Acryl-iPod

Sometimes one person's blunder is my chance to make something cool that everyone wants. Case in point: one of my friends here at work inadvertently threw her iPod Shuffle in the washing machine when it was attached to her laundry, effectively bricking it. (Does this term even apply to something as small as an iPod Shuffle? I guess it's akin to saying that you have footage when you've taken video on a camera that has no film or tape. Ah, this modern world...)

After futiley trying to dock it in hopes that iTunes might recognize it and allow a reset, I decided to open it up and look inside. I didn't expect that I'd find anything that looked wrong, as these small circuit boards are almost completely composed of surface mount components and are washed after their wave soldering step, so I knew that the electronics were probably still good. I suspected that the lithium ion battery was probably not that happy to be dunked in soapy water and was rendered useless during the wash cycle.

It wasn't very easy opening the tiny case and removing the circuit board, but I found instructions online that helped me along. Once I had the thing open and put a meter to the battery, I discovered that it held no charge whatsoever. Still, I decided that the only way to see if the shuffle was still functional was to connect a battery to the terminals. I didn't have any tiny lithium ion batteries handy so I used the next best thing: a battery from a cordless phone whose charger I had lost years ago. It had almost the same voltage as the old battery, 3.6V instead of 3.7V and knowing that the iPod probably wasn't going to be that picky, I went ahead and soldered the battery in. I connected a pair of headphones and to my surprise, music started playing.

My next action was to see if iTunes would recognize the tiny skeleton of an iPod Shuffle. I had a docking cord from Monoprice.com that allowed me to plug the Shuffle into the USB port of my computer without the annoying docking station that normally comes with an iPod Shuffle. After a few moments, the Shuffle appeared in the menu. I decided to restore it so I could find out if I could upload music to it. After it restored, I found I was able to load it with music.

So now I was stuck with the tiny circuit board of an iPod with a battery 5 times bigger than it. What to do? I decided to glue it to a block of acrylic approximately the size of a normal iPod. After carefully removing the navigation disc from the shell and attaching it to the buttons on the circuit board with some super glue, I carefully aligned the headphone/USB jack, circuit board, and battery on the acrylic block. I bought the block at a local craft store; normally they're used as a stamping block for clear acrylic stamps and as such, had an alignment grid etched onto the back. The grid comes in handy for aligning the various components on the block before glue and high-strength double-sided tape attaches everything permanently.

Once I was done, I ended up with a rather cool looking device. Since the new battery has 7 times the capacity of the old one, I decided to see just how long it would last. After fully charging the batteries, I connected a pair of headphones, turned it full blast and let it run. I left it in a spare bedroom with the door closed and check it everyday after I came home from work. It ran this way for 7 days. I charged it again and tried to see how long it would run at half volume. I got impatient after 10 days and turned it off.

I tried giving it back to my friend, but she told me to go ahead and keep it since I had put in so much work into it, and besides, it was a lot bigger now and didn't have the clip that made it perfect to take along on runs. Other friends did want one and have been offering their dead Shuffles to me to convert into Acryl-iPods.

Kitten for Hoku

Well, Hoku's been kinda bored. I'm gone most of the day and she's left to sort out her own way to relieve the monotony until I come home from work. Despite being the brilliant conversationalist that I am on the evening and weekends, she's still alone 40 hours a week.

What Hoku needed was a companion to keep her company (I know that was redundant, but it was either make a parenthetical comment here or interrupt the flow of my freeform writing and think of something more clever, thus derailing my train of thought. Crap. Now I've done just that. Anyway...) and I thought that I would get another dog. But that in itself presents problems. It's not bad traveling with one dog and a simple matter to take Hoku to my parent's home when I have to travel, but 2 dogs complicates matters a lot more than one. Hoku is already a handful at races and meets, and having two dogs to look after would be a challenge. Addtionally, I thought that dumping off two canines at my parent's home would be too much for a couple of retirees, and seeing as I'm going to be gone for three months next year, making my dad take care of 4 dogs was too much.

So, what then? Something between a dog and a gerbil that is mostly independent, won't destroy the place and won't mind at all if left alone while Hoku and I go to the races. The obvious choice was a cat. Hoku loves cats and not in that "they're delicious" kind of way. That decision made, I went off to the Berkeley Human Society in search of a pet for my dog.

Right away I was drawn to a very cute kitten whose colors were described on the tag as "dilute tortoise" whatever that meant. Here's what a dilute tortoise looks like:
She's already integrated herself and made the apartment her playground and she's only been here 2 days. Upon meeting Hoku for the first time, she made the requisite hissing sound, something I would probably do if I'd never seen a dog before, but she didn't run or even growl at Hoku any further. It was probably more like a hiss born out of surprise more than warning. After that, the new kitten's curiosity got the best of her and later that evening she went and gave Hoku a very close sniff. Hoku, being the dog she is, treated the new cat as almost dangerous, and has been taking great pains to give her a wide berth, until she figures this new roommate out.

It didn't take long, and after 48 hours in the same apartment together, managed to conspire against their benevolent mutual guardian to hijack the couch.
Funny thing is, they even have similar facial expressions.
My next dilemma, one that has bugging me ever since I decided weeks ago before I got a kitten, was what to name her. Getting out a pen and paper (I recently re-discovered writing with pen and paper, something that lends itself well to brainstorming in a way that a neatly arranged keyboard can't) and played around with a few anagrams. I wanted something unique that would be a combination of letters from the names of other pets I've known over the years. I thought of Shandy and Isis. Shandy was my very first pet, a rat that I had while I was living in the dorms. She was perfect in every way except her lifespan. Isis was a cat that I adopted when I was living in my first off-campus apartment. Everyone loved her and she was a great cat, capable of some extreme cat toy driven stunts. Rearranging the letter in "Shandy" and "Isis" gave me a number of interesting combinations, however the only one that made any sense as far as being a name for a cat was...Daisy Shins.

It made sense in some weird way. Hoku and Daisy Shins are going to get along just great. They're already beginning to emulate each other.

I'm such a GTD convert

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

Yeah. Check. Got it.

For years I struggled with the ups and down, confused by my apparent lack of concentration for some things and my days-long laser beam focus on others. Like most people I really believed that ADD was a lack of attention to anything and everything. I thought that I couldn't have ADD since I had moments where my concentration was so incredible that I blamed a lack of motivation for the times I couldn't or wouldn't concentrate. I fell for the most common misconception about ADD.

As an example, I remember when I directed Heidi Chronicles for a small theater in Berkeley. Not only did I direct the thing, I also did most of the costuming, all of the music, some of the lighting, built some of the set, and acted. All while maintaining a 40-hour a week job. It was even more hectic for The Sisters Rosensweig. When I directed that play, I also did all of the things I did above in addition to being the play's stage manager. I distinctly remember not sleeping for three days while I worked to get the set done, the music edited, and the painting and wallpapering done. I invited my then-manager who was a theater buff to come see it. His first reaction was one of disbelief. He had trouble equating the tardy, late with projects basket case he knew at work with the fanatic workaholic that produced the play he just saw. That's ADD's Jeckyl and Hyde.

There's a reason that I've had fifteen jobs in 12 years. I either had the foresight to get out while I still had a good reputation, was smart enough to take an assignment that only lasted as long as it took for me to get bored, or found something more bright and more shiny and more interesting. Right about now would have been the time for me to leave my current job, but a coworker sat me down and had a long and enlightening talk with me. He actually had me pegged as someone afflicted (blessed?) with ADD and made some suggestions about what methods I could employ to help me exploit the Jeckyl and wrangle the Hyde aspects of my ADD.

One of the things he suggested was I try David Allen's "getting things done" methodology.

Ha! Right. That's all I need, some self-help guru telling me how to "get things done."

I borrowed the book Getting Things Done and thought that it was pretty boring. How was this going to help? Fortunately I didn't chuck GTD out of my life just yet. I figured I'd at least try to listen to the mp3s that were given to me.

What a difference that made. It was one thing to read the boring dry book and quite another to listen to David Allen's enthusiasm through my iPod.

In a nutshell, GTD has shown me how to "dump my brain" onto paper and onto my computer so that I can finally think. I hate analogies because they're weak, but think of your brain as RAM. If your psychic RAM is filled running endless loops of everything that vies for your attention, you might just have enough processing power left to brush your teeth in the morning. That was me until I started using GTD and writing things down.

One of the most startling things I learned was that your brain makes no distinction between promises made externally to others and those made internally to yourself. If you flake on yourself, it's as bad as someone breaking a promise to you. Crazy, but true.

Go ahead and check out what others have been saying on the web about GTD.

I now carry a small notepad everywhere and with GTD it's changed how I look at and process information. It goes beyond task lists and action items.

Works for me.

Batteries for remote controls

Well, I built this yesterday in response to my DLO remote for my iPod docking station going dead. After opening the battery compartment, I discovered that the power source for the remote was a small lithium button cell that put out 3 volts. I went over to the corner Walgreens and was flabbergasted to learn that one of those little button batteries cost $4.29! Why, that's nearly 2.7% of the cost of the docking station when I bought it new. I simply was not going to fall prey to the rampant highway robbery of purchasing a small power cell for my remote.

In formulating a strategy for replacing the remote's power supply, I set some criteria for getting the remote functioning once again:

The solution had to be less than the cost of a new battery.
The remote must be fully functional.
The power source must last as long or significantly longer than the 3V lithium replacement battery.
Must be friendly to the environment.

Ancillary problems to be solved:
Must be able to find the remote.
Solution must make the remote far more interesting than before.

To get the poor dead remote functional once again was simple: provide a power source of 3 volts or close. Obviously the amperage requirement of the device was very low given the size of the battery that normally powers the device. Making the device power source last longer than the button cell was simple; just make the capacity bigger. Batteries of this size normally deliver several micro-amp hours of current. I wanted to go completely overboard and provide at least several hours of current at several tenths, a whole amp hour if I could manage it. This would require a power cell significantly larger than the nominal power cell. My mind was reeling with the possibilities.

To satisfy the environmentally friendly aspect of the project, I decided to try to build a battery out of components I had lying around, or could buy at the local Dollar Store, keeping in mind the$4.29 limit. It turns out that rummaging through some boxes in my closet provided everything I needed to bring my concept to reality:

Two baby food jars that I was using to store miscellaneous small parts.
Two large hose clamps.
Two nearly dead D-cell batteries.
A brand new package of 2 part epoxy.
Black and red wire, 22 gauge.

In the kitchen I found sea salt and the tap provided a source of water.

I stripped the dead batteries of their steel casings so I could get to the zinc casing that acts as the anode for the cell. I cleaned the casings with some sandpaper to ready them for soldering. My next step was to use my Greenlee punch to make an aperture in the baby food jar lid large enough to accommodate the D-cell. About a centimeter down from the top of the cell, I soldered the cell to the lid around the entire circumference, making sure that I wasn't leaving any voids where electrolyte could leak through. To make sure that no electrolyte leaked through the nylon insulator at the top between the positive cathode and negative anode, I sealed it with a liberal coating of 3-minute epoxy. Since the EMF of a carbon-zinc chloride cell was about 1.4 volts, I would need two cells wired in series to satisfy the voltage requirements of the remote. My next step after soldering the two primary cells to their jar lids was to make a couple of small holes in each to allow the flow of aqueous electrolyte into the cell.

Making the new electrolyte was simple. I just need to make a saturated sodium chloride solution. I mixed the sea salt with water from the tap. No complex chemistry here and it was completely safe to make. I aliquoted enough of the saltwater into each jar to reach the holes I drilled in the dead D-cells. To ensure that nothing leaks out, I sealed the lid to the jar with more epoxy.

Now to make sure that these two cells stayed together as a pair, I used the two large hose clamps. Since one alone was too small to reach around both cells, I fed the ends of the clamps into the other to make one big clamp with two tightening screws, making the cell pair look that much more robust. After the epoxy set, I was ready to connect them in series. Soldering a wire from the cathode of one cell to the anode of the other cell and a wire to the battery's anode and cathode made the battery functional and ready to hook up to the remote. I opened the remote up, identified the positive and negative terminals and soldered the wires from my newly-built battery. I left the old battery cover off to provide an entry for the substantially larger wires to get through and I was nearly done. The hose clamps made a nice surface to attach the remote to the battery with heavy duty double sided tape.

The new power source has an EMF of about 2.8 volts; plenty enough to run the remote and will last substantially longer than the little lithium cell. The little lithium cell had about 225 mAh capacity and weighed in at 0.1 ounce or 3 grams, this bad boy has about 16000 mAh capacity and weighs in at over a pound and a half or 700 grams. The ancillary project goal of making the remote loss proof was achieved as it seems highly unlikely that this combo will be lost inside the couch between the cushions. It also gives the remote a new aesthetic that appeals to me - and maybe only me. At least I didn't pay $4.29 for a battery, and I got to distract myself for a couple of hours.