Yesterday I was in town to pick up a camcorder (!!) I had ordered, and at the same time I bought myself a D-link DIR-635 wireless router for cheap. I had read that with the latest firmware this router could get online using a USB 3G modem connected to it, as it has a USB port, which sounded like a perfect solution for effortless camping Internet sharing!

It took me and a friend two and a half hours to figure out how to set it up properly! A very important detail, which my younger brother told me to try when he got home from work about an hour into our suffering, is that you have to remove the PIN code from the SIM card or else it will not work at all! I never thought of that, as I myself do not subscribe to a mobile Internet connection, and in all honesty I was hardly aware that the modem contained a SIM card in the first place! :P I totally blame the hot weather making my head really slow and mushy!

Here below are the settings and gear that worked for us, in case someone out there is trying to set this up themselves, with these exact pieces of hardware and operator! Right.

Router: D-Link DIR-635
Modem: HUAWEI E220
Operator: 3 (Tre)
Country: Sweden

Username: tre
Password: tre
Dial Number: *99#
Authentication Protocol: CHAP only
APN: bredband.tre.se

Other settings were left at default values.

The Dial Number and APN was given to us by the support before telling us they did not sell that router themselves and thus do not support it. We found the Authentication protocol (if it matters) on a forum, and the login information we deducted from a predefined setting for 3 in the UK, where the username and password both were “three”, and finally we just tried using the Swedish words instead, and magically (after those 2½ hours) it worked! We hardly believed it ourselves!

Now when we turn on the router, it connects to the Internet via the USB 3G modem, and all machines connect to the router through WiFi. No cables to connect, no computer to boot (except the one you use), and you are not tethered to the switch! It will be awesome.

The video has a weird aspect ratio as I have put two VGA videos next to each other, but it does fit into the 720p frame, neat! When thinking about it, you could fit 2x VGA and 4x QVGA videos, or 12x QVGA videos! The video is embedded below, but to actually see anything you ough to click over to Vimeo and run it in full screen HD!

On the ground I had my pocket camera in time-lapse mode, and on my head a helmet to which I had strapped a camera I bought for recording this years skiing trip (which I still have to finish editing).

Two bent metal bars that intersect. You will notice though that one is tall while the other is short. If you pay extra attention you will notice that in the pairs of bands in the same color both of them exactly matches the single band on the opposite side.

My initial idea was to either print and attach a photoshop job to the door, making it appear transparent, or to paint it to get the same effect but with a more imaginary motif. For this I would mount a board on the door, to avoid making it a permanent modification, instead of using the door surface directly.

While looking through my stuff I found a few door peep holes which I had planned to use to make a fisheye adapter for my pocket camera, but I never came around to doing that. It then hit me that I could mount a second peep hole on my door to enable stereo vision peeping! This was a concept that was easy to accept due to my first peep hole being located near the edge of the door, so adding another one closer to the center would hardly make it look worse!

Very close to the realization of this plan I decided to skip the board because the borders on the door were not perfectly angular, and I was uncertain how well I could get the board to fit. Instead I decided to make an ever changing door, in inspiration from my neighbor who has done it to a door in her kitchen, by painting the door with chalkboard paint and make it a chalkboard, on both sides!

The main ingredients for this project were…

Stereo Vision Peeping

• Power drill
• Drill stand
• 14mm wood drill
• Two new door peep holes

Chalkboard Door

• Sander incl. sandpaper
• Paint scraper
• Chalkboard paint
• Paintbrush
• Masking tape

Below is a time-lapse video which shows just about the entire process in a very condensed format.

I have made a short summary as the video can be a bit confusing to follow. It is a fairly straight forward project with pretty basic steps, as you might have noticed, just a bunch of work.

1. Remove old peep hole, and mirror (!)
2. Measure and drill the new hole
3. Sand the surfaces
4. Fix dents with putty
5. Sand again
6. Tape borders
7. Apply chalkboard paint
8. Mount new peep holes
9. Draw!

The whole sanding procedure took me ages, and was what caused the project to take way more time than I had expected. The cause was that I had a layer of soft matte paint on top of old and very hard glossy paint, and the matte paint had a tendency to peel off at certain spots, but not everywhere! I figured that if I left it as it were the chalkboard paint might peel off with it when drawn on, so I sanded and scraped until my fingers hurt.

So far the paint is intact, but I was nervous to try it out! Actually, I was not the first one to draw on either side of my door, people managed to sneak in messages and drawings before me!

All in all I greatly enjoy my new door functionality! In the beginning it was quite spooky to have a black hole as a front door, but as soon as I drew something on it the illusion of a hole broke and it became a solid door again, luckily!

A fun part with having a door that can be drawn on without ruining it is that people can leave messages, if they have chalk. Though, as I now have drawn all over the outside I guess nothing will end up there until I clean it again.

The stereo vision is also interesting, though the view is seldom exciting, as it is often just a pitch black hallway. So far I have almost solely used it when I know people are coming up the stairs to visit me :)

1. I unscrewed and removed the light socket and casing.
2. I cut the cable at the top and pulled it out of the arm.
3. I filed down the plastic retainer for the lamp head so the mike holder could fit instead.
4. I mounted the mike holder and cable to the arm.

Done!

Actually there was a bit more work to it than what I listed, but that was mostly because I did not know how go at it at first. In the beginning I tried to remove the light by dismantling it with the cables intact but as I could not figure out how they were attached to the light socket, without breaking it apart, I ended up cutting them anyway. Then I tried to file down the plastic retainer bit, but it took forever, and finally I resorted to a power drill which worked almost too well. The end result did not look very nice, but when mounted it is hardly visible. Below are pictures from the short process and the final result!

As the title says, it is a race between rubber ducks, 2000 rubber ducks to be precise. Duck certificates which grants you the prize if your numbered duck finishes amongst the seven first were 50 SEK each. I bought one but did not win, no surprise there! Prizes were as follows:

• 1st prize: Travel checks for 20k SEK
• 2nd prize: Travel checks for 10k SEK
• 3rd – 7th prize: Travel or food checks for 2k SEK

Below is a selection of photos from the event:

And a video! At the event there was a human gyro which I just had to try. I have dreamed about riding one since reading about the hardware in some magazine, ages ago. I just had not gotten around to it, or bumped into one for that matter, but there it was! And I sure enjoyed it :)

Spiral4
2009-04-19

Linework | Fillwork

If you travel with your mind clockwise around the center rectangle you will notice that you always go forward, out of the picture. If you split the figure vertically at the center you will always go backwards, into the image, if you follow any of the sides in a clockwise direction.

• Colored LED strips
• Half mirror ball with included motor mount
• Two spotlights for the mirror ball and the actual bulbs
• Two three color light organs (responds to sound)
• Stroboscope with color filters
• Smoke machine, smoke liquid and maintenance fluid
• Blacklight tube including fixture

Not everything was in stock, so it took a while to get everything in ready. In addition to the actual hardware I bought extra remote power switches to accommodate for all the new lights, power cables and cable holders, hooks and chains for the light organs. Oh, and a can of black spray paint for the remote.

All of the lights except the stroboscope are on separate remote power switches. The stroboscope is used alone for the best effect, so when I want to use it I just switch off everything on the remote, which only has four channels, and manually turn on the strobe. I have one original white remote for my normal lights and one painted black for the disco effects.

The smoke machine is not permanently fixed somewhere, but something I bring out when the situation calls for it. In addition to increasing the fun you can have with a laser pointer smoke also helps you test out your optical fire alarm!

My original plan was to quickly write a blog post about it all, perhaps with a video, but as you can tell that never happened, until now that is. The pictures included in this post are what got me working on this post and are from last Friday when I happened to get a bunch of people invading my home for some Guitar Hero World Tour action. I had setup my E-410 with an RF shutter so I could take random shots. It really looks like I am living in a box, no?

In these pictures all of the gear is active except the strobe, naturally. You can see the light organs with their red, green and yellow bulbs in the corners, the blacklight tube top center behind my normal ceiling lamp, the mirror ball is pretty obvious, the LED strips beneath the TV bench and of course some smoke in the air :)

When browsing the catalog I found my dream sofa from IKEA the moment I got my gaze upon it. A modular sofa that could be rearranged, expanded and moved easily, it had the perfect color to match my floor carpet and wall paint, it was fairly cheap and it was very comfortable when I finally sat in it. I got a three seat two part Tylösand sofa with covers in the Kungsvik sand color. In addition I got two Tylösand footstools to level up the comfortability factor.

The modular feature of the sofa not only makes it very fun setting up different scenarios, but it also makes it possible to quickly disassemble the entire thing into the base plate, metal railings and seat cushions making it very easy to bring along if you decide to move. In addition, even though the sofa is classed as a three seater, we can fit four people without any problems, and if we squeeze a little, even five people! And a parenthesis, the seat cushion covers can be removed and machine washed as well, or swapped to covers of a different color.

My recent spring cleaning had me compact the sofa as much as possible, as I used the floor to sort all kinds of stuff on. This got me thinking I should document just how fun it is with a modular sofa! So, lo and behold, below is a number of the different layouts which can be achieved in a small space like my apartment with this simple setup!

Instead of making the buns three times the normal size I stuck with only two times, as the triple sized buns scared a few people to cut them in half. To keep it interesting though, I mixed caramel color into the eggs I brushed on the buns before baking them. The result ended up both amusing and terrifying. Contrary to my first intentions to just make fun buns, they probably ended up with an even greater scare factor compared to previous buns.

The reactions were mixed. A few comments I remember…

• Is this one lingon-/blue-berry flavored?
• Which kind of poison have you used?
• How long do we have left? Enough time to get home and lie down in bed?
• Are you our new chemistry assistant?
• Ah, moldy buns!
• Between people: – You chickened  out and took a normal one right? – Nooo, mine was purple!

At least one person did not dare take any bun at all, due to the colors, but he should have looked closer! There were completely uncolored natural buns there too, and there was one left when I cleaned up!

I had five buns of each color with me to work, with six colors times five it makes 30 buns in total. There are 20 people that should have been there, but I know at least one is away and another skipped his bun so there should be 12 left, but there were only 10! The leftover stats are…

   Purple : [***  ]
     Blue : [**   ]
Turquoise : [**   ]
    Green : [     ]
  Natural : [*    ]
      Red : [**   ]

Funny enough the green ones were the winners, with all of them consumed! Their discreet coloring made them appear infused with green marzipan, which would have been more luxury than the natural buns and perfectly connected to preconceptions in contrast to the other colored buns.

Below is an oversized pool of photos from the entire process and the results.

Extra: As an experiment I put the most unpopular buns, the purple ones, outmost when storing them in the fridge. People like to have something for the afternoon, and I figured I would see which ones would be eaten! I even put the only uncolored bun left at the bottom of the plastic bag with red buns. The bags are all transparent so it is easy to tell what is inside. To my surprise all three purple buns were gone! It seems ease of access goes beyond icky color, at least in this case :)