Topic: What you Buy or DIY show off thread

[EV Dan]

When I used to frequent a PC 'n stuff related forum we had a "what you just bought" thread which was fairly entertaining as everybody could smile at how much dough the fellow members wasted on mainly useless but pricey computer junk. So in the thread i'm starting I decided to add the Do-It-Yourself part, just out of curiosity to know what you folks occupy yourselves with to tide you over the long and snowy (here) winter. 

So shall we start then.
Today I dug my EV bike out of snow and finally brought myself to replacing a rear tire. The one I bought in summer is a 20" made by kenda, has a more aggressive thread, fatter and can be inflated up to 65 psi, roughly twice more than the original one. I'm planning to start the season as early as I can because I'm really missing my morning rides through the park to the office. I'm also hoping for a winter surprise like we had last year in January, when it hit +20.
Next project on the same bike will be upgrading to a heavy gauge wire on the way from the battery to the motor. There is up to 20 amps going there and I should be able to recover a few volts with better wiring. Will let ya know how it goes.

Anyone else? Dont be shy! 

[wing]

I spent about 20 hours coding for the website

[Triple Bob]

I went out last night and took some photos of Waterloo.  Not perfect but it was -15C so I wasn't in the mood for taking all night..
(links to larger below)


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3096/3123884475_cce51ce840_o.jpg


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3213/3124709500_33c0e73a70_o.jpg


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3094/3123883755_e53f72029e_o.jpg

 

[The Mighty Duck]

Ooh, Bob, I'm envious of your photos!  I need to dig out my SLR and get to work learning how to use it, but I'm lazy.  :/

Um...  nothing new for me.  My place has been buried under two feet of snow all weekend, and even the Ridgeline is having trouble with it.  Took about three hours to clear the driveway this afternoon, with the whole family going at it.  :/

[Squishy]

I waste my money on old Gray tools.  Recently picked up nine wrenches worth about $500 new, paid $55 for them.

[Triple Bob]

Thanks Demo, much appreciated.

[initial_D]

I have a lot of computer stuff, mostly not needed nowadays. Bought three laptops for myself in the past 18 months.

In the past, bought numerous out of commission servers and Sun workstations.

[dr_spock]

I just bought a bunch of storage containers to sort out my Lego pieces.  It was getting harder to find the desired pieces all mixed together in the same box. 




I waste my money on gray cards instead of gray tools.

[ArticSteve]

Last week Owen Sound got quite a bit of snow and it being around zero degrees the stuff was really wet/heavy and my trusty Honda snow blower was clogging up and I was getting a little frustrated because I have a lot of area to clear including some of the road because the plow can't get down to where I'm at.  Only the city's front end loader can get down, but it doesn't always show up.  

So my son was after me to go over to the cottage and get an ATV I use for summer stuff and put a plow on it.  I didn't have much faith in a plow and didn't want to spend the money to find out.  On top of that I needed an electric winch to raise/lower the plow.

Well I blew the wad on one and installed it.  It's a fairly elaborate setup and requires installation of a bottom plate.  I installed the plow and my son installed the winch, handle bar control and did the wiring so that was good because I hate wiring.

So far so excellent.  I cannot believe nothing has bent because I have been smashing into and pushing some major packed piles of snow down this ravine opening.

1. pic of bottom plate
2. pic of plow
3. pic of the pile of snow I moved.  This is a pile that the city's loader deposits blocking some of my driveway and it's compacted and heavy and the ATV's plow just moves it around with easy.  I really thought I was wasting my cash this time around.  Ya never know.  

 

[Ex-airbalancer]

AS, that sound like just to much work
Was luck after the Friday storm, the wind clear the drive to the asphalt 
Sunday was about 125mm of light  snow

[DockMan]

   You art is beautiful.

[Scaerio]

On Saturday afternoon I spent two hours changing the polarity of and trying to get the lights to work on an old model of an Italian Railways locomotive (FS E.626 - see pic of similar model below) that I have.  Now it runs fine, and in the same direction as the other locomotives in my collection, but the damn lights still won't work!  They are supposed to switch from white to red depending on the direction the model is travelling.

[dr_spock]

I had some spare parts lying around so I mod'ed my garbage truck. I tried out the custom WB with the gray card. 

[Triple Bob]

Ha ha, god we're a bunch of nerds, and I thought I spend hours doing silly little electrical/pc related things too, there must be a plethora of nerdy men out there spending their evenings fixing and/or breaking gadgets/toys.    Come on Brig' shows us what the girls are up to!

Thanks for the compliments guys, LasP the waterfall one was shot at f/11, 13 seconds at ISO 200. It was actually well lit from both sides which helped, obviously taken on a tripod using a remote shutter release.  You can take these long exposure shots in the day using a filter to block out some of the light, but night gives you less light anyway so you automatically have to leave the shutter open for 10-15 seconds.

This one which I've posted before was 30 seconds, I sold it to the company shortly afterwards, you can see it one their website.



http://www.growhow.co.uk/content.template/1/1/Corporate/Home/Home.mspx

 

[dr_spock]

Very nice, what post processing did you do?   PP is one thing I don't like doing. 

Ok, for the nerdy PC side, I just downloaded and installed Sun's VirtualBox on my system.  It's open source virtualization software.   I've installed Knoppix for Kids as a guest OS.  Having a little problem getting the sound to work.   Overall, it doesn't seem bad for the price.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

[Triple Bob]

Very nice, what post processing did you do?   PP is one thing I don't like doing. 

Ok, for the nerdy PC side, I just downloaded and installed Sun's VirtualBox on my system.  It's open source virtualization software.   I've installed Knoppix for Kids as a guest OS.  Having a little problem getting the sound to work.   Overall, it doesn't seem bad for the price.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

  Geek!

Not much PP, I corrected the white balance because of the orange street lighting, noise reduction as long exposures can increase noice, tweak levels and contrast.

[EV Dan]

Those are awesome, Bob. Esp. the waterfall and the last one. I'm not gonna start on filters, but out of curiosity, what camera did you use for the 2 I mentioned?

I have an SLR myself, but it's film and is all in dust now. I took a few long exp. shots on water, but its hard to share without a good scanner..

[Triple Bob]

Cheers Dan, I use a Nikon D300 at the moment, the factory one was taken with a Nikon D40.

[Brig]

Ha ha, god we're a bunch of nerds, and I thought I spend hours doing silly little electrical/pc related things too, there must be a plethora of nerdy men out there spending their evenings fixing and/or breaking gadgets/toys.    Come on Brig' shows us what the girls are up to!

Well, the girls are up to photography, too... but as a means to an end.  After reading this thread, I am putting together some shots I took this summer and fall, which I'll post once I get my act together between working my arse off for the next 1.5 days and shopping for Christmas and entertaining out-of-town-guests and doing laundry and preparing to travel and keeping my sanity... I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Fack... so much for relaxing over the holidays.  My downtime doesn't start until Sunday night. 

[The Mighty Duck]

Not much PP, I corrected the white balance because of the orange street lighting, noise reduction as long exposures can increase noice, tweak levels and contrast.

Wow.  I was actually going to ask if the first two were HDR - the lighting just looks too perfect for a single exposure.