Summer Vacations: 15 Unforgettable Trips

In today's printed issue of USA Today (Section D - Life / Destinations & Diversions) is an article entitled "15 Unforgettable Summer Vacations." The cover page has a gorgeous photo of the Cedar Street Bridge Shopping Mall that crosses Sand Creek in Sandpoint, Idaho.

I spent the bulk of my adolescent years in this small Northern Idaho town (population 4,500 at that time) and used to regularly cross the bridge that the shopping mall uses as a foundation. I ice skated under the bridge in the winter. I popped-wheelies with my motorcycles on that bridge as my cousin ?Derek?and I raced to a riding area we called "Bum Jungle!"

The newspaper article leads with comments?about Sandpoint and I felt proud to have come from that place. The opening paragraph states:

I was smitten with this lakefront town from the moment I saw it, tucked between the Selkirk mountains in Idaho's Panhandle like some Northwoods Brigadoon. I relished my sunset tour of Lake Pend Oreille, the state's largest, followed by a solo, late-night foray to a meadow where a dazzling meteor storm punctuated the enveloping darkness.

Interestingly enough to me, that's quite often how I remember life in that small town. So many experiences and?such a beautiful place see during every season. I miss that little town. [sigh] Although it may not be quite as idyllic now as it is in my remembrance, it's still nice to stroll down memory lane every once in a while. Especially?when national news or local events remind us of those "Good Ol' Days."

Perhaps one day I'll get back there for a little summer diversion . . . I'd love to take my boys there. ?I'd like them to see where I grew-up.

~SP

Getting ready for OSX Leopard

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones who have several 2,5″ HDD laying around without a box - thereby rendering them somewhat useless. I went down to the local computer pusher to buy a suitable case (with both Firewire & USB2 of course).

I found a case that met my demands - however it was rather hideous, and being a Mac-guy and all, I knew something had to change… So what to do? Paint it? Hmm nope… Painting plastic and aluminum usually leaves a result worse than what I started with…

So I thought “Hey… Let’s wrap it to go with the new OSX”.

Tadaaaa! A furry OSX Leopard ready portable harddrive.

A special thanks to Jason at O’Grady’s Powerpage For good advice…

EDIT:
Here is what you need: 50×50cm of Leopard patterned (furry) plush (5$ - any decent girlfriend should be able to drag you to her nearest fabric-pusher), some fabric glue suitable for both cloth and aluminum (5$) and of course a suitable HDD-cabinet - preferably one that is made like a tube with end-pieces (around 65$). Then it’s just play n’ pray and you’ve got yourself an external harddrive to go with Leopard.

Automated BB-gun trigger

Inspired by the motion picture “The Jackal”, where Bruce Willis built a mean-ass automated gun (aka turret, aka sentry gun), I have always wanted to build something similar myself.

One of the hurdles I had to overcome was to automate the trigger… Iv’e tried loads of different solutions including electromagnets or weird solutions with strings and a rotary motor.

A major goal in this process is finding a way to get a rapid linear pull when flipping a switch upon which the “finger” should return to its original position… Ready for the next pull…

The solution I came up with (as shown in the pictures) was using the linear motor from the central locksystem used in a car. This was mounted on the gun with some pieces of aluminum from a studio rack mount and some parts for mounting a lock on a bike. I added a springcoil on the linear motor so it would go back to its original position. Finally I strung a wire from the “finger” and around back of the handle of the gun, thus making a soft but strong pull to the trigger.

Et voil?. Add 12v to the equation and you’ve got a lightning fast remote trigger and the ability to deploy rapid fire down range.

Be sure to read “The Turret #2″ - Mounting the gun. Coming soon.

Super zoom on a surveillance camera

For some reason I’ve always wanted a video camera with a huge amount of zoom.
Why..? Well. For no good reason at all. I just did. That drew me to build the zoom converter..

This strange setup gave me a good idea about the aprox distance between the cam & the lens.

A little theory:
One of the major issues to get at good picture is the optic the light has to pass through, before it hits the LCD, CMOS etc.
And the cheapest way to get a quality lens and with the most amount of zoom, is by using your standard 35mm SLR optics of any brand. Even a lot of the cheapest ones will do. ( a standard 70-300mm costs aprox 160$). These optics are the ones with the biggest market share and there fore the cheapest and easiest to get.

The obvious choice of camera is the standard CCD surveillance-camera.
They are cheap and comes in a large variety of versions; Monochrome, color, one CCD, 3CCD, Low res, High res, High speed, etc. For my little experiment i just used a 50$ Monochrome CCD camera. (get them at ebay)

With these things in mind.
All i now needed was to build the converter pice between optic and camera.
Easier said than done… However since all my 35mm optics where Nikon. I bought an old Nikon camera and slaughtered it.. Loads of fun and half an hour later i got the pice i needed. Just the small bayonet couplingthat attaches the lens to the SLR camera. I also had an old CCD-camera that endured the same fate as the SLR-Camera. So now i also had the C-mount coupling to attach my converter to the surveillance-camera. I went a workshop to make me a small cylinder and a few other items to make it work..

I will soon admit… It isn’t pretty.. but it worked like a charm.

Oh! The agony.
When i two weeks later found that some other soul got the same idea…
And even got the nerve to mass-produce the converter i thought necessary to build myself. Back in the old 8mm days, a genius thought of using low-cost photo-optics on his 8mm video cam. To my fortune they come in all shapes and sizes… So, i rushed my credit-card through the web-teller and got myself quite a few different types. One of course being Nikon-adapteble… the rest is calibrating…

Then i just added my 500mm Mirror optic and no neighbor was safe for my ever watchful eye..

A little theory #2
The 35mm SLR photo optic is made for 35mm film the CCD in my camera is 1/8 of this. Thus. I will gain x8 the amount of zoom the lens holds… 500×8=4000mm. NICE LENS!!!

Success!!