So I don’t get the chance to pick locks very often — and it’s always for a very good, legal reason, such as unlocking accidentally-locked file cabinets at work — but when I actually manage to do it, it’s a very satisfying feeling.
Archive for April, 2009
Today, Cary and I celebrate our 2nd anniversary. We both agree that it feels like we’ve been married for more than two years (and it feels like that in a good way). I think we’ve managed to establish a marriage built on equality — we’re in this together.
So happy anniversary, Cary. I appreciate everything you do for me.
Last year, we celebrated our wedding anniversary a tad early with our March trip to Arizona. This year, we’ll be doing most of our celebrating at the end of this month while vacationing in Florida. We plan to park-hop through Universal Studios, The Magic Kingdom, Islands of Adventure and Seaworld. My aging Canon camera will get another good workout. 
I spent some time today working outside and in the garage. One of the things I’ve had in the garage that I’ve needed to get rid of since we moved is my old desk. It was a monstrous black-and-woodgrain laminated thing that I got back in 1997. It was the kind of some-assembly-required desk, the pieces of which fit together with screws and locking cams. These kinds of desks weren’t meant to be disassembled and reassembled, as with each dis- or reassembly, the locking pieces get more and more loose. When we moved, I threw away the hutch that fastened to the desktop. Eventually, I bought a new smaller desk, and the Goliath desk was taken apart and stored in the garage.
Today, I finally threw most of the Goliath desk away. I say “most”, because I decided to repurpose two of the largest pieces of the desk. The wood-grain-lamenated desktop is now a smooth work surface for the workbench. The black lamenated back panel of the desk is fastened to the wall studs. I’m using that to mount tools that I might need handy when working.
It’s kind of a cheap way to quasi-recycle the desk, but I think it actually makes the garage workbench look cleaner — at least at first glance.
“Before” pictures would have helped sell the new workbench space, but I always forget to take “before” shots.
Here’s the new workspace:
Here’s a wider shot of the clean part of the workbench, along with the photoframe I’ve been working on, which I’ve loving dubbed “The Frankenframe”. The other unseen end of the workbench is currently being used for storage of old paint cans:
I still need to pretty up the back side of the frame, but for the most part, it’s finished:
I finally took some pictures of the guts of my photo frame (click on any of the images to go to the flickr site where you can view larger versions):
This is the motherboard by itself, stripped of all peripherals. The small circuit board hanging off the top of the motherboard holds the power and drive activity LEDs. I’ll probably remove it unless I can find a cool way to let the LEDs show through the frame.
Here we have the LCD display, complete with my fingerprints.
This is the rear of the LCD display, with ribbon cable connections for powering the display and the flourescent backlight.
Here are the peripherals that will be connected to the motherboard in the completed frame: (bottom row, L to R) two laptop speakers, the 12GB hard drive and the wireless network card; (top row, L to R) the CMOS battery (this battery allows the system to keep the correct date, time and configuration if it’s unplugged or if the main battery runs out), and the touchpad. The flexible orange circuitboard under the touchpad contains connections for the speakers and CMOS battery.
These are the peripherals that I only need while building the system: mouse, keyboard and DVD drive. This won’t be in the final build of the photo frame.
This is the system all put together.
Powered on and booting. The flash really shows how much I need to clean this screen. The small orange and grey box hanging at the end of the network cable in the background is an emergency wired connection that I used when the wireless card wasn’t working; which was quite often until just a couple of days ago.
Fully booted. I’m working on setting the system up so that when it boots, it automatically launches streaming audio from the local NPR station. That part still isn’t working quite yet, but I can work on that after the frame is finished.
This google home page is set to load automatically when the system boots. It displays the time/calendar, weather forecast and local radar.
It’s currently storming as I type this.
Now we’re off to the craft store to find a suitable frame and some mounting supplies!
So I think I finally have this photoframe working properly.
Over the past several days, I’ve been trying to get the wireless card working. I was worried that spending only $20 on a wifi card would be a mistake, and that a more expensive card would be a better investment.
On the one hand, that’s true, as there are many wifi cards that don’t work with Ubuntu.
But on the other hand, if I had managed to buy a wifi card that worked without any problems, I wouldn’t have learned so much about Ubuntu.
The process of getting this particular wifi card to work in Ubuntu was nothing short of exasperating, but I think I finally did it.
The solution, it seems, was to re-install Ubuntu and install the Windows XP drivers found on the CD that came with the card. Now I could swear I tried that already and it didn’t work, but this time the Linux gods were nice to me.
So far, I have a working laptop sans frame that can (finally) reliably connect to the internet. When the system boots, it automatically loads the Firefox browser full-screen and opens to a Google homepage which contains only calendar, weather forecast and radar widgets. I’ll have access to an on-screen keyboard as well, to allow text input with just a mouse/touchpad.
The system is also accessible via VNC so I can adjust it remotely from the other computers in the house. This will make changing settings much easier once it’s all built.
Stuff left to do:
- Buy the frame
I’ll have to pick a solid wooden frame with a wide border, and will most likely have to build the back panel from scratch for securely mounting the laptop guts.
- Attach the touchpad (so access to the keyboard isn’t required) – I’d like to either make the touchpad hidden from view unless needed (like having it slide out from behind the frame, or maybe even create a hinged section of the frame border itself with the touchpad mounted on the back surface, so it’s accessible by flipping down the hinged piece of the frame.
I’ll post pictures later.
My current project — one which I’m determined to finish — is turning an old laptop into a photo frame.
I hesitate to call it a “photo frame”, because ultimately, I don’t really see using it for displaying photos. I’d like to use it to display weather or other useful information, but photos will do for now.
There are directions on making laptop photo frames all over the web, so there’s no shortage of ideas.
I’m starting with the guts of a Dell Latitude CPx laptop:
– PIII 500MHz processor
– 256 MB RAM
– PCMCIA Wifi card
– 12GB Hard drive
These specs are pretty pitiful compared to today’s laptops, but for something like a photo frame, it’s more than adequate.
The first thing to do when scavenging a laptop for something like this is to make sure all of the parts are working. Once you’ve verified that it isn’t dead, the next step is to strip the laptop of all of the non-essential parts: mainly the chassis.
When making a photo frame, there are only a few components that are essential: the screen, motherboard, memory and hard drive. Everything else is unnecessary (unless the motherboard is missing some functionality like built-in wireless, which would require a USB or PCMCIA wifi card).
In fact, it’s amazing how those components make up such a small percentage of the laptop’s physical bulk.
The LCD screen, when removed from the shell, is quite thin. The motherboard is less than half the footprint of the laptop — the rest of that real estate is used by the battery and media drive (CD/DVD or floppy drive).
Input devices like the keyboard and touchpad are also unnecessary if you can set up wireless connectivity; this allows you to access the system remotely via programs like VNC.
So far, I have disassembled the laptop and reassembled the necessary pieces and installed the OS.
In general, an expensive operating system like Windows is overkill for a photo frame. I decided to install Ubuntu, a version of Linux that is meant to be more intuitive and user-friendly. Ubuntu is free, and it runs much better on only 256 MB of memory than heavier operating systems like Windows XP.
After doing some tests, I realized that the I needed more memory before going any further, so I’ve ordered some cheap RAM from eBay.
The next step is to work on getting Ubuntu to recognize the Wifi card. Once that’s done, I’ll start shopping for a nice frame in which to mount the entrails.
A couple of days ago, I had to take Cary’s Volvo in for repairs. The air conditioning had stopped blowing cool air, and with the spring coming up, I knew that fixing the air conditioning was something we wouldn’t want to wait on. I was prepaired to wait a little longer to fix it, but last week, the “check engine” light warned of another problem, so I decided to bite the bullet and have the A/C fixed while the shop diagnosed the CE light.
The A/C was an easy fix — a bad relay needed replacing — but the Check Engine light was another issue. It seemed as though the Atmospheric Pressure Sensor was malfunctioning. While that sensor probably wasn’t really necessary in Raleigh — it helps the engine adjust fuel pressure to compensate for a lower- or higher-than normal atmospheric pressure, such as when driving in the mountains — I really didn’t want the CE light staring at me whenever I drove the car, so I dropped it off at the Volvo dealership and walked to work.
A few hours and a few hundred dollars later, the dealership called me to let me know the car is ready. A friend dropped me off at the dealership after 5:00pm, and I paid and picked up the car. But as soon as I started the car, the Check Engine light glowed menacingly at me.
I pulled back up to the repair bay — hadn’t left the parking lot yet — and let them know that the light was still on. I figured they probably just forgot to reset the computer. So one of the techs plugged the car into the diagnostic computer and tried to reset the light, but it wouldn’t clear. He then said that the light was actually on because of another malfunction. The computer was now saying I had a bad air intake temperature sensor.
I asked the manager who was with us, “Isn’t the timing of that a little odd?” The manager responded, “Well, things break when they break. Can you bring it back in tomorrow?” The Volvo people are always really nice, but his response was a little odd. Wasn’t it possible that they had made a mistake and accidentally messed something up?
Not wanting to wait around any longer, and knowing that this particular problem wasn’t going to cause my car to explode, I decided to drive home and bring the car back in the next day.
When I got home, I thought I’d open the hood and just take a look. I’m not a grease monkey, but I can identify a lot of the innards of most cars. I can change the oil — but as compact and cramped most car engines are these days, I choose not to — and I know just enough about engines to be dangerous, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the sensors looked like. I popped the hood, and it didn’t take me long to spot the new atmospheric pressure sensor. It was the only really shiny, clean piece of plastic visible on the top of the engine, a small dark green box about the size of a large grape, connecting two cables.
As I was looking at the new sensor, I spotted another sensor closer to the front of the engine. It was about half the size of the other one. I realized that the part of the sensor I was looking at was just an electrical plug that plugged into the side of the air intake near the grill. Logic told me that must be the Air Intake Temperature sensor, and it was unplugged.
I kicked myself for not asking the guys at the dealership to pop the hood and check. They were apologetic about the issue when I returned the car the next morning, and now the mean Check Engine light is, for now, vanquished.