I’ve been cooking with the solar oven. Here’s a log of how it’s been going. Continue reading “Solar Recipes”
Solar Cooking
I made a solar oven last night and I baked some potatoes with it this morning. Two words: best baked potatoes EVER.
PHP Countries, States and Provinces
I modified my phpstates code include to display countries and Canadian provinces as well. The country codes come from the UPS developer’s API. This is another one of those snippets that I use often, so maybe it will help you out.
Simple credit card number validation with PHP
I was looking for a quick and simple PHP function that would validating credit card numbers, but the code I found was mostly clunky and sometimes just wrong. I wrote this function and it seems to work correctly. Feel free to use it and leave a comment here if it works for you.
Continue reading “Simple credit card number validation with PHP”
Toy Ingenuity
I like the little gems of ingenuity and economy of design found inside crappy toys. I was taking apart some electronic toys yesterday, as is my wont. This particular toy had a few neat mechanisms, but I thought this use of rotary encoders and cams was especially cool.
ZoomBot
I created a circuit that zooms a camcorder in and out. This is the path I took.
Calculator Hijacking
I’m making something that requires remote control of a printing calculator. I’ve got it working.
Burning the Arduino Bootloader with an STK500v2
I had trouble using Arduino to burn the bootloader onto a blank atmega8 with my ST500v2 development board. I eventually figured it out and here’s the deal.
Continue reading “Burning the Arduino Bootloader with an STK500v2”
“Dumb Kit” MIDI Controller
Teach your baby to be a hip hop producer early. This is a MIDI drum kit that I made using a microcontroller and another $2 find at Savers.
“Idle Hands” 555 Keyboard
I made this keyboard from a $1 toy that I bought at Savers. I made some changes to the electronics including pitch control, a 555 timer circuit that adds extra resistance in secret places, a speed control for the timer, 1/4″ output jack, and a touch-contact for good measure. I fabricated the case from cold-rolled steel and acrylic.