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I really thought about it though. I have now if an idea of what I well be doing. I’ve decided o won’t try nanowrimo this year. I’m thinking about what positive changes I can make in my life to increase my productivity.
I’m thinking pretty soon here I’ll deconstruct a pair of trousers or two. Then I’ll just need the fabric to start sewing on. After I change the design of course. I want back pockets that function, don’t ball up in the laundry, and aren’t slapped on the butt. Deep front pockets for sure. I’m not sure what else.

So I didn’t actually finish it. I know; I’m really surprised too. I did find a 20v 200mA wall wart though. Originally being a drills battery pack charger, now that the battery is dead anyway, well, you know.
Using these I can hook up 6 and still have room for slop. I figure the beer bottle itself will act as a decent diffuser.
I am slightly concerned about the possibility of great build up. I mean they are relatively low power LEDs, but I’m still looking at close to 500mW of heat while operating, in a glass bottle. This makes me think it’ll be fine, based on the minimal heat sinking built into the 3W LEDs that all the kids are using today. I figure one I breadboard the basic circuit and do the LEDs in the bottle, I’ll just let it go for awhile and watch to make sure I’m not getting too hot. Makes me wish I had a temperature probe did my arduino so I could set it up as the controller pushing the transistor and logging the temperature data and killing the circuit before hell came to town. Even to make a ghetto fuse if need to know the normal opposing temperatures first.
I also need heat shrink tubing or electrical tape.

My phone is working phone the Wif’s battery. Well except I have to go all silent running at a couple points during the commute. And today I forgot my headphones so I’m not adding on the joy of music, more the sound of silence. But other than that, I’m doing just fine.
Tonight I get to building my LightBeer. I think I’m just going to find a decent sized wall wart, cut down some perf board add a resistor and let it till with add many LEDs as I can also on there. I still have my bag of support bright 3v ones, so that should probably do the trick. If I get all crazy, I’ll add a photoresistor and a transistor so that it turns itself on. I should probably go that route, just so I get over my fear of the transistor, I’ve only killed three or four so far.
That’s what I’m doing tonight. I’ve got this.

The Wif had been complaining about her phone battery during super fast and I’ve mostly figured it out now. Obviously the problem is the battery is munched and needs to be replaced, but the symptoms, now that was weird.
Friday night I met her downtown to commute home together. I traded her batteries right then and there to continue my previous troubleshooting which consisted of turning down the pete around and stuff. Day-to-day morning I started of just trying to discharge the damnable thing, and it wouldn’t. I left it watching video after video with gps, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all on. Nothing. Yep hours later and I still was closer to 70% than it should have been based on her tales of rapid discharge. It seemed to dance around a little, but not just dying. Sunday, it was just another day. Thing never died. Then this morning on my commute to work, within 20 minutes of leaving the house, just listening to music and reading the news it died hard. 90 something to 15% after rebooting. I put my phone back in my pocket and didn’t touch it again full I plugged it in at work. Work, yet again no issues though I usually stay plugged in for most the day, but even wanting the warehouse, I still had no rapid discharge. This evening though, within 20 minutes of being on the bus I tanked again. I didn’t think a thing about it other than now I needed a new battery. I got downtown and was about to hit the second leg, and I decided to check if it was heat related. This entire time I hadn’t noticed any untoward heat levels, but I always like to know if I have a lithium ion fireball in my pocket before I dress as Johnny Torch for Halloween. 75%. Dick. No heat. No pushing apps. No Wi-Fi. No Bluetooth. No gps.
Then I realized. It died in a tunnel. It died in a deadzone of coverage coming down the hill this morning. Any time the phone has to stretch a bit to get signal, it’s killing the phone. Now then, if this was a case of the phone overdrawing, then I should be feeling some heat. Since I’m not, my official guess is the bulging of the battery might involve some shielding out grounding issues, meaning that as the phone puts out more em, it his a point where the battery just freaks out. To test this, I’m running in airplane mode right now. We’ll see his this works. So far so good.

No solar. At least at this time, with a panel putting me back $25, not being as aesthetically pleasing as I’d like, and 8″wide, I’m not seeing the upside. Solar charging only is viable in my opinion of it didn’t change the entire focus of a project.

Lookup flexible solar cells

On Saturday, I finally soldered this together. I was pretty eel happy with the quality of soldering I managed to do, which is to say the alarm works. I haven’t started to check it’s time keeping drift, bit I’m guessing it’s somewhere between good and poor. As it is, it probably won’t become my daily alarm. I’ll probably use it for something else.
Seeing as how it has these nice pads already to patch to for redoing is program, the sky is the limit. If I remove the speaker, and replace that with a transistor or relay, I could probably use that for turning on our off pumps once I get all aquaponic. I’m thinking of container alternatives seeing as how fish tanks are expensive. I could invert Jack Daniels bottles and cut the top of maybe? Slaving of bottles, depending where about the Wif and I are this evening, I might get to working on the BeerLite. Admittedly it will be a very brown light, but that’s what experimentation is for. I just want to make sure I carefully dip the LEDs in before I go to town and wire a sixer or something. I have caps at Los Parientes, and so will just need to figure out which ask bottles I have that are screw top (screw tops are balls for recapping I read somewhere). Ideally, I would embed a chunk of perfboard in each cap, with individual resistors. I think the final goal would be that at the controller end would be a constant current thingy, and a daisy chain of cables going from one bottle to the next. Adding in some addressing function would be dope as well. Maybe I should just look at addressable LEDs.

I’m at Wayward with the Wif. She’s studying her nursing (oncology right now) and in reading about the joy of C++, and here comes pointers. I understand the advantage of pointers versus not pointers. I just don’t understand why not design the language to handle not pointers. The only reason pointers are necessary, as far as I can tell, is that functions can’t handle more than one return value. It’s like saying the shoe is the best hammer ever, because we don’t allow people to use hangers in this town.

Just read about this and immediately thought. Servo, turning a (diastolic) pump, for pushing fluids to push actuators. I’m guessing that might be an effective way to transfer power without adding too much weight/inefficiency. If I added in a way to switch pumps with only a few servos, I could drop weight more.

But traffic. The problem with living on side of a big freaking lake and working on the other is the commute can suck. Oh, that and single occupancy vehicles. Of course, my bus not being on the carpool lane kinda confuses me. I’m pretty sure that twenty some odd people are more than two. Maybe they’re trying to get more good will from our misanthropic neighbours by allowing some Mercedes to pass us, some with two people in it even. Personally, I’d close down the carpool lanes, they only confuse people.
My goals for the weekend include such tasks as finishing my desk, root my phone, kill some aliens, get sdl up and linking right, laying my team to alien destruction, planning a couch using blender, and maybe start making burrito lunches. The burrito lunches are sounding good.
I’m pretty sure that if I dropped off the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’d be feeling healthier. The only thing is, I hate cooking at work. I’m thinking some fluffy rice, beans, lettuce, maybe broccoli, onions, peppers and chicken. As long as I keep everything most enough on the inside, like when I bring leftover burrito to work, I’ll be fine. I just want to make sure this is something I could make on one day, put in the fridge and easy through the week.  I could also look at sine cold pizza alternative options. Start doing to mix it up. I’ll have to talk to the Wif to see what she thinks. For me of course, I’m sure she’ll think the entire idea is hippy and disturbing. I really don’t blame her. Almost off my first bus.