Anton Olsen.com

Vacation Time!

We’re having our company Christmas party in The Bahamas this year, so we’ll be off-line for about a week.  First stop is Galveston for xmas with my family and to drop the kids off with my sister, then we hit the beach in Nassau. I’ll take lots of pictures, but don’t count on me uploading any until we get back.

Have a happy winter festival of your choosing and may the next year be full of fun and exciting adventures!

For anyone who’s interested, we’ll be staying at the Breezes Bahamas resort and on New Years Day we’ll be taking an all day island cruise with a stop at Rose Island.

Bookmarks for December 24th

These are my links for December 21st through December 24th:

• SparkFun Electronics – LED Light Bar – Red
  Some red LED bars for my over sized hit counter.
• SparkFun Electronics – Autonomous Vehicle Competition – April 15th
  SparkFun is having an autonomous robot competition on April 15th. Any chance of a VEX competitor?
• Parts: 1K 1-Wire EEPROM (DS2431) – Hack a Day
  A pointer at using the 1wire eeprom with a single i/o pin on a ucontroller
• Interactive Matter
  Some cool ping pong ball sized projects with LEDs and AVRs
• QKits Electronic Kits: FK936, 4 Digit Counter Kit
  Nice inexpensive LED counter kit.
• Bacon Explosion: The BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes — BBQ Addicts – BBQ Blog
  Double up on the lipitor and have a bite.
• HPC lab: cluserssh : life saver for cluster system administrator
  Use 'clusterssh' instead of normal ssh to save a lot of time and typing.
• Steves Digicams – Canon EOS 50D – Hands on Review
  Steve's does his review of the Canon 50d.
• Texas
  Reviews and Ratings of BBQ joints across Texas.
• Tao Of Foo » Baklava
  I've always wanted to learn how to cook this.

Zipper Mast Helps PackBot Peek Over Walls

Geosystems Situational Awareness Mast (aka Zippermast) from Travis on Vimeo.

Geosystems Situational Awareness Mast (aka Zippermast)

An ingenious method of lifting a camera much farther than any standard boom or scissor lift could.  I’ll add this to the list of things to try someday.

UPDATE: Travis points us to the original post with a lot more detail. I’ve updated the link above and embedded a higher quality vid from Vimeo.  Thanks!

YouTube – High Voltage Nerf Vulcan

YouTube – High Voltage Nerf Vulcan.

I hooked up three 9.6V batteries to my nerf vulcan.  Now I need to mod the battery compartment to hold them and build some longer chains.  It goes through 25 rounds in about 3 seconds.

This was inspired by ManaPotion’s 500 RPM Vulcan mod.  I’ve reached their fire rate, but hope to push it a little farther with some heat sinks and better motor cooling.  One more 9.6V battery should push it to 666 rounds per minute.

YouTube – 500 Round Per Minute Dart Chaingun Hack

YouTube – 500 Round Per Minute Dart Chaingun Hack.

I’m thinking I need to do this mod with my gun, but I’ll add some heat sink to the motor if I can find or make one that fits.

Bookmarks for December 20th

These are my links for December 16th through December 20th:

• EXTRALIFE – Web comic for geeks, gamers, and stuff like that
• Atanua – About
  Atanua [Say it] is a real-time logic simulator, designed to help in learning of basic boolean logic and electronics. It uses OpenGL hardware-accelerated rendering and a custom UI designed for a fast workflow and a very low learning curve, letting the students concentrate on learning the subject instead of spending time learning the tool.
• Video Site   Up Butt Coconut – Stupid but yet funny video
  This wins my most wtf award for December.
• Zeusaphone Z-18
  For $1900 I could wimp out and buy a ready to go singing tesla coil, but I think it'll be more fun to build one.
• Amazon.com: Cosina 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 MC AF Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon EOS / EF: Camera & Photo
  A wide angle lens at a very cheap price. Need to look at some more reviews.
• Unified Theory of Bacon at ryptide.com
  I’ve finally gotten around to formalizing my Unified Theory of Bacon.
• USB mic on Linux – Audacity Wiki
  Some info on using the co1u on Linux.
• Let me google that for you
• SmartMow, The Smarter Way to Mow Your Lawn!
  A robotic mower, but still kinda expensive.
• 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs | How-To | Smashing Magazine

YouTube – Frosty the Snowman – Holdman Christmas Display 2008

YouTube – Frosty the Snowman – Holdman Christmas Display 2008.

A very cool looking xmas light display.  More info on their website at: http://www.holdman.com/christmas/

YouTube – Happy Christmas from AKQA

YouTube – Happy Christmas from AKQA.

This is so cool.

YouTube – Made the MIT Infinite Corridor in less than one parsec !

YouTube – Made the MIT Infinite Corridor in less than one parsec !.

This looks like fun!

YouTube – NERF Lawbringer

YouTube – NERF Lawbringer.

Even an innocent nerf gun can be modded into a lethal weapon.