The Rainbow Orchid

In the same 'Graphic Novel' vein, an online strip entitled 'Rainbow Orchid' by Garen Ewing has now been published in a limited edition run of 50 copies. Yours Truly is getting one!!!

It's a nice strip that chronicles the adventures of one Julius Chancer in his quest for the elusive Rainbow Orchid.

Written in the European 'Ligne Claire, Bande Desinee' style similar to Herge, Bob de Moor etc.

Looking forward to getting my hands on it come December.

Take a look at the strip online at http://www.garenewing.co.uk/rainboworchid/webcomic/stripIndex.php

Artemis Fowl - The Graphic Novel

After becoming (by my own admission) the first 38 year old to finish reading every Artemis Fowl novel within the first two months of 2007, I was quite pleased to that Eoin Colfer had released a Graphic Novel of the very first 'Arty' book.

While it's not as detailed as the novel, it's a great effort and really nice to see Eoin's rendition of the characters.

Now that Harry Potter is complete, Artemis Fowl is a nice distraction to look forward to!!
Bring on book No. 6, Mr. Colfer

Next project on the 'Wishlist'

While there is still so much to do on the house, I cannot help myself but dream about all the 'NON ESSENTIAL' projects that I want to do.

Next on the list is back lit house numbers. Not your standard sized house numbers, but at least a 18 inches in height, black anodized aluminium mounted on a Plexiglas substrate that will contain a multitude of tricolored led's, essentially enabling me to obtain the complete visible spectrum. So I can have Orange for Halloween, Red for Canada Day, Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness, Red/Green/Blue for Christmas etc. etc.

After agonizing over how I was to achieve the color control, I found this great instructable from Dan that seems to suit my purpose to a T. Here's the link and look forward to us wearing our heart on our porch.

http://www.instructables.com/id/RGB-Color-Controllable-High-Power-LED-Room-%2b-Spot-/

Truly 'Cordless'

I'm back! No explanations for my brief departure. Been busy. Doing things!!!

So I got myself this cordless wonder that has 4 handsets enabling us to have extensions all over and more importantly without running wires all over the place. Unfortunately the main unit needed the incomer from the phone line as well as the power from the transformer. And it looked something like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This would not fly. So I set about making the phone truly cordless. The phone line was already run from the basement to the wall jack on which the phone sat. All I had to do was run the power line through the floor and up to the wall jack. After putting it off for a while, I realised that the phone line in place was a 2 pair, with just one pair utilised for the phone. I then proceeded to chop up the transformer cord in half, splice one end to the top two spare wires and the transformer with cord down in the crawl space. Put it all back together, and Lo and Behold - 'Cordless' Cordless Phone!!!!!

It's a good thing!

Measuring Output Voltage across the spare wires. Unsure what 1 Volt can actually do!

Wires stripped and ready

Jack hanging out of the Wall Plate (Apologies to Bauer)

Power socket in the crawl space for the PSU. Telephone line is visible going through the floor.