Twitter Updates for 07-02-2011

• Home again with a mug of redbush tea, a "malteaster" bunny, and a few interesting bits from the @londonhackspace rubbish box. 00:48:58, 2011-02-07
• Just set up Direct Debit for @LondonHackspace. 01:29:26, 2011-02-07
• Think I'll have a fair few materials/bits I can contribute too. Stuff I can't use, but too good to chuck. 01:29:42, 2011-02-07
• Being told what government's been up to that I've missed. I should go to bed. 02:11:38, 2011-02-07
• Hard not to quote Godwins Law when told the PrimeMinister's going to promote "patriotism" & vet aid funding for a single religious minority. 02:16:44, 2011-02-07
• @tajasel Go sleep, attack it when rested & it least expects it! in reply to tajasel 02:17:14, 2011-02-07
• I liked a YouTube video — Linux Webcam Recording Made Easy with GUVCviewer http://youtu.be/hW-ZoKTef_I?a 11:00:56, 2011-02-07
• I liked a YouTube video — Jim Henson discusses the Doozers from Fraggle Rock http://youtu.be/7AF96fnozXw?a 21:19:28, 2011-02-07
• This is amazing. :D(YouTube http://youtu.be/A3iP0NGDDao?a) 21:40:55, 2011-02-07
• I liked a YouTube video — Hamster Powered Walker http://youtu.be/A3iP0NGDDao?a 21:40:55, 2011-02-07
• Camera's memory card corrupted. Formatted it. Let's see if it works now or if I have to get a new one.. 23:04:29, 2011-02-07
• Phew, seems to be working now.. but photos that were on it are jumbled like a tile puzzle. Will have to re-take. :/ 23:09:26, 2011-02-07
• JPEG repair programs all pay-for. So just hacked pics back together with crop tool. 23:47:23, 2011-02-07

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Scavenging log

Friday 4th, Friday Hill recycling center

Rolled leather hammer and cross-peen hammer. 20p.

Sighted a lawnmower sans-engine with exposed drive pulleys. Slightly too burried under a sofa-bed frame to reach or extract. Shame.

Located small bag of bolts. Insigifigant to them, so got for free. Turns out has some welding bits in. Copper rollers, massive earthing braid, some rolled steel pins.. Also two bits of phenolic board held together with wing-nuts. May be a flower-press.

Saturday 5th, Friday Hill recycling center

Arrived 20min from closing. Rushed around and found a silver steel wood auger (7/8″),  an octagonal bread plate (matches one I have already), a brass door pull with a fun latch mechanism (should be easy to fix/reproduce), a pair of soft-close drawer runners, a kitchen pot hanging rail, and 4 alloy bike pedals.

Pic includes hammers from the friday

On the way home I also found someone chucking out some old bike wheels, one with a Sturmy Archer hub gear. Cleaned up turns out it’s a 1948 Model “AM” gear set. According to Sheldon Brown, that’s a rare type from old British “club bikes”. So will try to sell instead now. May be of use to someone doing an accurate restoration or such.

Alloy pedals aren’t of immediate use. One pair is a high-spec Crank Brothers 5050X set, but very chewed up and missing one of it’s plates (that you don’t seem able to buy separately). The other alloy set is of no current use, one missing it’s spindle. The 5050 seems to use a very short spindle tho, so stripped of the plates and studs (basically grub screws. Handy) I should be able to cut the pedals down to be narrower and use the threaded holes to attatch the “horse legs” to the unicycle cranks on the proposed art-trike.

Sunday 6th, London Hackspace

During the (excellent) party, was informed it was ok for anyone to rummage through the “rubbish” boxes. These are boxes where odds and ends people find and donate are put. If no one takes them in 3 weeks, they go in the skip (and often back out and back into the boxes as someone freshly “discovers” them there).

After a couple of beers, felt comfortable rummaging as others were and found a tiny blacksmiths vice, a robot insect, a usb card reader with no cable (soldered one on while there. Tested at home. Detected, but very broken.), a colour security camera with IR lamp removed, and a tiny 5mm square camera module (probably from a phone. Probably useless, but so cute.).

Will have to fix up the trailer or something. If it’s okay, I have a lot of things that are too good to throw away but that I’ll never use that I could donate to the Hackspace. And probably a number of other things I could happily give on extended loan (like the homebrew equipment).

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Name those movies

I have vague memories of a movie I watched late at night a long time ago. Maybe 15 years or more. It’s bugging me because I have no idea what it was called, or what it was supposed to be about.

I remember it was set in a hospital or lab of some sort, and was essentially a horror movie. It might even have been a 1970s british horror movie. I remember there was an obsession with brains in it.

Early on in it a doctor is slicing up a brain, talking about it, then puts the bits in a blender, makes a milkshake from it and drinks it, explaining only a brain has all the bits in it to fuel another brain.

Later on the “good guy” gets killed, only one of the doctors projects is to build a human being, frankenstein style, so uses the good guys head. The operation works, the creation rises, the doctor leans in.. and the guy bites him. Much flailing until they can pull the freshly sewn-on head off the body.

The closing scene of the movie had them wheeling out their prize project to an audience of important folks.. a huge artificial brain. Pulsating with internal light and the size of a beach-ball, the disembodied brain had it’s own monologue explaining how the next generation of it would be smaller and smarter, over and over until a brain would fit on a silicon chip.

And that’s all I remember.

There was another movie I can only recall from it being set, I think, in Veitnam. Troops smoking drugs in someones house, one suddenly getting the helment of an Imperial Stormtrooper from Star Wars, then getting the female character to strip and keep going until she takes a knife to herself and goes to start peeling her skin off too. But I turned that one off at that point because it was a bit much for early-teen me.

Anyone recognise them from that?

Anyway, now it’s out of my head I can go to sleep.

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.