PC Teardown

My son performed his first PC teardown today.

This one was a 3.06 GHz pentium that was manufactured before he was!

For full pics see:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bob.willmot/PCTeardown#

Cake Boss

We used to live in Hoboken, NJ ten years ago.

Yesterday was our 11th Wedding anniversary and were feeling nostalgic, so we stopped by Hoboken today.

We got bagels at our favorite bagel shop: Hoboken Hot Bagels on Washington and 7th street, and then stopped at Carlos Bakery -- the home of the TLC show "Cake Boss"


My wife Mary Beth is the school nurse were Buddy's niece and nephew go to school, and the kids got their picture taken with Buddy in the Bakery today.

Digital Camera Kit

Back in the days of film photography I do fondly recall making a pinhole camera.

Here is the digital equivalent of a pinhole camera kit:

http://www.bigshotcamera.org/

Sounds like a great project that my kids will love. Just hope they don't start tearing-down my Nikon to see how it works.

Google Voice

I've been using Google Voice for a few weeks now and I am really impressed.

From my perspective the most useful features are:

1. Ringing multiple phones at once
2. SMS transcriptions of voice messages
3. Online access to calls, transcriptions of calls, SMS history
   
4. Routing of calls based on caller, time of day.
   
5. Call Screening / Listening in on calls
6. Cheap International Calls

Quite impressive -- Google continues to impress me.

ZWave Test Bench

I'm planning to upgrade my house with Zwave Home automation

I decided to get the hardware and software verified and ready to go before I start replacing all the wall switches.

So I threw together a test bench with a light and a Intermatic CA600 Dimmer


As expected no problems with the incandescent bulbs tested so far -- but need to test the different versions of CFL that I have in certain places in the house.

Linux Alarm Clock

Well its a whole lot more than an Linux-based alarm clock...

but I just replaced my alarm clock with a Squeezebox Radio

This one has color LCD Screen that wasn't part of the Squeezebox Boom that I already had in the kitchen.

The ability to see album art is a really nice touch!

Squeezebox Server on Synology

I installed the Squeezebox Server on my Synology NAS.

I continue to be impressed with how well the Synology NAS runs services like the perl & mySql based Squeezebox server.

I do have my eye on the Squeezebox Radio ...

I think it may be time for an upgrade to my bedroom alarm clock / radio / CD player