Projects

I am an incurable tinker. I just can't leave things alone, and I take the words "that's broken" as a personal challenge. I always have at least a half dozen minor, and a couple of major projects in varying stages of completion. Sure, this approach may mean it takes longer to complete any particular project, but it also means less down-time with nothing to do if I hit an impasse with one.

Listed here are some of the larger projects I am currently working on, have done in the past, or currently have on the drawing board.

The Notebook
This is a 386SX-20 notebook that I got brand new in 1992 as a graduation present. It's been through hell, and served its time well, but I'm not about to let it off that easily. Cracked motherboard or no, it's being rebuilt from the ground up.

2-meter Receiver
Okay, so it's a kit. I added a slight modification to the tuning mechanism though, and re-boxed it, so now it's an official "project".

Pitch Bender
Actually, a lot of my "projects" are simple re-packagings of existing products. There's often one or two minor details that I don't like about various consumer goods, so I rip them out of their existing enclosures and re-box them to make them just that much more convenient or useful to me. In this case, the pitch bender started life as a cheap toy, and now enjoys the title of... well... a re-packaged cheap toy, with a couple added features.

Shortwave Flavoradio
Yes, that most ubiquitous of gift items -- the Radio Shack Flavoradio -- converted for shortwave reception!

Countdown Timer
Yet another in a long line of rebuilt consumer products, the timer was indeed rescued from the scrap pile. Formerly a magnetic kitchen timer, it now looks nothing like its original incarnation, but still counts and beeps as always.

Speaker Amp
What do you do when your computer's amplified speakers blow up? You strip out the amp and rebuild it to drive another set of speakers, of course!

DTMF Generator
An early project, done primarily to see if it would work. It did. A couple of 9-volt batteries power the keypad from an old junked telephone to produce the standard 12 DTMF tones, plus a switch on the side for adding ABCD tones

Axis Box
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this one -- someone decided that they wanted it more than I did and stole it. A mouse with a slightly modified mechanism, mounted inside a box with two knobs; one for the X axis, one for Y.

Robotics Projects
These actually live in their own section of these pages.

Chainmail
I make chainmail in my spare time, as well. This link will take you to my chainmail instructional pages, where you can learn to make some for yourself.