Compact Keychain

This is a nice keychain I've been using for more than a year now. Since it broke, I had to rebuild it so I took this chance to share it with the rest or the world.

Materials

• 3 washers (number of keys + 1)
• Some keys (I use only two keys)
• A pop rivet (requires a river gun)
  

Construction

1. Fasten the keys together using the rivet and put washers between them.
2. Admire your creation.

That's it. It works well with my two keys, and it is very compact and quiet.

Switching to Ubuntu

I was tired of having a slow computer, I did not want to deal any longer with bugs and annoyances (and these where paid annoyances and bugs). This is why I decided to use Linux, instead of a well known mainstream OS.

At first I thought I'll give it a try since I was not sure it suited my needs. I thought Linux was hard to use, that I'll be using the command line a lot and that I would not have any of the functionality a more standard desktop computer has.

Guess what, I was wrong. Linux is a beautiful piece of software that enables your computer to perform at its maximum capacity. It is stable, slick and fast.

Installation

Installing Linux, Ubuntu more specifically (a Linux distribution) is very fast. It takes about 45 minutes and when you're done you have a full desktop environment with a beautiful user interface, lots of software, including OpenOffice.Org (an office suite), The Gimp (a Photoshop like application), Gaim (instant messaging), Rithmbox (music player/organizer), Evolution (email client), Firefox (no introduction needed), and lots of other nice software out of the box. The best is that it all takes about 1GB.

All you need to install Ubuntu is downloading and burning a free CD, booting the computer with the CD (putting the CD in and restarting it for most users), and following the installation instructions. You can keep your mainstream OS if you wish and have your computer dual boot (you choose which OS you want at startup).

You can also use the CD to run Ubuntu without installing it, if you want too give it a quick try. I think the Ubuntu people have simplified this process even further by now, the CD is not even required any more (quite neat).

FYI a more popular OS takes more than one hour to install, eats up more than 1GB all to itself ad doesn't come with all the wonderfully functionality out of the box.

By the way, all my hardware was recognized flawlessly without the need of installing any driver (except for the video card for which I had to install the driver in order to enable 3D rendering).

Ubuntu also worked without any troubles on my brother's laptop (including the wireless internet connection).

Now that I use a good operating system my computer runs fast (as hell) without any troubles. I also have no worries about viruses, spyware and the like since there is non of it for Linux.

For the record, this is the hardware I use:

• 1 GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird
• nVidia gForce II 32 MB
• Yamaha low end sound card
• 640 MB of RAM @ 133 MHz
• ASUS A7V Motherboard
• 4+1 ports USB2 PCI card

• 20 GB Maxtor HD
• 160 GB Western Digital HD
• 16x, 10x, 40x LG CDRW drive
• floppy disk drive

• Logitech Wheel mouse
• Logitech Internet Keyboard
• HP photosmart 1115 (printer & memory card reader)
• Canon LiDE 20 scanner
• Smasung SyncMaster 753df 17" display.
• Altec Lansing 2.1 speakers
• 2GB iPod nano 1st generation
• 1GB Lexar USB key

LCD Display

I got a brand new LCD display for free from the guys at uC Hobby (their website has many nice projects).

It is a Samsung 0202A (see more details here). It is a very nice piece of equipment and I hoe I'll be able to put it to good use

I'll learn how to use it and I'll come up with some project for it soon enough (hopefully). Meanwhile, I'm open to any project ideas.

Toast Oven Makeover

My girlfriend had an old toast oven (about 20 years old). Slowly it decayed and eventually, broke (the timer did not work any more but it still heating).

What to do in such a situation when you find yourself to be the most amazingly kind boyfriend in the entire universe known to man?

The answer is simple, and it can be reduced to three easy steps:

1. Find another toast oven in the trash (it must be the exact same model than your girlfriend's).
2. Clean it thoroughly (and I mean THOROUGHLY. It should shine like a mirror, inside and out).
3. Give it to your girlfriend.
   

Note: in step No. 2, you should make sure the oven is in excellent working condition. There would be no point in cleaning it if it was broken (besides the intrinsic pleasure of cleaning a 20 years old oven).
IMHO, the easiest way to clean it is to take it apart, clean each piece, and put it it back together (but I have not tried any other method).

Enjoy some before and after shots:

Before...

After...

Blue Mouse

I was tired of the red LED in my Logitech optical mouse, so I changed it. It took me less than 10 minutes (including searching for an LED).

It is very simple, just open up the mouse, desolder the LED, replace it by a LED of your choice (blue in my case), put it back together, and thats it!

I also slightly bent the spring in the scroll wheel so it scrolls much smoothly and quietly.

By the way, I noticed a better performance of the mouse on surfaces where it failed to work properly in the past... weird, but cool.


LED Specs (for the curious):

Emitted Colour : OCEAN BLUE
Size: 5mm
Forward Voltage : 3.2 V ~ 3.8 V
Luminous Intensity: 6000 mcd
Max Continuous Forward Current : 30mA