Anton Olsen . com

Kayak Bytes: Building a Skin on Frame Kayak

Kayak Bytes

Finished up the bow and stern yesterday and the chines late last night. Tonight I’ll knock it all apart and finish up sanding a few rough spots before I start gluing it together. Hannah was disappointed to hear that I’d have to take it all apart again before I glue it.

Just a pointer over to my dad's blog where I'm writting about my first attempt at building a kayak.  My dad (Tony) is also posting about his 3rd strip built kayak.  When I'm done with the first (for my daughter), I'll immediately jump into making a larger one for me.

Apache2 SSL and Subversion in Debian

Apache2 SSL and Subversion in Debian

Debian Sarge comes with an apache2 package. I thought I'd give this a go to get it working with a self signed SSL certificate. However, I had little idea of what I was doing. Eventually I worked it out - and it's easy:

Handy howto on setting up Apache2, SSL, and SVN in 683 seconds. I'm quite certain it took me much less than that to copy and paste all the commands but it worked well and was easy.

www.soundbombs.info

www.soundbombs.info

Soundbombs are New-Media-Accessories. Each one a lowtech object for interactive transmission. An integrated soundmodul makes it possible to record any given sound and then activate it through a motiondetector.

Interesting looking project.  A couple of us at work have been contemplating how to make sound throwies but this could be fun too.

How-To: IR Remote Control your Computer - Engadget

How-To: IR Remote Control your Computer - Engadget

For today's how-to we spent some time rummaging around in our parts box to build a serial IR remote interface for our PC. We took a few pieces from various designs to come up our own, built specifically to work with WinLirc or LIRC; it can transmit and recieve IR signals, just imagine the possibilities.

Google Reader Subscribe Book Marklet (Favelet)

Subscribe in Google Reader

To use, drag the URL to your bookmark toolbar.  When you find a blog you'd like to subscribe to, hit the bookmark and it'll take you to Google Reader and offer to subscribe to the feed (if Google can find one).

Google Reader's new search can find the rss feed when you search for a blog's URL. This book marklet takes you to the search results for the current page. Makes subscribing to blogs in google reader way too easy. It seems to work equally well from pages withing a blog as from the front page.

What's that sucking noise? It's Sourceforge.net

Is it me or does Sourceforge just suck lately?

In the last 3 months it seems that half the time I've wanted to download something hosted by them I cannot connect. I've tried from home, both my web servers, and work and the connection times out from all locations.

[update:]

Now that I've complained about it things have improved.  The preferred mirror options seems to be working correctly and downloads are once again fast.

Making hobbyist PCBs with professional CAD tools

Making hobbyist PCBs with professional CAD tools
Very cool tutorial on using EagleCAD to design a circuit and etch a board with the toner transfer method.

Intro Making hobbyist PCBs with professional CAD tools

It's nice that there are some professional circuit board tools available to the hobbyists. Here are some tips for using them ito design boards that don't need a professional fabricator to actually MAKE them…

Texas Kayak Builders Bash 2006

I got back from a weekend at Huntsville State Park for the Texas Kayak Builders Bash.

Check out my Flickr set for more details of the weekend.

There were about 40+ boats, mostly kayaks but a few very nice looking canoes. Hannah (my daughter) was bitten by the kayak bug and is now convincing me to build her a kayak. I'm consideirng a couple of Skin on Frames, particularly Tom Yost's design for kids, the Sea Pup for Hannah and the Sea Tour 17 for me.

When I do get around to building a kayak, I'll probably document it over on my father's blog: Kayak Bytes.