Frankenheadset

Soldered this little number up today so I could stop borrowing a roommate's mic, headset with mic is much easier and more convenient anyway. Mic came from some generic earclip-headset crap I bought in the Philippines way back when, I was much more frivolous with money back then. I never even used the headset (partially because it SUCKED, the drivers at least). The drivers are KSC-75 (clearance, $8), and the headband is Koss KTX/Pro with broken drivers ($1.50). Lo and behold, the KSC-75's drivers fit perfectly into where the old drivers used to be (the old drivers have a strong resemblance to KSC-35 drivers, no pic because they are far, far away.)

Works great! Just started playing TF2, this makes it more fun.

Oh yeah, the soldering was limited to soldering the leads from the headset to some 24 gauge speaker cable to a cheap mini plug. The drivers are attached to the stock KSC-75 cable. I've been wanting to recable it for a while, but didn't care enough to actually buy the materials.

If you look down at the previous post, you'll see that my 21st birthday occurred recently. I came into a little bit of money and bought this.



That pic is crap. Anyway, if you care, yes there is a dust cover. It's not in the best condition so I left it out for photos.

Yes that is the cardboard shelf (shoe-rack lol) from a previous post. After realizing most of the shoes taking up room belonged to only one of my roommates, I got selfish. After all, I made it, why should it be used to hold someone else's shoes? Anyway this is too off topic.

It's a Kenwood KD-44R with an Audio Technica MG200E cartridge. I can find next to NOTHING about either on the internet. From the looks of the cartridge and stylus, and some forum help, apparently I can upgrade to this stylus, which has a shibata diamond tip, as compared to my cheap AT10 or whatever with a conical tip. I was actually considering dropping another benjamin on a new cartridge! 80's Audio Technica cartridges were audio gold, according to some forum posts (don't feel like looking for them now) which said some of them sound better than cartridges selling for hundreds (think 5-8) of dollars today.

Here is the cartridge:

Removing the cart just to identify it was a bad idea, but curiosity got the better of me. It took me quite a while to realign it.

Anyway, I absolutely love this thing. I can't stop using it. It's a good thing this stylus is rated at 1000 hours of use (or so the dealer tells me) because I swear it gets an average of 4 hours a day. That means I have to replace this thing in less than 250 days. That's less than a year, obviously. I want a new stylus anyway.

More pics, this thing is beautiful. Perhaps it is only because I have spent the past week looking at pictures of turntables on the internet.

The old setup in the living room: my receiver is a little shallow front-to-back. The positioning was kind of awkward but the little rubber feet on the turntable (a nice touch!) adjusted well. They are terminated in what seems to be some kind of velvety-soft material.


The new setup in my room. Makes the room kind of cramped, but I tell myself this is temporary. Pictured are the turntable, receiver, my cardboard shelf, the record collection so far (about 13), my pink fake-diamond-encrusted belt (thanks Eve), and my Insignia NSB2111 speakers, which are pretty infamous. The entire thing sounds INCREDIBLE. I don't know, analog is just so much more fun and sounds so much more REAL than digital, more on some records than others though. Hopefully this will change when I upgrade my stylus. My copy of the My Fair Lady soundtrack in particular sounds excellent, even though it may be my oldest record.
If there are any audiophiles reading this, yes I realize how bad a very light cardboard shelf is for a turntable, this is temporary.
It is also a fire hazard, but it is okay as long as I keep everything off while I'm away, I believe.


So shiny! The record is Radiohead's Pablo Honey, 180g.


I love the look of this tonearm assembly. In fact, an edited version of this photo is my desktop background right now. My Alessandro MS-1s are in the background, as well as my roommate's desk.

that's a 4 foot straightedge, and a triangle. FOUR FOOT.

Remember to properly fillet your joints, kids!

(HAPPY PI DAY!)

The shelf is done. I can't believe it. I was really expecting to procrastinate.

In a way, I was procrastinating by working on the shelf, instead of working on my labs/midterms. Anyway, here are the shots leading up to it:


This is a glue fillet.


Fillet drying. It looks like this shelf was designed by Casa Designs. It wasn't. Kind of funny my random cutting of cardboard worked out that way.


Final panel clamped down after gluing, with the force of THREE CAMPBELLS lol. David donated his international edition paperback Campbell to the cause. Other books helped too (damn Vollhardt).


Goddamn shaky fingers. Anyway, this is one possible configuration of shoes. As you can see I really should have made it ~4 inches wider to accommodate a third pair of shoes in each shelf, but it helps plenty like this.

Final shot:


Man, that was really fun. REALLY. It's like, more relaxed than papercrafting: with cardstock papercraft I had to cut with a precision of 0.2 mm and never ever designed anything myself. My precision is way off with this shelf (sometimes an eighth of an inch off!), not to mention I only have an 18" straightedge, but it works fine. Someday when I have more furniture and I don't care about this piece, I'm going to test it to failure. I wonder if I can sit on it.

I feel kind of empty now. Although it was always a mess in between our living room and kitchen, it was really fun. The thought of always having something to do to this thing was comforting.

I think my room might need some more organising help in the form of post-consumer recycled tree pulp.

HOLY CRAP PROJECT

Oh my goodness, I've begun building something. FINALLY.

While it doesn't involve any kind of wiring, soldering, or moving parts, it's a lot harder than it looks.

But first: Some of what I wanted on this blog I've actually done in lab for a class I'm taking right now. Last week I made an amplifier circuit using a dual opamp to amplify a signal from a function generator. It's a shame I didn't take any pics of the breadboard or oscilloscope. Maybe I'll take some next week, where I'm going to be making an AUDIO SYNTHESIZER using the famous 555 timer, an 8 pin IC.

Anyway, onto the project!

This is actually day 3 of it, and I'm doing the least today (I have a 17 page lab due tomorrow and homework, and a midterm Thursday).

It all began last summer when we (my roommates and I) were moving into our new apartment. Moving into a new place usually involves a lot of new furniture, at least if you moved from a pre-furnished dorm. This left us with a LOT of cardboard. I figured, hey, why not save the cardboard? I want to experiment with cardboard furniture. It has been several months and the extra cardboard boxes have been an eyesore that I've made my roommates endure.

So, as you might have guessed, I've begun building a piece of cardboard furniture. A shoe-rack, or a shelf, essentially. Our entryway is cluttered with so many shoes, (and I know we don't use all of them on a daily or even weekly basis, I'm not going to explicitly mention anything more) and simply getting into our apartment can be a hassle at times, tripping over shoes and whatnot.

I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, but I really didn't know where to start with a design. I got some ideas from this instructable.


It gets worse than this. This is when everyone's GONE.

I don't feel like uploading the plans. the next pictures are just progress.

some pieces cut out

Bottom struts inserted

All struts inserted, bottom two rows glued.

Back support glued. Front support in position.

And this is where I am now. Front glued on, two shelf bases glued on. The second shelf supported most of those books on the left (and there's ANOTHER Campbell biology book). They're heavier than they look (especially Campbell, and there's an Ochem book on the bottom).

I guess I could do it faster by using tape (like the instructable above dicates) or hot glue (like this guy). Although it's only going to be supporting shoes, I would like some more strength. Most of the joints (with the supporting struts) are made using small pieces of cardboard folded in half, glued, and then placed as you would normal tape.

*Sigh*

Not much going on these days. Since I'm a more serious student now, not much can go on off on the side.

Anyway, I sorta fixed my couch.

See, we got the couch for free with the apartment, and I think I know why. The seat cushions had this habit of coming out just a little bit whenever you sat down, and gradually they'd be so far out as to be annoying.


We'd have to shove them back in like three times a day. No wonder we got this loveseat for free.

But no more shall the seat cushions inch outwards! For I have installed INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH VELCRO, and the cushions are now ATTACHED TO THE COUCH. HOORAY!




Anyone of my readers remember this pic from a previous post? Note the tiny plastic yellow vise. The chromed locking screw is actually plastic as well, and it attaches by suction. I actually dremeled things in that vise. I don't know how, but I did. It was kind of scary at times.

However, with the recent acquisition of a Sears gift card, my last trip to Sears produced this:
Sure, it still attaches by suction, but most of it is metal (aircraft aluminum), and it feels very solid. It can rotate into all sorts of positions (note the ball between the base and vise), and has rubber jaw caps for stuff I don't want to scratch. Now, if only I had a little more capital, and if Sears carried the Craftsman stepped drill bits they have online in their stores, then I'd be set for my next amp build.

New Years Update

JESUS H CHRIST

this blog hasn't seen an update since SEPTEMBER.

I'm on winter break right now, maybe the school year got in the way?

I can't even remember all the things I did that I wanted to post. For the extreme few who read this, I apologize. However, not that much has happened really. I stopped K'nexing.

Very recently however, I recased my cmoy headphone amp, now I can finally fit 2 9v batteries in there! Still need to mount an LED somewhere in there though, and replace the duct tape with electrical tape.









I also bought some new fountain pens

A Pelikan Future on the left and a Pilot Petit1 on the right, nothing special, just more cheap fountain pens. I did get some gift cards this christmas, maybe I'll get a nicer fountain pen.

Whenever I'm at home, I like to go to what we call the Monday Sale. It's basically a flea market.

A week ago I grabbed a few things on impulse:


That's right, this is A TURBOGRAFX 16 BUNDLED WITH A BUNCH OF GAMES. This is a video game console from the 80's. THE 80'S. Since it didn't lead to a lineage of other successful consoles (I think), this is quite the novelty. Only one controller port is on the console itself (there's a huge port on the back, I have no idea what it's for, multiplayer with multiple consoles maybe?) Also, instead of cartidges like the Sega and Nintendo consoles of the time, it uses nice thin huCARDs. That game on the lower right STILL WORKS! It looks sunburnt and has CHEW MARKS ON IT. The game on the far right I've had for years, my dad found it thinking it was a PC game, and I can remember trying to shove it into my old beige IBM trying to get it to work. I can finally play it after all these years.

I got it for a steal at $10 (ok, I paid $5, my friend owns the other half, lol we're so cheap).

Anyway, the games are really, REALLY fun and addicting, and have the BEST music. Bonk's Adventure is my favorite so far, but I really would like to get farther in R-Type, it's so difficult.
(Bonk's Adventure)


I also bought an old sony Discman after hearing some hype on the audio forums I frequent (not so frequently, lol) about their sound quality and it works sans for a few tracking errors on the first few tracks of some CDs (fixable with pot adjustments I have no idea how to do), and some heavy distortion, which I'm guessing is due to bad caps. I really hope I don't have to replace any SMD caps, as that would be a pain and I'd probably just throw the thing away instead of continuing with the repairs.

After reading into the forums more, however, I sadly found out apparently only the legendary cd players are worth fixing, and this unit from 1993 isn't one of them. Why did the CD players get worse and worse as the years went on? Big business and cutting costs? Units such as the D-25 by Sony are fetching insane prices still.

For $5 though, I have no regrets. After listening to it, I can hear a lot of potential through the line-out (yes it has a separate line out) and headphone out. I hope replacing the electrolytic caps and twisting some pots will do the trick.

Small lame update

This is my first semester out of the dorms, and as it turns out, things have changed. It's been a month and I still haven't missed any classes, which is especially unusual since I have 8 AM lectures every single weekday. Before, I would just stop going to lectures after a few weeks. I hope things stay like this. Also, I work out 6 days a week (after every morning lecture and on Saturdays). More importantly, though, I'm pretty much keeping up with all the material and homework. I have had a few classes in which I never did any homework. I studied a total of 3 days last semester for organic chemistry for ch%^&*ssakes.

A typical day in the life last and past semesters was: wake up between 2 and 5 pm, eat, go to lab (once a week), go to discussion maybe, waste time, sleeeeeeeeeep. OK it wasn't that bad. At least I (amazingly) haven't failed any classes yet.

Well, in response to this more religious routine, I actually need one of those weekly planner things that I took for granted in the dorms. Instead of just stealing one from a person in the dorms like everyone else, I went out and bought one.

On the left is the matching red pocket pen I got a while back, it has a stylus opposite the writing end.
The planner is just so... cute! I love the leather (pleather?) binding, and the ribbon bookmark, and it's from some company in London.