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

“Death of a Battery: the Saga” or “I’m an Engineer with Too Much Time on My Hands”

Oh noes! Out of juice!

I’ve been going on an Ebay selling binge for the last week or so, which has meant some heavy use of my little DigiWeigh postal scale. All this weighing resulted in the battery that I got with the scale two-odd years ago finally eating it.

Now at this point, I faced what would be for most people a pretty simple decision… do I run to Kroger and buy a new 9V battery, or attempt to Macguyver one out of random stuff I had sitting around my desk?

HP Scanjet 4470 Teardown with Pictures

I’m in the process of cleaning out my room in preparation for my move to California at the end of this semester, so I decided to dig into my box of old electronic crap that I’ve been hauling around for a few years. In doing so, I ran across my trusty old Hewlett Packard Scanjet 4470 scanner that I’ve had since middle school. It hasn’t worked for a couple of years due to a bum power supply, but I managed to scrounge up another 12 volt supply and turn it on. It turns out that all these years of hauling it around have caught up with it, and it doesn’t scan very well anymore. I tried several scans with it, and they all came out with rainbow lines across them:

Scan of an IEEE publication I had laying around

After reading a few forum posts, I came to the conclusion that the CFL tube used to front-light the media being scanned is on the fritz. Couple this with the fact that HP doesn’t have any drivers that will work with Leopard, and I decided it was time to retire the old scanner to the dumpster. Being a EE, I couldn’t resist tearing it apart first to see its guts, so I thought I’d share the results of that with you, and thus begins…

New Year, New Semester

So I’m entering my last semester at Georgia Tech. What with a lot of my friends graduating last Spring and this last Fall, I guess I’m about ready to get out of here. Already having my job lined up is a huge weight off of my shoulders, as is the fact that I’m only taking 10 hours of class this semester. I’m kind of feeling aimless already since I have so little to do. The good part of it is, I’m finally able to focus on my friends and doing all the things I haven’t had time to for the last year or so. I’m pretty psyched about Senior Design. I have no idea what our project will be yet, but I’m sure we’ll find something interesting and challenging to do.

I’m getting ready to sell my car, which is kind of weird… It’s been a while since I’ve been without a car, and I’ve developed a pretty close “relationship” with it over the years… is that weird? Oh well, it’ll be good to have the money from it, and I don’t really drive it that much these days. And there’s no way I’m driving it out to California this summer. I need something with four doors, cruise control, and some more power to pull me through the mountains. I remember having it floored in third gear and barely holding 50 going through some of the passes in Nevada – ugh.