The ICTP wireless school rages on. On Wednesday we did the annual “long distance link” exercise from Muggia to the ICTP. This year was cold, but at least there was no snow this time. Two out of three …

<a style=”text-decoration: none;” href=”uploads/2010/02/ICTPlogoColor-300x101.png It’s that time again: the 2010 ICTP school on wireless networking is rapidly approaching. …

It has been a while since I checked in on the Metaverse scene. Tonight I downloaded Snowglobe (the open source viewer from Second Life, remember them?) and OpenSimulator (the still-alpha but apparentl…

I ordered some 1000 Megohm resistors today. They’ll be the basis for some new HV measuring tools. I’m finding that I could really use a high voltage voltmeter and oscilloscope lately. Using a gigohm r…

A while back, I inherited a surgical lamp from a decommissioned hospital in Mt. Vernon. While astoundingly awesome in its light throwing and ambiance-enhancing abilities, it weighs about 150lbs. And s…

Matt Westervelt (Metrix:CreateSpace), Willow Brugh (Jigsaw Renaissance), and Eric McNeill (Seattle Dorkbot) had a discussion about hacker spaces on KUOW. I find it interesting that it’s 2010 and the m…

Rawrbot is HBL’s “official” mascot. Here is a vector drawing I made, based on a whiteboard sketch a bunch of us worked on last year. (PDF) Here’s the little guy on a ruler intended for laser cutting. …

Power, Volts, Current, Resistance. There are a bunch of charts floating around that describe the relationships between these four variables. I didn’t like any of them, so I decided to make my own. (PD…

I made a basic singing arc, based on this Instructable. It uses a TL494 to switch a MOSFET very rapidly, dumping current into the primary coil of a TV flyback. The air rapidly heats up when the spark …

I got my first home computer for Christmas, 1982 (about a month before my 8th birthday). It was a TI 99/4A with a speech synthesizer, built-in BASIC interpreter, and audio tape storage device. I …