Teflon Wallet

I’m going through another minimalist phase, and one of the things that’s been bugging me a lot lately is how swollen my wallet has become with all the gift cards, froyo punch cards, random trash, etc. I emptied out my wallet, only to find it didn’t really get that much thinner or smaller, because of how massive just the wallet leather is. I started looking around online for a thinner alternative more compatible with my newfound minimalism, and ran across this Instructable for making a paper wallet. I was really taken with how compact and simple the paper wallet manages to be, while still being functional and a viable way of carrying cash, credit cards, and identifaction around.

I made myself one of the paper wallets as shown in the Instructable, but realized after a few days of use that it would not last long in an abrasive jeans pocket, and would be absolutely wrecked at the first sign of moisture. I took a brief survey of the paper items around my room which could be more suitable materials for a wallet, and found that I had some USPS Priority Mail envelopes, which are made of a pretty heavy-duty teflon. Here’s a quick overview of how I put the wallet together using the envelope:

GoPro Hero HD 960 Interface Cheat Sheet

As almost everyone who’s used a GoPro can probably attest to, they’re amazing little cameras with a completely impossible user interface. I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed to change some setting but couldn’t for the life of me remember how, and of course the user manual was long gone.

I made some GoPro cheat sheets that I printed out and then taped to the box where I store the GoPros, so that it’ll always be close at hand when I need it. I’ve even folded up one of the smaller ones and inserted it behind the camera in the waterproof case so it’s easy to get to if I need it on the go.

I’ve posted the cheat sheet I put together here, in case it’s useful to someone else. There’s a pocket sized 4×2″ version (GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet 4x2inch), and a larger, easier to read 7×2″ version (GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet 7x4inch), both in .pdf format. I’ve also posted the excel file I used to create them (GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet Excel File), in case you want to modify them to suit your particular tastes.

Files:

• GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet Excel File (57kB .xlsx)
• GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet 7x4inch (45kB .pdf)
• GoPro HD Hero Cheat Sheet 4x2inch (49kB .pdf)

Chip Yates Electric Motorcycle

http://green.autoblog.com/2010/10/24/chip-yates-reveals-kers-secret-of-swigz-superbike-w-video/

A pretty cool article describing some of the up-till-now secret sauce on the electric motorcycle project I’ve been working on with Chip Yates for the last few months. The article describes the front-wheel Kinetic Energy Recovery System that Chip designed in great detail. It has some cool pictures of the bike, and an awesome video that someone (ahem, yours truly) put together for the bike unveiling a few weeks ago.

GTI Thumpin in the Trunk

I’ve been a wannabe car audio nut for quite a while, but I’ve never really had the time, money, and inspiration to actually do anything until recently. When I had my Miata, I had planned on installing an 8″ sub in the trunk in a custom fiberglass enclosure. I even went so far as to build up a foam mockup of it, but that mockup just sat on my shelf for four years of college and never got built.

Now that I’m working and have more dollars than sense and finally have a car that’s big enough to hold a decent audio setup, I finally decided to buckle down and install a woofer. Following is a writeup of my install.

Airport Express Power Supply Repair

I bought an Apple Airport Express off Craigslist a couple months ago so I can send music to my living room stereo via Airtunes. The little bugger quit working about a month in though, so I tossed it in a drawer to be put on Ebay for scrap or otherwise dealt with. As is wont to happen this semester, however, one day recently I got bored and went hunting around my room for things to do. I ran across the Airport Express and started wondering what was wrong with it. Here’s the story of the teardown and my attempts at repairing it:

iPod 4th Gen Teardown

The series continues… My roommate had a 4th Gen iPod that someone had given him which wouldn’t turn on, so he gave it to me. My inner five-year-old was screaming for me to see its insides, so I cracked it open. Here are the results:

Canon Powershot SX100IS Teardown

I keep running across more and more stuff that is just begging to be torn apart. It’s like I’m 5 years old all over again, except this time I have screwdrivers instead of just rocks and sticks. Anyway, this time around, I tore down my roommate’s Canon Powershot SX100IS camera. It’s been having some issues with a stuck shutter, so we tried to pull it apart and fix it. Following are the results of that attempt:

Senior Designing

Considering I’m only taking three classes this semester, I’ve been pretty busy with Senior Design stuff so far. We had a technical review paper due two weeks ago and a proposal due next week… too much writing for my tastes.

Anyway, I’m the webmaster for the group, so I’ve been working on getting a website together. I grabbed a .tk domain name for the website, so that we don’t have to deal with the horrible Georgia Tech hosting url. Anyway, the site’s at http://www.pneumaniacs.tk if you want to see what we’re up to. I’ll be updating it throughout the semester as we get more work done on the project.

Cubeecraft Obama figure build

If there was any doubt up to this point that I have way too much time on my hands, this post should put that doubt to rest. Cruising the web the other day, I ran across a link to Cubeecraft’s new Obama figurine. For those of you not familiar with Cubeecraft, they make print-able fold-up templates for paper figurines with little square heads – pretty cool stuff. They have a bunch of characters, with one of their latest being the Obama one. Following are some pics of my experience “building” one:

Samsung SGH-E105 Phone teardown – pictures!

So, in the vein of tearing stuff apart, I ran across some pics I took a while back of my old SGH-E105 phone. I’m really hard on my phones, so the case was destroyed after about two years of use. After sourcing a new case off Ebay, I completely disassembled the phone to put the pieces in the new case. Pics of the torn apart phone after the break…

The Phone