We Are Makers

We are makers.

We make mistakes.
We make progress.
We make enemies.
We make friends.
We make time.
We make money.
We make assumptions.
We make apologies.
We make fools of ourselves.
We make up.
We make movies.
We make up stories.
We make excuses.
We make amends.
We make wine.
We make beer.
We make breakfast.
We make lunch.
We make dinner.
We make clothes.
We make guesses.
We make decisions.
We make it worth while.
We make out.
We make babies.
We make love.
We make war.
We make peace.

We make.

I’m a Loyal Scot…..So Now What?

If you’re an alumnus/a of Carnegie Mellon or a student/administrator/faculty, you’ve probably heard of the Loyal Scot program. It’s a program designed to increase alumni participation and outreach. To become a Loyal Scot, you must:

  1. Update your contact information to stay informed
  2. Get involved (volunteer, attend events, etc.)
  3. Give back, i.e. donate some money
  4. Show your pride by wearing the CMU logo, liking CMU on Facebook, etc.

Once you’ve done all this, you’re a Loyal Scot. And what does that get you?
Continue reading “I’m a Loyal Scot…..So Now What?”

You will be DELETED!

Here’s a costume I built for my son for Halloween. It’s made of EVA foam. I used Pepakura and the videos from the awesome TheHeroTutorials videos on YouTube put up by user Stealth from the RPF forums. The design files came from user unheard on www.405th.com. Many, many, many thanks to these two individuals for their videos and design work.

Here’s a video of the voice-to-led function that lights up the mouth piece when he talks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9UTA8cP97Y

And here are some pictures:

Why not Pittsburgh?

So there’s this.

Alcoa is one of the entities supporting this, but there’s no mention of Pittsburgh. They’re opening a TechShop in Pittsburgh, and you’ve got places like Pitt and CMU nearby that are working on pretty high tech stuff.

So…..why no Pittsburgh?

Toothy the Timer

Here’s Toothy the Timer, a little project I made to help my kids brush their teeth for the right amount of time. I originally made a through hole version, but I wanted to make an SMD version to help me practice surface mount soldering.

http://youtu.be/1TksuoMT4sA

Quick Hack of a VS200 Food Sealer

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”