Monthly Archives: August 2011

Digital Windows – DIY Passive Telepresence At Home

Posted on August 31, 2011 by

Long distances apart can make it tough to keep up friendships, and while the Internet has helped with this through the advent of e-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing like Skype none of these mediums can accurately duplicate the experience … Continue reading →

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Westinghouse LCD Repair

Posted on August 28, 2011 by

After seeing the repair I made on the Samsung LCD monitor, a friend gave me a few-years-old Westinghouse LCD/TV that had quit working – it wouldn’t power on anymore. It’s a Westinghouse SK-19H210S, 19″ LCD accepting VGA or HDMI up … Continue reading →

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Satellite TV in 1981

Posted on August 28, 2011 by

I used to be a satellite hobbyist, with a few large motorized dishes that pointed at various FTA satellites receiving free music and international TV channels. It’s always been my ambition to have one of these large dishes in my … Continue reading →

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Testing CCFLs [Salvaged Electronics]

Posted on August 26, 2011 by

I scrounged these up a while back and just now decided to test them out as a part of another project I’m starting. They’re CCFL bulbs, cold cathode fluorescent lamps. Each driver powers two lamps; I have 8 connected. Naturally, they’re … Continue reading →

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Adventures in Dumpster Diving: Samsung 225BW LCD Repair

Posted on August 22, 2011 by

I found a Samsung 225BW LCD sitting on top of my apartment’s dumpster, and figured I’d drag it upstairs. It’s a few year old model but it’s better than the current older Dell LCD that I’ve been using (1680×1050 versus 1440×900). … Continue reading →

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1939-1941 Stromberg-Carlson Dial Stringing Diagrams

Posted on August 17, 2011 by

I’m recently the proud owner of a copy of the original dial-stringing guides for several Stromberg-Carlson radios from 1939-1941. This information is extremely hard to come by – it wasn’t included with the original engineering/service data, nor is it anywhere … Continue reading →

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Microsoft Word

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

Wouldn’t it be neat if Outlook were smart enough to download a GAL when connected to an Exchange server, then add all of the names to the spell-check dictionary so they’re not flagged?

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Google’s New, Really Awful Real Name Policy

Posted on August 12, 2011 by

Early adopters of Google+, myself included, have been drawn to its clean interface , user-centric privacy and content controls, “Circles” model of friendship networks and general user-friendliness. It’s not open to everyone just yet, and they’ve recently decided to make … Continue reading →

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Higher Speed High-Speed Has Arrived

Posted on August 11, 2011 by

Residential Comcast service is pretty objectively terrible for most power users and hobbyists, even if it does meet the needs of most less-technical consumers (although that may be less of the case as Internet use continues to grow…) Residential High-Speed … Continue reading →

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Turn Off Annotation Pop-Ups in YouTube

Posted on August 4, 2011 by

If you’re like me, you probably find it terribly annoying when an annotation appears automatically over a YouTube video. They stick around until you dismiss them and block the view. It’s possible to disable them for all videos by default, … Continue reading →

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