Notes from James

ViaTalk Problem Solved?

I have had trouble with my ViaTalk calls going straight to voicemail on my D-Link DI-614+ router. After playing with various settings, I found one for "gaming mode" that seems to help a lot - I tried it out after this change and did not have any problems so far -- knock on wood.

Interested in Disasters?

Interested in disasters? Then try the International Disaster Database.

William's Scratch Drawing Program

Here's a program in Scratch that my 8 year old son William did. He wrote it by himself!

His instructions:

To use helicopter: wasd keys To use orange plane: arrow keys. To use blue plane: ijkl keys. and when u start it press space. press space also to clear.

Press the green flag to start!

Learn To Program Computers the Easy Way With Scratch

My son William has been playing with Scratch, a programming language that lets the user move objects around on the screen and interact with the user. People have even cloned Donkey Kong and Duck Hunt with it -- it's that powerful a tool. Even if you're not a beginner, check it out...it will make programming fun again as it's extremely easy to use and you don't have to worry about syntax errors or the like. If you ever played with Logo, you'll know what I mean.

Nothing Better to Do?

If you have nothing better to do, you watch a guy with even less better to do than you. He's counting to a million.

The Wizard's Castle

I found a Window's port of The Wizard's Castle, a program originally written in BASIC known as castle.bas that I remember fondly playing in my youth. I have yet to poke with it long enough to remember all the funny things that happen (i.e. the Blue Flame which dissolves books that are stuck to your hands), but am glad to find that this fun game won't die for a little while longer.

Thanks to Derelict for porting this game. I dropped him an e-mail, and he responded within a few minutes! How's that for service?

Found Some Old Comments for the Blog

VOIP Debate

Currently deciding if I want to switch from Verizon to a VOIP service...I really don't use the phone all that much, but am somewhat leery of being my own phone company, as it were. I was thinking about trying out SunRocket...still not sure if I will. I'd like to, but I also like having the stability of a land line, especially after last weekend's blackout. I did notice that the cell phones were working at that time, though.

Taylor Air Compressor

The Victoria Mine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan used a natural air compressor - no moving parts! - to power its equipment. This is a follow up to the waterfall powered air compressor I mentioned in the previous post. Here is a page devoted to the Ragged Chute Air Plant, a similarly powered air compressor.

Compressed Air - The Past of Alternative Energy

Back in the early 20th century in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, there were some mines located near Quinnesec Falls that used compressed air generated by a central, waterfall powered power plant. I found some other sources that reported that there was a 2 PSI loss with transmission of the compressed air over three miles. Evidentally, it was not economical back then. However, another plant near Hazelton PA reported near zero loss of pressure over 10,860 feet! Search for Compressed Air Information by William Lawrence Saunders.

Photograph of the Hydraulic Power Company's plant at Quinnesec Falls on the Menominee River in Iron Mountain, Michigan. A pipeline supplying compressed air to the Chapin, Ludington, and Emmet mines runs from the stone compressor building.

Photograph taken near Hydraulic Falls, shows a typical log drive camp. Note the cook tent and large kettles steaming over open fires. To the right is the air pipe which served the Chapin and Ludington mines with compressed air to work machinery.

The future is today. What goes around comes around. Compressed air cars, anyone?

Cheap Freezer Technology

According to this blog entry, there is a company which sells, well, a pipe from outside your house to your freezer. If it's cold outside, then use the outside air to cool your freezer! Good idea. Especially here where it is cold.

As an aside, I purchased a freezer a few years ago in the middle of winter. The clerk looked at me..."why do you need one of those?" she said. Good point.

My Backyard - Live Webcam

I realized that I never posted it, but here is my backyard webcam's picture. Normally not too interesting, but you might see some kids running around occasionally. Updated once every minute. Live! (Well, mostly) from Erie PA.

More Website Woes

Well, I seem to have lost 99% of all my comments. Bummer. And it also appears that they are not recoverable. Hopefully I have a partial backup somewhere, but I definitely lost a fair number of them. Guess just another reason to back up your computer. Or, if you have a server out there somewhere, back that one up too.

Pay Your Bills

Don't forget to pay your bills. Somehow I did, for this website, and lost quite a bit of it. Plus, at the same time, they were in the process of migrating to a new set of servers. Hopefully, I'll get it back sometime soon. At the very worst, all the comments were lost. :-( Anyway, at least I got my e-mail address back again so I can receive huge amounts of spam like I did previously.

American Money Under a Black Light

While screwing around at my dad's house, we shone a black light (ultraviolet light) on some US money. Not sure why we decided to do this, but we found an interesting result: the strip of plastic that is in currency glows different colors depending on the value. The pictures here really don't do the glowing justice. Next time you're out clubbing, take out some money and see for yourself...the strips really glow in a brilliant set of colors.

Ten American dollars has a red glow to it.

Twenty is green. 

Five is blue.

Dell Makes Strange Speaker Sounds

My work machine sometimes makes a strange set of sounds on the built in PC speaker by itself. It seems to be a set of rising notes or tones that come out. I have another machine at work that does it first, so I hit record and caught it happening. If you know what this sound is and why it's happening, please let me know. Note that one of the machines is not running Windows, so it is not spyware!

Maya 44 USB Vista Drivers

Finally - there appear to be drivers for the Maya 44 USB sound card for Windows Vista. After a few months of waiting, they seem to work. Finally, I think I have a complete Vista system. I did try them out and they seemed to work ok in ASIO mode.

Partition Manager

I recently used the GParted partition editor to split and dual boot my Vista laptop. This (well, at least the version I used) is a Live Linux CD - you put it into your CD drive, reboot your machine, and run the editor. It then does its thing, and voila - your partitions are changed! It was a fairly easy process, but, as all these type of activities are, a bit nerve racking. When you're playing around with that much data, you wonder if it's going to come back alive. It did, though!

I haven't put Linux on my laptop yet, but I'm considering it. Hopefully the partition editor will work its magic again without any issues.

Before you use, though, backup, backup, backup!

Death of My Palm

A while back, my Handspring Deluxe got dropped. That took out the rightmost 7 or so columns of pixels. Not enough to warrant getting a new one. Then, something else happened (not sure quite what), and the screen was totally shattered. So, instead of running out and getting a new one, I tried using the PocketMod paper PDA. Although, from time to time I do miss the Handspring, the PocketMod does most of what I need to do, is battery free, and, best of all, is free! The only thing that I really do miss is having my address list with me all the time. However, my cell phone has my most common phone numbers with me, and I have a copy of my address list in my glove compartment. This happened to be a good step in simplifying and "greening" my life.

On a somewhat related note, I recommend the More Hip Than Hippie podcast if you're interested in being more environmentally conscious. They present a nice set of ideas to "green" your life without being preachy.

Windows Loses DVD Drive

So Windows Vista lost your CD or DVD drive too? Every so often, I go to use it, and it is missing. After a brief search, I found an interesting tip - put your machine to sleep, and wake it up again. I tried it as well, and the drive magically reappeared. Not the greatest workaround, but a lot faster than the shutdown-restart approach that I was using earlier.

Escapepodder 0.17

Released Escapepodder 0.17. Just a little maintenance release. Added:

• Case insensistive mp3 extentions
• Fix for a buffer overrun issue with long titles

Relative Sizes

If you think the Earth is big, and the Sun is big, check out this video.

Test Comment for Antispam

This is a test comment to test if my lame antispam comment filter is working.

Waves Photographed in a Wine Glass

Ok, the wine glass made music, and this is sort of a science experiment. I filled up a wine glass full of water and ran my finger around it to make a musical tone. I then used my camera to take a picture of the waves. The thought was that I could determine the tone that was being played by counting the waves and doing some math with respect to the circumference. Well, I didn't do any of the math, but got a cool picture of the waves around the outside of the glass.

Twitter

I've been playing around with Twitter, a sort of mini-blog thing where users post simple one line statements as to what they are doing. It's kind of interesting, but I'm still not sure what the point of it is. Maybe the point is to waste time and watch other people wasting time.

Doctor Who on WQLN

According to the WQLN website, Doctor Who will show up on Friday, March 23rd, at 10:00 pm!

Ani-movie Camera Repair

My son's camera, an Ani-movie animator camera, stopped working with its SD card. Upon disassembly of the camera, I saw that there was a plastic shield that would go between the pins of the SD card and the SD card cage (which holds the card). That shield had been mashed into many pieces by the SD card. I pulled out all the pieces with a needle nosed pliers and small screwdriver, and replaced it with a thick piece of plastic that I had lying around which was used to create stencils. You have to be very careful when putting in the card to make sure that the SD card is between the circuit board and the new plastic shield. My guess is that when I want to put the SD card in, it is safest to take the camera apart to make sure that the SD card is in the right position.

Camera disassembled with new shield in place

Detail of SD card cage with SD card in place.

Here's why I made the statement of wanting to disassemble the camera when inserting the card. I tried putting in the card manually, and mashed the second to leftmost pin because the SD card came to the wrong side of the shield.

Cleaning your keyboard by washing it

I read that you could clean your keyboard by washing it in a dishwasher. My son's keyboard was filthy, so I decided to try it. It came out beautiful, and even worked for a while. Then, it stopped working. The caps light comes on after powering up the computer, but that's it. Now I have a mostly dead keyboard. Maybe I should try washing it again.

In any case, word to the wise - don't wash your keyboard! I suspect that minerals from the water might be causing trouble. Regardless if it is minerals that is causing the problem, I'm out a keyboard.