Messages

101

Living Room / Re: New DVD Rewinding Service

« on: June 18, 2011, 04:02 AM »

I can sell you the Harbour Bridge.
Contract of sale says you can't take it home with you, but every now and then I'll write to you to tell you how its going.

102

Living Room / Re: Couch surfing over USA

« on: June 12, 2011, 05:19 AM »

Damn, why didn't she come over here???
Oh well, I did have 2 french girls who came for a night. But then they got tonsilitis, and ended up a week. Pity I was working away, and I only saw them the first weekend and the last, and between my Dad had to look after them.
After that, I was all for it, and Dad was all against it.

BUT I also met some really good people through it in  my travels as well. And they're often poor students, and I'm an Australian working class on holidays, so the drinks I buy are welcome

103

Living Room / Couch surfing over USA

« on: June 11, 2011, 06:00 PM »

Hey all,
How many of you know Couch Surfing? www.couchsurfing.com
It a REALLY good way to meet interesting people and to see things you normally don't when travelling.  Not to mention the cost saving.

I'm coming from Australia to USA for the 2nd time in July. All I know is that I'm getting into NYC on the 28th. I have some plans and ideas for there, but my next step is to get to central Wyoming sometime in the middle of July and stay out on a the most awesome ranch there which I discovered last year.

So if anyone is in the New York or pretty broadly surrounding area, or near an airport since internal flights are cheap enough, and want to catch up for a few drinks, or wants an excuse to go sightseeing, or anything else fun, we could meet up sometime.
If I can sleep on your floor/couch, then I can buy the drinks and dinner

Oh, and here is my CouchSurf profile http://www.couchsurf...eople/joshuacobargo/

And even if it doesn't help me, I hope people check it out and join and help spread 'helping people and having good times'

104

Living Room / Re: Thinking of Getting a New Email Address (NSFW)

« on: May 30, 2011, 06:21 AM »

Some people have more money than cents [sic]

And I will admit to being a fellow member of that clique despite having very little money 

105

Living Room / Re: Now you're REALLY screwed...

« on: May 29, 2011, 05:48 PM »

So now the Mafia can join the boy scouts with the joint motto of one good turn a day?

106

Living Room / Re: favourite hardware hacking resources

« on: May 22, 2011, 06:39 AM »

The trick is Duct Tape and WD 40
If it moves, but shouldn't = Duct tape
If it doesn't move and should = WD 40

No other problems exist

107

Living Room / Re: Visual Studio lost my solution

« on: May 16, 2011, 04:05 PM »

Thanks for your support, but I think its gone now.
Even with Shadow Explorer I can only find an empty folder with the right name in backup.
I'd never heard of SVN before. Looks way overkill for this, but I'll try it just to learn it.
I'll do it again, but there's just so much 'fill' work which seems a waste of precious time since its only an assignment.

Anyway, as advice to anyone new to VS, I found out later there is a setting in options to save upon creation which should have avoided this if I'd known this before.

108

Living Room / Re: Visual Studio lost my solution

« on: May 16, 2011, 06:46 AM »

Also, Mouser, if I submit it without fully re-creating everything, I hope you remember this post.

109

Living Room / Re: Visual Studio lost my solution

« on: May 16, 2011, 06:42 AM »

I ran ChkDSK, but the log tells me nothing. You mean a recovery program, or where do I find the files? Thanks for help.

110

Living Room / Visual Studio lost my solution

« on: May 16, 2011, 05:54 AM »

OK, so I'm smoking mad...
Was almost finished Assignment 8 of Programming School in C#
Had the project open in Visual Studio, and remembered to hit CTRL +S after everything that worked. System had some form of crash (I only ever hibernate, so its not too suprising) and now its GONE.
Shadow Explorer can't even find it.
This is Vista, does anyone have any idea of how it might be recovered?
Serves me right for not having a full backup plan, BUT I often haven't the time for the laptop, and I only back up important docs/photos.
Gnnnn Gnnnn Gnnnn, this is sooo annoying. And I was so close.

111

Living Room / Re: Clicking Cool Ads... NOT! (NSFW)

« on: May 14, 2011, 06:14 PM »

[email protected]
[email protected]

I had an entire fake profile so that any data entry would match if I reused it, but it wasn't traceable to me. I even had fake fb accounts, but that was more so that I could see mine as a stranger would and double check privacy settings.

Now I just close it.

I wonder if anyone reads the logs.

Also I wonder is anyone ever reads [email protected] since it must get heaps of cool hatemail and spam.

112

Living Room / Re: If a tree falls (in c#)

« on: May 10, 2011, 04:55 AM »

Remember we had N-1 string * N+1 drinks, making a grand total of 2N-1 (drinks/string whatever) So if N > 10, then we have almost double the string, and way too much to drink.

Remember not to do calculus when drinking though: don't drink and derive :p

113

Living Room / Re: If a tree falls (in c#)

« on: May 09, 2011, 06:08 AM »

If N>10, then you have way too much string.
I think if I have had N+1 drinks I would get entangled in all of it. And then go from falling trees to 'string theory'

114

Living Room / Re: If a tree falls (in c#)

« on: May 08, 2011, 09:57 AM »

Actually, I have always found the length of a piece of string to be N-1 where n is the required length....
And my programming also comes up short

115

Living Room / If a tree falls (in c#)

« on: May 07, 2011, 07:43 AM »

Just a random, late night thought of a programming student.

I think I might be on the track of solving the age old problem of
"if a tree falls in the forest and no-one hears it, does it still make a sound"

I have considered it equal to:
"if something happens in my atempted program but there is no gui link, does it do what I wanted (and will use and later link)?"

When I work it out, then I will have solved both of them.


I also found out that is the answer os 42, the question is "How long is a piece of string?" Now to find out the units..... ( I need another drink)

Fred

116

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« on: March 02, 2011, 05:08 AM »

This group of people is so totally awesome.
I just donated a reasonable (I think) amount [@Mouser it came through in my real name, as Joshua Schuessler] because I felt I owed it to the site.
Things DC has given me over time:
Lots of nice programs
Programs made up on the spot (I once had a coding snack made for me)
Someone to ask about any technical issue and its always been answered helpfully and no-one make you feel like an idiot for asking.
People who have helped me find things/programs when I gave them up as too hard.
A reason to stay interested in programming
An easy route to get into programmin thanks to Programming school.
Programming school: a better teaching method than those that cost a fortune. I still always find it amazing that Mouser takes the time to mark my attempts at coding. If it wasn't for DC I wouldn't know any code, and its now a hobby I enjoy.

And I'll never forget how good I felt when Mouser gave me a 'supporting member' status and lifetime license when I was too young to have enough money to donate, and didn't have a credit card to do it with anyway.

Not to mention links to all sorts of really cool tech jokes and cartoons.

Big Cheers to everyone here. You're all legends. ['legend' is used in the Australian way. Means you're all awesome. But sounds better]

117

Living Room / Re: Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 22, 2011, 05:08 AM »

Thanks,
The thing is, I don't think the battery is dead. I haven't taken it apart to see, but I think the charger just registers it as too low, it HAS to be dead, when in fact if it got above their cutoff voltage, it would come good again.
I have seen a charger give a 'dead' sign a few times, and just taking the battery in and out fixes it.

As you say, the chip will be all in secret code, and impossble to reset, but if you could, you could save a lot of batteries, I reckon.

118

Living Room / Re: Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 21, 2011, 01:43 PM »

There is a safety issue if you try to revive a dead cell, but the killer is that I took my battery and connected the teminals to another, charged battery, and let them equalise for an hour or so, and then dead one had a healthy (probably about 1/4) amount of charge. And I imagine that if the circuit hadn't blocked it, it would now be a working battery.

Here's a link to what's inside: http://hackaday.com/...battery-pack-repair/

From the pic I guess its micro circuits, so its probably not a soldering job, but there might just be a jumper or something simple, or make a pc interface (apparently Makita can read the amount of times its been charged, so there' s bit in there).

And its a very common problem, there are heaps of dead batteries out there, if you want one to play with, I could send you one, but international postage might be high. Are you friends with anyone in the construction industry? They should be able to get one to pull apart.

119

Living Room / Can anyone repair Li-ion battery circuit?

« on: February 21, 2011, 04:57 AM »

I'm a carpenter as a day job, and I had a Makita 18v lithium ion battery fail on me today after being drained too far.
Which made a conversation topic and I found out the following info:
This is a VERY common problem; there are heaps of dead batteries out there.
Often its a case of the charger saying it HAS to be dead because its so low, but actually it isn't, and if you can trickle a bit into it, then it will work again.
Also, there are plenty of sites on the net showing you how to pull them apart and replace the faulty cell.

BUT, here's the killer: there is an on board circuit in the battery. And if you get a 'fail' 3 times in a row, it stops it from ever trying to charge again.

Now, if someone with a bit of circuit knowledge can find out how to remove the block, there would be good money in restoring old batteries. And/or it would help a lot of people (new batteries are about $200 in Australia, and there's only a one year warranty on them)

Anyone want a project?

Fred

120

Living Room / Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

« on: February 04, 2011, 05:32 AM »

I just read that artice as well. Its cool idea. I have often thought that all games of 'chance' have to be calculatable.
And they probably are.
Sweet, we can make real money on this.
Lottery is a tax on those who are bad at maths. Until you get REALLY good at maths.

121

Living Room / Re: WikiLeaks: Important petition for all Australians and supporters of free speech

« on: December 11, 2010, 05:04 AM »

Ahh, thats better. I *thought* the DC crowd would be on the side of freedom and openness.
I was a bit worried about the first responders there


Now, has anyone signed the petition? It may or may not help. But apparently they've raised $25000 which is enough for a full page ad in the New York Times.

How that will help, I don't know. You Americans can wrap up your fish and chips in a lot of Australian dollars

122

Living Room / Re: WikiLeaks: Important petition for all Australians and supporters of free speech

« on: December 09, 2010, 08:01 PM »

Looks like a it follows a quote of someone I once read "no matter which side of the fight your on, there's always someone who you wish was on the other side"
What I mean is: I totally hate the governments (esp. the Australian one) and everything else who try to stop freedom of speech and anything like it.
In defending Wikileaks we are defending that.

Its a pity we are also defending someone who probably deserves what he is getting. BUT if he is not given a fair trial it has set a precedent for others with more reputable and honest motives to be taken down the same way for interests of business and government (of any country).

Interesting article, Eoin, and I agree that he's probably not a hero. But we can't let the authorities play foul because of it. You can't fight corruption with corruption.

123

Living Room / WikiLeaks: Important petition for all Australians and supporters of free speech

« on: December 09, 2010, 04:50 AM »

I think we all know the Wikileaks story.
Now he's being branded as a terrorist before charges have even been laid.
This is not good for someone who's innovation supported freedom and democracy.

Please help by signing this petition for Get Up.

http://www.getup.org...aks?dc=1471,527677,3

124

Living Room / The worm as a 'cyber missile'

« on: December 01, 2010, 05:02 AM »

This is absolutely crazy technology,

http://www.foxnews.c...s-nuclear-ambitions/

This sounds like fun. Imagine being able to write code like that....

125

Living Room / Re: How much soda (pop) do you drink?

« on: November 07, 2010, 06:31 AM »

I haven't watched any videos or read any articles since I'm a bit short for time, but has anyone got started on energy drink?
The new Ice Coffee V (don't know if you have it in USA) is so powerful it HAS to be seriously bad for you.

Get work done quickly though.