Naxxfish

So, you’ve got a nice shiny laptop which you use every day. After a few months, the screen gets somewhat grubby and has marks on it. Ew. So you have to go to the computa shop and get some of those LCD screen wipes, right?

WRONG.

What’s really in those wipes? They’re just lint free cloths soaked in water and isopropanol alcohol! Why pay £10.00 for a load of wipes (which will probably dry out after a while) when you can make your own solution and use kitchen towel instead?

The process is easy. Just get some isopropanol, probably from Boots or another chemist, pour some into a jar or container. Add the same amount of water. Voila, you now have some screen cleaning solution. Approximately 50% isopropanol 50% water.

All you do now is get some kitchen towel or some other lint free cloth, dip it in and wipe the screen down. I then suggest you rub gently, and then dry off with the other end of the cloth. What usually happens is the isopropanol dissolves the crap on the screen, the excess evaporates (isopropanol is very volatile), and leaves the water, which you can then mop up taking the crap-in-solution with it. This is a similar process to how soap works, without a) damaging the screen and b) leaving residue on the screen.

So there is a handy tip for all your laptop-cleaning needs!

BlogTorrent
An excelent idea if you ask me, it uses its own safe BT client downloaded from your website to download files. It also makes settings up a tracker and that sort of thing easy.

I have a feeling I’ll be using this to distribute video and audio files in the future!

CSS Reference Sheet (PDF)

This is a reference sheet with a few common CSS style rules and a colour reference and how to specify lengths in CSS. Enjoy.

After reading an article at i-hacked.com about Transmitting audio with a Lazer pen, I decided that I wanted to hack a calculator so that its solar panel was able to recieve audio transmissions made by a laser pen. So, I grabbed my soldering iron and an old calculator and set to work. The only tricky part is I want the calculator to be fully functional afterwards too!

Here it is, the victim. See, it can calculate the answer to Life the Universe and Everything. When we’re done it’ll perform just as well.

So, first things first, take the thing to bits.

I took off the back and looked at where the power wires went. Turns out on the back of the calculator PCB there are 4 power connectors: one pair for the solar panel, and one pair for the battery. So out comes the soldering iron and I desolder the solar panel connections. I then take the little bit of sellotape holding the panel in place (impressive quality eh?), and yank out the panel so I can get a look at it.

Hmm, pretty simple really. A and K connections, with wires coming off it. This thing can make anything from 1.5V to about 6V in strong light. Interesting. Anyway, we then needed to do some mullering of the case to put a jack in there that we can plug into.

Hmm. Looks like I’ll have to make a slight modification to the socket to make it fit.

Eventually I decided it would be best to put the jack on the right hand side, just under the panel. So I took out the drill and slowly drilled a hole for the socket to sit in. I then used an excessive ammount of glue to make sure it was in position.

Et voila

Finished. All I need now is somthing to transmit stuff with and I’ll have a very sneaky bit of kit! :p I connected it to an amp and I get get some static off it,and pops when I pass over it with a flashlight, which shows its working at least.

Its ugly, yes, but it works.

Edit: I’ve been told that using a solar panel isn’t the best way to get accurate sound from a AM laser signal. Apparently a LDR(Light dependand Resistor) or LDD (Light dependant Diode) would produce a better quality sound. Perhaps there is a way to intergrate one of these into a calculator’s solar panel array so it isn’t too obvious. It would also require another power source.

Also, I’ve been thinking about ways to wire up headphones to this thing without the need for a massive great mono jack sticking out the side: it’s pretty tricky, but I might come up with a v2 which is more elegant and less ugly!