Category: Random Things

So I was unable to take my son to “take your child to work” day (or whatever it is technically called) on the actual day. But I told him that if things worked out, I’d do it another day at our lab. Well, things worked out. Continue reading “Make Your Kid Work Day”

Here’s a quick hack I did a while ago to my VS200 food sealer.

I bought this some years ago to use for sealing up meats and such after a trip to a club store. It was cheap, but it had one problem: To seal, it went through a pre-programmed routine. This was pull a vacuum until a vacuum switch trips, continue pulling vacuum for about 30 seconds, and then seal for about 9 seconds. This meant that if the bag was small and evacuated quickly, or, more importantly, if I just wanted to make a new bag up, I had to go through the entire cycle. Waste of time, especially if I have to seal 30 or so bags or make up a bunch of new bags. More expensive units have seal-only functions, but I didn’t want to spend the money for that when I bought mine.

So, I flipped it over, removed the Phillips screws, destroyed the sunk security screw, and gained access to the innards. Behold, a PIC microcontroller, power supply, vacuum switch, and associated electronics goodies.
Continue reading “Quick Hack of a VS200 Food Sealer”

It’s like nothing you remember. One of the greatest games ever made. I still have the original box and CD. Awesome music. Best line from the game from Taurus: “Damn. I’m so good, they should name a car after me.”

This is pretty interesting. Bartering for education. You take a class in exchange for teaching a class.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/03/barter-for-instruction-at-trade-school.html

I imagine it took more than a few dollars to put this together. Must be great to see live though.

Anytime you combine robotics and flame throwers, the results will be interesting.

I’m in the wrong line of work.

Pencil Balancer