly, but I made some of them into working systems. I also have a complete "museum piece" 8086 PC with 640 KB of RAM and...

That's the kind of stuff I saw on Star Trek but never dreamed I would live long enough to see it actually happen. On the main topic, my first computer was an Amstrad something or other with a Z80 microprocessor and monochrome monitor running CP/M. It was basically a word processor which could...