The Talik

DIY MacBook Pro stand

March 23rd, 2008 | Category: cool,Hardware,Projects

It’s been a while since I’ve done any engineering/DIY posts so today I’ll change that and show you how to make your very own MacBook Pro stand.

Here are the materials you will need: (1)1.5×1.5 foot sheets .25inch of Acrylic (2)Acrylic glue (3)Table saw (4)sandpaper. First start by getting out you acrylic sheets and marking where you need cut. Here are the dimensions for the various pieces:

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After marking down the lines on the acrylic it’s time to visit the table saw. This is by far the hardest and most dangerous step in constructing the stand, but with a little common sense you should be fine. Obviously one of the most important parts of the saw is the blade. Websites that I have read suggest that you use a carbide tipped blade with ~ 5 teeth/inch. Despite this suggestion I ended up just using a normal carbide blade with ~ 2 teeth/inch and everything turned out fine (just had to do a little more sanding). Most of the parts are pretty simple to cut except the legs. To compensate for this I made a simple jig that allowed me to make the cut.

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After cutting all the pieces it is time to sand the edges so they can be glued. To do that I suggest starting out with fairly rough sandpaper, something around 50 grit should work. From there move to 100 grit and finished it all of with 320 grit paper.

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The final step is to get everything glued together. Because this was my first time I used a general acrylic glue made for aquariums. It’s more forgiving and easier to work with in my opinion, however it doesn’t look as good nor is it as strong as glues that actually melt the acrylic pieces together. So after you have decided which type of glue to use just put all of the parts together according to my diagram, let the glue dry, and you’re done!!!

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Though the stand has a old G4 PowerBook on it the stand was actually made to fit my MacBook Pro which I got soon after.

Hope you enjoy your Stand!!!

More pictures…

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Toroidal Internal Combustion Engine

February 12th, 2008 | Category: cool,Hardware,Uncategorized

So I just read about this company called Rotoblock. The company is basaed in Santa Rosa California and is working on a type of engine called a toroidal internal combustion engine. The torodial engine made by Rotoblock is an evolution of the oscillating piston engine (O.P.E) designed by Dr. Monti Farrell.

As skeptical as I am that any of the large auto manufactures will adopt the revolutionary engine I can’t help but root for the small company.

The O.P.E seems a promising alternative to traditional reciprocating piston engines mainly because of it’s increased power to wight ratio.Given that Mazda has been using Wankel engines for some time now maybe their is some hope for Rotoblock.

How ever it turns out it’s always great to see innovation alive and well.

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Legos

February 11th, 2008 | Category: cool,Hardware,Projects

So in an effort to get back into this whole blogging ordeal I’m going to start of with a nice interesting post.Over winter break my brother, mom, and I decided to organize our Lego collection. At the end of the tedious process of assembling and finding the various legos I took a few pictures with my camera and the awesome tripod from my aunt and uncle this christmas.Without further adieu:

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more lego pictures…

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It Goes To Eleven!!!

April 30th, 2006 | Category: cool,Hardware

Those of you who haven’t seen Spinal Tap may not to apreciate this find to its full extent, but I recently stumbled upon this dial at school. The special thing about it of course is that the numbers don’t just stop at ten, no no they go all the way up to eleven. So I brought my camera back a few days later and got a picture of it. The dial is on a table and it must have something to do with audio but I don’t understand why it’s mounted on a table, any ideas? Pretty cool though Watch the Clip

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Apple Remote predecessor?

April 05th, 2006 | Category: cool,Hardware

This is just a picture that I took of a remote that my grandpa has. I’ve never seen a tv remote with so few buttons, kinda made me think of the Apple remote for Front Row.

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UberWiFi Powerbook Update

March 27th, 2006 | Category: Hardware,Woes

I just got into Florida today it’s nice and warm about 22ºC today. But as I was leaving I forgot one important thing my UberWiFi antenna!!! Fortunatly I can still get an okay signal but there’s no fun in just a normal antenna. sigh……

Below are some pictures of: the ghetto plane (notice the tape), the one spot where I can get a good signal, all the access points from airport-grandpa’s condo, and the two accesible access points from inside the condo.

Also-thanks to everyone commenting on and reading my blog.

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UberWiFi Powerbook

March 25th, 2006 | Category: Hardware,Projects

Pretty soon here I’m going to be leaving to visit my Grandpa in Florida for spring break. Luckly he lives in a condo and for the past couple of years there has been a nice person with an open but weak WiFi connection. So I decided to go on a quest for ~~the Holy Grail~~ a way to better my wireless reception. I had many options while on my quest for wireless reception perfection. Should I build a Cantenna or maybe a Omni antenna, but then my brother suggested that I take apart our old broken wireless router and snatch the wireless PC card from it. After some searching I found out that the card is a USR 2410. Sadly U.S. robitics doesn’t have a OS X driver but a company called IOxperts does. Unfortunately it costs $20 and the demo version that I have shuts down the driver after 30 minutes then I have to restart my computer to get it working again. But anyway having having the external antenna increases my wireless reception pretty substantially and I’m looking foward to good, strong WiFi reception.

Here are some pictures of me taking apart the antenna and turning my normal powerbook into a UberWiFi Powerbook