Antenna

Long Range 802.11 Signal Interceptor

My (Second) favourite Wireless card. My favourite is still the stock Atheros chipset that came with my old netbook, but sadly that will not fit in the case of my new laptop. So, I use this instead. Supports monitor mode, and is perfect for sniffing out interesting packets - or injecting some :D

Freakin Laser!

The business end

Yes, it can be dangerous

Rear view. Recessed clicky button makes it lase.

Rather powerful laser pointer I happen to have. Pop's balloons and such, great for lighting cigarettes if you want to lose an eye.

All I need now is the sharks, and some veterinary surgeons...

Creative Zen

Underneath the screen

Back view

Front view

This old Creative Zen MP3 player (1gb capacity) has been knocking around for at least 5 years. It has suffered numerous falls, water, and other things, finally resulting in it being dismantled. It still even plays music!

Voiding the Warranty: Old Phone

The Victim, before I got the screwdriver out.

Disassembled into it's major components.

Not really all that much going on there, though I suspect the metal "boxes" cover most of the fun stuff. Further investigation needed.

Found an old phone in my room, a screwdriver was at hand...

The bright side of the moon

So it turns out the moon is very fucking bright when there is no cloud cover, and no light pollution. So it appears very strongly in this photo.
Wonder what the odd cluster of light near it is?

It is very bright, that moon thing.

Your warrenty was just void'd

Voiding the warranty on a broken Acer Aspire One. It died of unknown causes. Post mortem to follow whenever the Computer Pathologist is bothered.

BugBot

One of many experiments in autonomous robots. This little guy is set up to constantly seek light, much like a real bug. Built him from a kit when I was 15 to practice my soldering.

Lightseeker!

Ahead of its time...Th

This is the only surviving prototype of a LED based lighting system I designed when I was 15.

This particular item, I found in my room. It was the first prototype of a LED based household lighting system I designed aged 15, for the BT Young Scientist (2008). It sucked in 2 watts of electricity (a later one only sucked up 1.5W) and lit a room better than the previous 100W incandescent light. The only downside was I had to use a diffuser over it as the light was rather harsh.

The exact same design idea (transformer in bulb) as my alpha model is now being touted by Phillips and such. My second model used one central transformer that would provide 1.5W to each light-unit. The light-units would not have to be replaced, and the only part that heated up was the resistors. Correct heatsinking would mean you would never have to replace a damn lightbulb, ever.

EDIT (04/01/2014):
It would appear my insistence on separating the transformer and bulb in my final design is somewhat vindicated - during a conversation on twitter, it was learned that certain models which contain the transformer/driver within the bulb assembly do not have the ability to correctly heatsink the transformer/driver.

As anyone with a laptop knows, transformers release a LOT of heat. The laptop charger brick you have, that doubtlessly overheats regularly, is a transformer. If they are not able to disperse heat well, they have a peculiar habit of failing - sometimes catastrophically with sparks and popping noises.

The idea with the external transformer would be that on the lighting branch of your mains circuit in your home, you would install an inline AC/DC transformer to supply the light-sockets with DC current at a safe/low voltage. I would suggest using 12V and using high powered LED clusters with a diffuser/lens assembly to give the "warm glow" appearance of an incandescant light, as opposed to the harsh glare of unfiltered ultra-bright white light.

The prototype model pictured used 6VDC to drive that small cluster, which I now use for close up photography on occasion.

Pocket Watch

A pocketwatch. Now to find a waistcoat.

Not the correct time. Pocketwatch, go home, you are drunk.

Danger! High Voltage!

Some photos of an incomplete capacitor bank project. When completed, it will output 330V per "strip" of 10 80uF capacitors (wired in parallel). 5 of such strips will be wired in series to provide 1650 volts of reasonably high amperage electricity in one pulse. For safety reasons, the "charger" will max out at 1500 volts, to avoid overcharging (and possible damage to capacitors).

The idea of this is to have a high voltage pulse power supply ready for all kinds of projects :) (total cost so far? 1 euro for the stripboard, the capacitors were free - stripped from recycled disposable cameras).

So far 30 have been soldered on

My soldering was not at its best that day.

This project was abandoned for a while. Still works though.

KITTEH!

I could not work out how to disable the flash... Kitteh not amused!

No, really, kitteh NOT amused :3

Oh? So you managed to disable annoying blinky thingy?

Invasion of bed: Complete :D

Cat got curious as to what it was I was pointing at her. It was not food, so what is it?

 

 

... And then she got up to get food.

Photos of my kitty :)

Dog

My dog. So happens he loves posing for photos. He also seems to have a nicotine habit, as he follows me outside on cigarette breaks.

Lockpicks

Lockpicks and some locks :)

One of my hobbies, besides computing and electronics, is lockpicking. This is a cheap enough "entry level" set of picks (some missing) that open damn near any pin/tumbler lock.

Local Scenery

Old Franciscan monastary near where I live, somewhat zoomed shot

More zoomed out, captures some of the Clare River also :)

Norman castle being restored, just over the river from monastary.

This tree, near the Monastary, has been hit by lightening several times :) Still seems to bear life though.

Just a few photos from where I live. Quite a scenic place if the weather is OK, other wise it is just bloody miserable :P

Epilepsy In A Box

Front View of the first panel :)

I need to find my soldering iron!

This is one of my ongoing "for fun" projects. Basically, I found a whole bunch of high brightness flashing LED's, in Red, Green and Blue in my "box of bits".

Using a few old DVD cases as stock for the plastic, I have decided to create a "cube" of flashing, high brightness LED's in RGB.

Currently only 2 of the panels are functional, but I hope to finish the project soon :) Due to its incredible epilepsy-risk, I have named it "Epilepsy in a box".