Vincent Creative Blog

Making a shop counter

2012-01-13T08:46:00.000+10:30

You know, everybody is going to need a shop counter in their life at some point. So pay attention! Coz I'm about to show you how!

It's nothing fancy really. Very cheap. But it looks quite good! Like a proper counter actually :-)

Get wood. This counter will be 250x92x60 cm deep. The wooden frame we'll start with however is 231x72x55 cm. I got 6 pieces of 300x69x44 cm.

Saw in to bits.

I made drawings first using Google Sketchup. This is what the first step should look like.

Not a bad start.

Next put on the smallest beams.

Voila. I used the counter top as a working surface because it's actually more even than the floor was ;-)

Next up are the legs.

There they are. The shop was out of white ones so I used black ones for the back since customers won't see those.

Then the sides and top need to be put on.

I actually put the sides on while the frame was still lying on the top. That way everything it straight. Then I turned it upright.

Attach the top and you're done!

This is the rear-view.

Even that looks as designed ;-)

Making a gate

2011-09-12T06:53:00.000+09:30

This post is about making a gate.

I wanted a small gate to close off the entry to my door. My dad had some leftover wood he "rescued" from being thrown away by someone. I'm glad he did because it's a high quality wood that is probably not allowed anymore these days.

So let's begin.

(Click to enlarge)
The wood. High quality, straight planks. More or less painted. Good stuff.

I used a sawing bench since it's a fair bit of work. I used it to cut the pieces the right length and also to cut the tips.

Quickly put together after it was cut. Looks promising.

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Back home I have a tiled floor. The lines between the tiles come in handy. I used the lines to make sure everything was on a 90 degree angle.

The result of putting in a zillion screws. Well, not really a zillion, OK... The top 2 horizontal pieces and the bottom one have 2 screws on each intersection of wood. The diagonal piece has 2 screws at the ends and 1 everywhere else. You can see the screws reasonably OK in the next picture.

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The diagonal bit is crucial to making a solid gate. Without it, the gate would collapse after it was put on the wall. It is important that the bottom end of the diagonal bit is on the side where it is mounted against the wall.

So I painted the back of it first. That way I could paint the front after mounting it to the wall.

(Click to enlarge)
You can see the separate piece of wood here as well. That's to put on the wall. The gate will then be mounted on this piece of wood.

To put it on the wall I needed some big screws and matching plugs. I wanted to know exactly where the holes needed to be so I drilled hole in the wood first, held it against the wall and then drilled holes in the stone with a small drill-bit, just to mark where the holes needed to be.

It needs to support a fair weight so I put in quite a few screws. Starting to look good there!

Next up are the hinges. I bought the biggest ones I could find. Since the wood is hard, I pre-drilled the holes for the screws to prevent wood-splitting. You have to be very careful though not to drill through the wood!

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I sat the gate on a small piece of wood to lift it off the ground a bit. It happened to have exactly the right height. This made it easy to mount the gate on the wall.

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Yay!

I don't want it to be smacked against the wall by the wind when it's open so I made a hook to hold it still.

I painted the front of the gate as well.

Not bad I think :-)

I had to think about how to lock the gate for a while. There's a gate and a pole. Hmm... In the end I decided to make a sliding lock that slides in to the pole. Except the pole is made of solid metal and the hole needed to be 1cm in diameter. I drilled the hole by using 3-, 4.5-, 6-, 8- and 10 mm drills. I had to use my power drill for the last 2 bits.

After that it was a simple matter of putting the lock on my gate. I did this by holding it on the gate with the slide in the hole. Then I pre-drilled the holes for the screws and screwed it on.

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And so the gate got finished. This is the view from my hall way. I like the result very much.

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And there is the all finished gate from the front. It was a very satisfying bit of work and I enjoyed making it.

Mission accomplished :-)

Fixing outside plaster

2011-09-06T07:33:00.000+09:30

I am preparing my little patio at the back so I can put up a small shed. The wall that the shed will be standing next to needs fixing and painting. The weather was reasonably OK so I took my chance.

Plastering is difficult and requires a fair bit of skill. This was my first time ever and even though I'm pleased with the result, a proper craftsman would've done a much better job.

Anyway, this is what I did:

The bad part of the wall. I wanted that big hole and the crappy corner edge fixed. I cleaned it so it would be reasonably dust-free.

I bought stuff particularly suited for this kind of work. I have no idea if there's a special name for it in English though...

It said 3.7 litres of water on 20 kilo of cement. I only needed 2 kilo of cement so I added 370ml but that was too much, the mixture stayed to runny. I think I ended up putting an extra half kilo of cement in.

With a simple spatula I put the cement in the hole and other places.

The result is quite rough but a bit of sanding will do the trick. It's not smooth and flat but it's a lot better than it was before :-)

Straightening out plants

2011-08-20T05:39:00.001+09:30

Not really any serious DIY but a small chore to do around the house anyway is doing up your plants. These plants have been bugging me for ages. It's too much plant and they're not standing straight up. Rubbish collects underneath them which attracts vermin.

So it needed a quick face-lift.

I put one of these in the wall behind each plant and tied them to it with a bit of metal wire.

I also trimmed them down a lot and now it's a lot more presentable. They'll also withstand the winter storms a lot better this way.

Another sensor light

2011-08-14T21:23:00.000+09:30

Here's a quick explanation of how I put up another sensor light outside of my front door.

At the back of my light were a few places where the plastic was very thin for you to cut a hole. These are the holes used for mounting it to the wall.

Because I wanted to put it up in a corner I needed to create a bit of surface so I cut a 45 degrees angle on a block of wood.

The wood is hard which means it has a higher chance to split when you put a screw into it. So all the places where a screw needs to be were going to be pre-drilled with a very small drill 1/2 to 1/3 of the thickness of the screw. Also the wood needs to be removed where the power chord comes out.

3 holes for screws and 1 showing where to cut away some wood for the chord.

This is the corner it will be in.

To fix our "surface" well, I drilled 3 holes for long screws to fit through.

This is the idea...

... After fixing the wood we have a solid surface for mounting the light.

Wire the light. Be sure to switch off electricity for safety reasons.

And mount the light. Voila, all done.

Creating an Urban Micro Garden.

2011-06-27T03:07:00.000+09:30

In the city where I live, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, it is very crowded. Like most major cities really. People live in apartments where only the person in the bottom apartment may have a garden and sometimes the people all the way at the top have a roof terrace. However, even the garden that some people have are usually very small. Mine is 10 square metres for example but it gets zero sun. So it's good for storage but nothing else. The front of my house gets sun from the early morning till late afternoon. So that's where I want my garden! But since it's a bit anti-social to use up all of the sidewalk (and a bit illegal, too ;-) it has to be small, very small... Other people had the same problem and the idea of urban micro gardens (or sometimes urban micro "farms" if they actually grow food!) was born.

This blog post shows how I made mine.

Last weekend I went to a garden centre and bought the borders and proper dirt. It's actually all quite inexpensive. Check your local garden centre for prices. I needed 6x50cm and 10x8cm pieces and 160 litres of dirt. I also bought some plants.

This is the "before" picture. Pretty ordinary. But that's about to change :-)

Clean the place up a bit. It will make working nicer.

I placed the border around the windows to see where it needed to go exactly and which tiles needed to be taken out.

One tile in the middle was easily removed so that's where I started.

All the tiles have been removed.

The next step is to dig a big hole. I made mine about 20cm deep. In the middle I made it about 35-40 deep though because I'm going to plant a big rose there which needs more dirt than the smaller plants.

Make sure the "bottom" is as flat and straight as possible and then start by putting in the side and continue all the way round. I used a piece of brick that came out of the ground as a measure to make sure all the parts stuck out evenly.

Create the whole border this way. Be accurate, it saves you from having to do things again.

Fill it up with dirt.

It's a bit tricky putting the tiles back because there may not be enough that fit. I barely made it. A few holes had to be filled up with sand here and there.

The next day I put up this grid for the rose to grow on.

Now it is finally time for the fun part! The planting :-)

(Click to enlarge)
And here it is, an Urban Micro Garden!

Pimping IKEA BISSA

2011-06-20T01:16:00.001+09:30

So... I needed a shoe cupboard. Where do we look for a cheap shoe cupboard? IKEA, right. €19,95. But it fits 8 pair of shoes (well, kids sizes, not mine! but anyway...) and I only need it to store 3-4 pair, that's a waste of storage space!

And hence I turned the the top shoe drawer in to a door with a shelve behind it.

Start by purchasing yourself a BISSA at IKEA.

You'll need a few more things. Handles will make the cupboard look a lot better but it also makes it very clear how to open the door or drawer. Without them you'll get people pulling down your door thinking it's a drawer. I bought TAG handles at IKEA.

You need to be careful with the hinges. The BISSA cupboard fronts are positioned "inside" the cupboard and not covering it. Most hinges that you buy (including ALL the hinges you can buy separate at IKEA!) are for front panels that are positioned to cover the whole cupboard, like the ones in your kitchen probably.

Oh, and you need wood for a shelve later on...

This is what IKEA thinks the BISSA should look like. Well, I'm going to replace that top drawer with a door and put a shelve behind it. If you're curious to see what that looks like, scroll down to the bottom of this post.

We need to pretend we're IKEA engineers now, doing the work that they usually do for us: thinking of where holes need to be etc.

Opening the box gives us a heap of things. Most of it we need.

Now, clear a work space and get a tape measure ready!

Place the left side of the cupboard on the work space and also the 2 fronts, like in the picture above. Put the plastic parts of the drawers on it too. Position them where they need to be then align the holes in the fronts with the holes in the plastic parts.

Positioning the hinges kinda correctly is crucial. Be as accurate as possible. So while everything is aligned, lay down the top hinge and find a place where there are no holes that can be in the way of the ones that we need. I found 6cm from the top of the front to be a good place.

For the bottom hinge these 2 holes were a little bit in the way. Well, potentially anyway.

So I positioned the bottom hinge on top of these holes. More precisely; I positioned the hole in the side panel in between the 2 holes in the hinge. The big hole that is required in the door panel overlaps with the little hole already there so that will be cut out. Perfect plan! ;-)

I was a bit stupid and forgot to get the bottom of the panel in the picture but the 50cm mark is indicating that the centre of the hinge gets aligned 10cm from the bottom of the panel.

The holes for the hinges in the door panel need to be 35mm in diameter and 4mm away from the edge of the panel. So the holes' centers are 21.5mm away from the edge. Be accurate!

Now, the panel for the door is 15mm thick. The hole for the hinge needs to be 10mm deep minimum. The centre tip on the drill is 4mm. Panic! So, you want to make very sure not to drill to deep or you will be looking in to a hole from the front. This is nearly undoable by hand so I advise you use a drill-stand with a depth setting. It's a bit close but it can be done, if only you are patient and accurate enough.

I did a pretty good job drilling those holes I have to say. Exactly 1cm deep, 4mm from the edge. Enough to fit the hinges.

The door with the fitted hinges. Just for show, no need to fix them yet.

Now, position everything on the work space like before, but add the right side of the cupboard as well now.

Align things properly.

The positions for screws need to be marked so there can be little holes pre-drilled for the screws. Position the door against the plastic part and determine how far the holes for the hinge need to be away from the edge. In my case it was 58mm. Keep in mind that we have already measured the center-line of the hinges. Remember? 6cm from the top and 10cm from the bottom.

Measure the distance between the holes in the hinge. In my case 3cm is OK. So 1 hole will be 1.5cm above the center-line and 1 hole will be 1.5cm below the center-line. Mark those holes.

Also mark all the holes in the door.

After marking everything for fixing the door, let's think about the shelve for a bit. First we need a small shelve. I happened to have a few shelved of the IKEA PAX system lying around so I took one of those and cut it to the right size using a jigsaw. You figure out the right size by measuring the inside of the cupboard when it gets put together later. So just put the wood for these shelves aside for later now.

The shelve needs to be somewhere close to the bottom of the top front panel but not too low otherwise big shoes might get stuck behind it. So with the tape measure it seems that 40cm from the top of the side panel seems a good idea.

Pretending to be IKEA engineers for a bit longer we have to mark the places where the shelve-holders will be. Do this in both the left and the right-side panels. I thought 1 at 4cm from the back of the panel and 1 at 21cm from the back of the panel would be fine.
Again: be accurate or the shelve will not position well!

Now get some drill bits and start drilling! Be careful not to drill all the way through though. That would be a real pity for all the effort that gets put in ;-) The size of the drill depends on the size of the screw you're using. These holes only exist to make it easier for the screw to go in but it needs to leave sufficient wood for the screw to hold itself on to.

The holes for the hinges go only in the left panel.

Because I opened a pack of PAX shelves I happened to also have these shelve holders. I didn't want to use the "pluggy" bit so I cut that off.

This is what the side panels look like with all the holes drilled and the shelve holders screwed on. Circled is an extra shelve holder that is actually positioned in a way to serve as a door-stop :-)

We are now done with pretending to be IKEA engineers. We can become plain old IKEA customers again and start putting things together now ;-)

First put the cupboard together exactly like the included guide explains but do not put together the top drawer.

Fix the hinges according to the holes we pre-drilled. Then mount the door and also make yourself a shelve to go on the shelve-holders you used.

With the door closed you should not be able to tell the difference between what it's supposed to look like.

But wait! What's that? A shelve?! WOW! ;-)

As a finishing touch, mount the handles. It looks better and everybody will open the door or drawer the right way.

So there's a pimped IKEA BISSA with a shelve instead of a drawer. Good stuff!

The IKEA Bjurön

2011-01-12T03:52:00.001+10:30

This is a packaged IKEA Bjurön. It's a round piece of wood with 3 wheels. You can use it to put a big plant on for example. That's what I'm using it for anyway. You can't really call this DIY because it makes even LEGO look like more work!

Like I said; a piece of wood and parts to mount 3 small wheels.

This is how each wheel is put together.

Still a round piece of wood but now it has wheels on it...

Very handy! :-)

A small IKEA Lack shelf

2010-12-31T07:35:00.000+10:30

Here's an empty wall. You have to drill two holes in it for this tiny Lack shelf that I'm mounting. The holes need to be very accurate or the shelf will not fit well.

I'm actually holding it upside down, sorry. The shelf is placed over 2 screws and should fix itself when pressed down over the screws.

The end result.

A security-strip on your door.

2010-11-15T03:18:00.000+10:30

To put security strips on your door, start by cutting them at the right length.

If you like to work neatly, use a file to smoothen the edges. Do your nails while you're at it.

Put on the door strip first. Mark the edge of the door frame on the door.

Depending on the kind of strip you use you need to position it on the door, in my case the strip has to be 2mm away from where I marked.

Fix the strip with only 2 or 3 screws.

See if the door still closes (don't forget your keys!)

If it looks fine, get the other strip and mark where it needs to be.

Screw that strip on with 2-3 screws as well and check to see if the door still closes. If it does, put in 20 more screws and it's done!

Mounting a TV

2010-09-19T00:44:00.002+09:30

These days most people have flat TV's. It saves a lot of space over the old CRT monsters we used to have. Another advantage is that these TV's can be mounted on the wall. Mine was standing on my (tiny) dining table and I really need the space so it needed to go on the wall.

So I bought this wall mounting kit from Vogel's.

The contents. Almost everything you need apart from the drill, drill bits and screw driver.

First you attach the brackets to the back of your tellie. Yes, in the picture you can see I had accidentally screwed one a bit higher than the other. I found out when I was hanging it on the wall, very frustrating. OOPS!

Put together the part that goes on the wall.

Drrrrrrrrrrrill holes.

Mount the wall-part. Vogel's come with a little water-bubble to see if it's horizontal. Now I know my table is not ;-/

And then hang your TV on the wall-part. All done.

Making a fly screen.

2010-06-20T03:25:00.004+09:30

I hate mosquitos. But I like fresh air from an open window. So I need fly screens.

Here's how to make a simple fly screen:

For a simple rectangular from we need 4 pieces of wood, the corners cut on a 45 degree angle. Mark the wood.

Cut the wood.

And see to it that things fit nicely.

Then get some metal corners and screws.

Mark the holes.

And pre-drill the holes for the screws a little bit so that the wood doesn't split when screwing in it.

Put on the 4 metal corners.

Get your mesh and a tacker (staple gun).

Attach the mesh and there you go, a fly screen!

Works in prison cells as well! ;-)

The IKEA BESTA

2009-11-21T07:16:00.005+10:30

Today I put two Bestas together. It is the simplest piece of IKEA furniture I have seen so far. I wanted two, one to put my TV on and one to put my printer on.

It comes in one box only. Easy peasy.

There is of course the standard IKEA Allen key included but I had no use for it. I did need these guys though; a flat screw driver and a Phillips screw driver.

Start by screwing these guys in the top piece. You need six.

Then place the sides and fix them.

The short ones are used for the sides, the long ones are for the thicker middle part.

Sides and middle part attached.

Slide in the back pieces.

Then screw the remaining six fixation points in to the bottom part (recognisable by the extra, smaller holes)

Turn the cupboard on its side.

To mount the bottom piece, place it next to the cupboard and fix one side first.

Then fix the remaining points.

The Besta standard comes with these little feet.

I bought the higher legs for it though.

They are easy to attach. (And you will get 4 Allen keys of the same size...)

And there it is.

The cupboard in place.

Test Track II (N scale)

2009-01-18T23:23:00.003+10:30

Before starting a project as big like the coffee table model railroad, I want to make sure certain things will work. Therefore I am now making a little test lay-out that allows me to test all the things that could potentially block creating the coffee table track.

It's also my introduction to digital railroading so it is also good to try it out like this first in that respect.

Before anything can be tested, three phases have to be completed:

Construction of the lay-out
Wiring the lay-out
Writing software to operate the lay-out

This blog post describes phase one: Constructing the lay-out.

First the plans. It will be a two level lay-out. This is the bottom part:

A simple reverse loop which is entered after driving down the spiral through the inside track.

This is the top part:

When arriving at the top level the train can run through the loop and go down again or it can enter the station where the loco can be driven to the front of the train again if necessary.

I used the spiral parts that I created before. For tips on how to create one, look at this blog post.

NOTE: The reverse loops must be isolated from the rest of the track otherwise you will get an electric short cut!

I got a 100 x 54 cm piece of wood. Well, MDF. Mark the holes for the threaded rods for the spiral.

After the holes are drilled we can start.

Laying out track is not very hard. Here I'm up to the first level in the spiral. I put a little piece of double sided tape underneath the track in some places so the track lies nice and sturdy.

Here the spiral is finished.

I cut another piece of MDF. This one had a size of 54 x 50 cm. I attached it with threaded rods as well.

Then bridge the gap between the spiral and the top level and lay out the rest of the track.

Spiral view.

Top view. Ready for wiring.

Installing Windows from USB on the Asus Eee pc 1000H

2008-12-24T20:36:00.008+10:30

As a new owner of an Asus Eee pc 1000H one of the first things I wanted was to install Windows XP my self. I didn't like how it had loads of stuff pre-installed. But because the device does not have an optical drive the only external device I could boot it from was a USB stick. I never created a bootable USB stick and getting the Eee pc to boot from it was not easy either. Then there is the issue of Asus only providing an image of the factory installed system so that you can really only get it back to the factory 'cluttered' default state. You can not do a clean install from that dvd.

But there are tricks. Tricks that allow you to start a proper Windows XP installation from a USB stick. A Windows XP installation that was created from the factory installed Windows XP on your Eee pc. I'll outline everything in this blog post.

Disclaimer
Everything described in this post worked for an "out of the box" Eee pc 1000H (with finished setup) using a 4GB Kingston DataTraveler USB stick (slider version).

Performing the above actions CAN result in failure with your computer's harddrive being wiped withough having a working installation of Windows on it.

Entering the BIOS.
First things first. It's hard to enter the BIOS of the Eee pc. To make it easier, once you manage to get in by keeping the F2 key pressed whilst booting, find the "Boot Booster" setting and disable it. This will make the booting a bit slower but it will allow you to enter the BIOS or the boot menu a lot easier. Which brings me to the next issue.

The Boot menu.
The Eee pc can boot from USB devices such as USB sticks or optical USB connected devices. Even though you can set the boot order in the BIOS to look for a USB device first, it never worked for me. But then I found out that pressing ESC while booting takes you to the boot menu where you can select any connected USB device.

Creating a bootable USB stick that starts the Windows XP setup.
First off you need to download some Windows 98 DOS files here and unzip them in a directory anywhere. Also, just incase, download the USB Disk Storage Format Tool here.

Now you need to install a little tool called WinSetupFromUSB on your Eee pc. This tool will use your existing Windows installation to create setup files with. You can download it from here and you find more info on it here. After installing you can run it from the Windows Start menu and this is what it looks like:

With the top-most Browse button, locate the folder that has the I386 folder in it and select that folder. With the second Browse button, select your USB stick.

If you haven't prepared your USB stick yet, click the HP Format Tool button. This will start the USB Disk Storage Format Tool from Hewlett-Packard. You may need to install this previously.

The USB Disk Storage Format Tool has the following interface:

After setting the interface's properties like above, hit the Start button. It will create a Windows 98, DOS-mode bootable USB stick.

When this is finished, you return to the WinSetupFromUSB screen. When you hit the Go button it will start creating a Windows XP setup on the USB stick for you. This may take a while. Maybe go watch some Family guy episodes or something.

Installing Windows XP

When the setup is created and you reboot your machine, keep the ESC key pressed to select your USB stick to boot from.
Select the first part of the setup. This will start the text based part of the Windows XP setup. After a reboot (leave the USB stick) press ESC again to boot from the USB stick and this time select the second setup-stage which is the GUI part.
If you forget to press ESC the Eee-pc will boot from the hard disk and complain it can't find the file HAL.DLL.

From here onwards you just follow the Windows XP setup.

When Windows is installed you will need to install all the drivers manually. You can find those in the Drivers directory on the Asus provided dvd. Copy them on a USB stick and install them one by one.

Finishing the drawers

2008-09-20T17:49:00.003+09:30

OK, it's taken a while but you know, I'm a busy guy...

To finally finish the drawers, all that needed to be done was putting on a nice front and knob. The fronts I made from plywood panels, 4 mm thick. The knobs I bought at the hardware store.

I measured the size quite precise. Then the panels were cut and glued on to the drawers. Use a glue that dries fast so that you don't have to keep it pressed for hours. You wouldn't enjoy that, trust me.

In the picture you can see that I stuck a little piece of paper in between two panels. Like wise I also had one stuck under the bottom drawers at some point. This is to make sure the panel doesn't move down. You know, gravity and such.

After they dried I drilled a hole in the front where the knob would come. Screw the knob on and it's done.

Finally this project gets the status "closed".

A simple monitor stand

2008-09-20T17:34:00.003+09:30

When you are looking at a computer screen eight hours a day, it is important to have them at a correct height otherwise you will screw up a few muscles here and there. Mine seem to get a bit unhappy at the moment so I made this monitor stand to elevate my screens. Another benefit is that you will be able to put the keyboard underneath it, creating room for papers and books etc.

Introduction: Meet Ms. table leg and Mr. shelf.

The table leg can (in my case) be screwed apart. That way we have the leg and the leg-plate. "Leg-plate" is probably not the correct name but I don't know what is. If you do, please let me know.

Use the leg-plate to draw circles where it will be screwed on the wood.

After drilling the holes (make sure NOT to drill all the way through!), mount the leg-plates on the wood.

When all leg-plates have been screwed on the wood, screw on the table legs.

And there she is, a beautiful, simple but elegant, monitor stand.

Making a drill press stand

2008-08-31T20:15:00.004+09:30

A while ago I found a drill press in our shed, wrapped in plastic. It didn't have a stand or anything though so I put it on the work bench. Recently, a frame became available after the bird cage that it was supporting was seriously upgraded. I quickly put the pieces of this simple puzzle together and hence this blog gets a new entry!

So there were a drill press and a frame. I also found a piece of 4 cm thick wood. Just chipboard but really strong. It had a workable size already, I didn't even have to cut it. How convenient is that?

These are the only things I had to buy: 6 angle brackets and 2 M10 nuts and bolts.

Use the 6 angle brackets to firmly mount the wood to the frame and you end up with a table.

Then use the M10 nuts and bolts to fix the drill press on to the table and you have a nice drill press stand.

Creating a bird cage roof

2008-08-23T19:30:00.004+09:30

We got two new bird cages for outside but they don't come with a roof. So we make some ourselves! The roofs are made out of scrap wood except for the panels. I reckon you may have some panels lying around as well though.

The roof is a simple, 90 degree model. Start by making the legs for the frame. Cut one side at a 45 degree angle. You need 4 per roof.

A fancy connection is not required so just put pairs in a vice, drill a hole for the screw and screw the two parts together.

The result should look like this.

Add a few more pieces of scrap wood like in this photo and you got your frame.

Put the panels on. Don't worry if your frame is a bit wobbly. After the panels have been screwed on it will be completely steady.

Paint.

And place on top of the cage.

power supply (now 0.75-30V / 2.7A), part 5.

2008-08-03T19:44:00.004+09:30

One last part is needed to put the wires together. Just incase it needed to be taken apart (maybe because things can screw up sometimes? ;-P ) I wanted to be able to de-solder the wires leading to the heat sink from the print board. Therefore I cut out a piece of plexi-glass (I cut a semicircle), drilled some holes in it and mounted solder lugs on them. One for each wire to be connected. After this it was testing time (basically a check to see if nothing explodes ;-).

The piece of plexi-glass is at the front here. Click the picture for a slightly larger, but much clearer version.

The finished back.

The finished front.

Finished from above.

Project completed successfully!

Power supply (now 0.75-30V / 2.7A), part 4.

2008-07-27T20:50:00.003+09:30

Mounting the transistors on the heat sink is a yucky job. You have to put paste in between the transistors and the heat sink to help conducting the heat. I used one with silver in it, it conducts heat better. Unfortunately , because of the silver it also conducts electricity better.

I first put a thin layer of paste on the heat sink. And thin means THIN. It's only purpose is to fill up microscopic holes to flatten the surface more for better contact.

Then I put the mica insulating washers in place. I actually made the holes for the transistor pins a lot bigger because I don't want the pins to come in contact with the paste due to the paste's electrical conductivity.

After this I put another very thin layer of paste on the bottom of the transistor and placed them on top of the mica washer.

After this the transistors have to be screwed on to the heat sink. The casing of the transistor will actually carry 34 Volts but I didn't want to put 34 volts on the whole heat sink, hence the mica washers. One of the screws was isolated from the transistor and is simple to use. The other one was in contact with the transistor because it will serve as the +34V contact of the transistor. It therefore is screwed directly on the transistor and the screw is shielded from the heat sink by little plastic cylinders inside the hole in the heat sink. Put a solder lug on it and fix it.

The end result of today's DIY.

PS: A note on the mica washers. The ones you buy can be pretty thick, some times more than 0.25 mm. This influences the thermal conductivity, you want them to be thinner. With a sharp knife and some patience you can "slice" them in thinner ones. The one I bought were 0.1 mm and I sliced them in half.

Power supply (now 0.75-30V / 2.7A), part 3.

2008-07-22T22:09:00.003+09:30

The power supply does need a fair bit of heat sink. Possibly later on a fan will need to be mounted but I'm not doing that yet.

To work with chunky metal it's handy to be able to use a drill press. It's very stable and it's also safer then drilling from the hand.

I had the vice screwed to the table. This was to prevent it from being lifted while drilling which could cause danger. The holes for the transistors are 4 mm wide. The four outer holes were drilled with a 4.5 mm drill to make M5 screw thread in them. I think actually you need to drill an even smaller hole for M5...

After the holes are drilled, the four outer ones needed to get screw thread in them.

Et voilá, the heat sink with beautiful holes in it, ready to be used.

Power supply (now 0.75-30V / 2.7A), part 2.

2008-07-20T22:23:00.005+09:30

The past few weeks I have redesigned the circuitry a few times and this is the "latest and greatest". Also I have bought a new transformer with 2x12V coils. Because of this I can use less power when using a lower voltage. This is good because it makes the transistors less hot. The power supply will have two voltage ranges: 0.75 - 7V and 5.5 - 30V. The maximum current will be around 2.7A

The new schematics. Click picture for a larger version.

The board with it's components. A heat sink may be added here and there in a later stage.

This is the power supply close to it's current phase. At the moment the board is connected to all front-side controls. The transformer is wired too. Now the board needs to be hooked up to the transformer and the transistors need to be mounted on the heat sink and wired. That will be done soon.

Re-using an old wheel barrow

2008-06-09T21:47:00.003+09:30

A couple of weeks ago I found this old wheel barrow in the back of the garden. I thought it was a shame to let it go to waste so I thought I fix it up a little bit.

The frame was really rusty and needed sanding. The worst part of the job...

Then I painted the frame blue. I used some paint that is OK for covering sanded rusty surfaces.

To be able to use the wheel barrow again (decoratively) I made a wooden tray and gave the wood several layers of varnish. The last layer was a nice glossy one.

I think it looks nice and I'm happy to have used the wheel barrow instead of letting it go to waste!

Replacing an outside light

2008-06-09T21:07:00.004+09:30

We had this outside light that we wanted to replace with a sensor light so that it would turn on automatically. The new light was bought at the DIY store and has both a light and a sensor.

Before starting I checked for 3 important things:
1) Is there enough room to mount the new light?
2) Will there be enough cable to reach IN to the new light?
3) Has the power been turned off?

You really don't want to find out the answer to any of these questions is "no" after you started...

This is the old light. Say "bye bye" now.

Unscrewing was a bit of a struggle. When screws seem fixed by rust or other crap, just give the case a few whacks with a hammer to loosen things up a bit. It did the trick for me :-)

After removing the old light, I cleaned up and tidied the wires. Work gets a lot easier and nicer when you have a clean and proper workplace.

Then I mounted the back panel of the new light and I connected the mains wires.

Next I connected the wires coming from the sensor and the light.

Screw the front on the back and you're done.

New track lay-out

2008-05-23T20:17:00.002+09:30

To be able to use the spirals the trains need to drive upwards with the smallest slope possible. This is the outside track. This meant the spirals had to be on the other side which is changed in this lay-out.

Test spiral

2008-05-18T22:59:00.008+09:30

Mainly to see how this is really done but also to test what some "authorities" in model railroad building are saying, I build a small test spiral this weekend. Before anything else I must say that this spiral will only be used by trains consisting of max. 5 cars including a locomotive.

It's N-scale. The curves are R1 and R2 and there are 5 cm's between levels. The outer track has an incline of 3.8% and the inner track has an incline of about 4.5% (which is why we drive up along the outside as that has the smallest incline).
The spiral was made from 3 mm thick MDF panels. This is really thin but surprisingly stiff when fixed properly!

During this build, a few things went wrong which is good so I won't do it again when building the real thing later.

Start with cutting the biggest pieces of wood. I was going to try several kinds of wood but the 3 mm MDF worked so well that I didn't bother trying the others. The white panel is 18 mm thick melamine crap wood.

I made a giant compass to draw all the circles required to build the spiral on the white panel. After you draw the circles, mark the points where a rod is going to be.

To fix the different levels, get some threaded steel rod. Make sure it's nice and smooth and clean thread. I had to go back to buy new ones. After I cut the first ones up I noticed how crap they were and that you couldn't put a nut on it without using heavy machinery...

Mount all the cut rods firmly.

Because the edge of a panel is in the middle of a circle you can't position the compass properly. I made a little helper out of scrap wood.

Place one panel tight against the helper and draw your circles on the panel. As the spiral goes up, the diameter of the circles should be a little bit bigger than what you drew on the white panel. The formula for this is the Pythagoras formula: A^2 = B^2 + C^2. So if the diameter of the outside of the spiral track is 50 and it goes up 2.5 cm (!!! HALF of the spiral distance of 5 cm in my case !!!) you should use a diameter of sqr(2500 + 6.25) = 50.1. This may look too little to bother with but it works a lot nicer when things fall in place well instead of forced.

If all goes well you end up with a lot of circles. Inside and outside of the spiral and circles for rod positions.

When that's done, cut out the half tracks.

Now the best part can begin: Building the actual spiral. Fix the spiral track on the rods between 2 nuts. I had to fix the bottom with a nail because it wouldn't go down. Possibly due to a miscalculation (I used the whole 5 cm instead of 2.5 cm when calculating new diameters...)

Build the spiral further.

spiral tracks may have to be fixed to each other to make them even.

Do bit by bit, including the track because you can't really reach well.

And when it's finished, test it by running a train up and down. Here's my little NS 1100 pulling a few cars without any trouble.

Here my NS 1200 pulls 3 cars up the spiral without much effort.

I have to say though, my little glasskasten has a lot more trouble going up the hill.

Giant compass

2008-05-17T22:34:00.005+09:30

I made this compass today.

It's a big one.

It's quite simple. 2 pieces of wood. Drill a hole in one leg to hold a pencil.

Make a hole in the other leg, saw the top off a screw and screw it in the hole head first.

The legs are held together by 2 thin pieces of scrap wood.

Fix those really well on one leg and use a butterfly screw to hold the other leg.

It's not exactly rocket science but it's better than using a string or something like that.

Test circuit

2008-05-17T22:17:00.004+09:30

I have put together a test board of my power supply and it works pretty good. I may do a bit of fine-tuning so I'm not posting the circuit yet but it is something like this with a few modifications. The heat sink this guy uses seems way too small unless he's using a separate circuit to detect overheating but he doesn't speak about that...

Based around the good old 723 voltage regulator.

The multi meter is also finally paying off :-)

Another close up. Breadboard fun...

First table design

2008-05-13T22:22:00.005+09:30

I'm looking for a place where I can see and enjoy my model trains but I don't want it to take up part of or a whole room. I want it to be a static display but also dynamic. It has to be technically challenging in lots of different ways. It should be fun and functional and also it should look good because my girlfriend is not into model trains so it may not be in her way ;-)

So I'm going to make a coffee table model railroad.

I tried this before but it was a shonky quick and dirty job so now we're going to prepare better starting with designing the track layout and now the table itself.

This is the first attempt in designing the table. It will also get a glass top. The cylinders will hold the rail coil on the outside and the inside will not be covered by glass, leaving an opening for i.e. a plant. It has yet to be decided what kind of "feet" the table will get...

The design tool used by the way, is Sketchup from Google.

Power supply (1.5-30V / 2A), part 1.

2008-04-14T20:07:00.005+09:30

To be able to do some electronic hobby projects you need a power supply. You also need other things like a multi-meter for example but that's harder to make. Power supplies are much easier to make and often a lot cheaper than one from the shop.

So I'm going to build a 1.5-30V/2A power supply which is sufficient for most little projects.

To start you always need to convert your mains power (110 or 220-240V) to something more suitable like in this case 24V. Because I didn't want to have all those high voltage parts lying around while working and testing the circuit I decided to make the case first and put all the high voltage stuff in there.

Here are some pictures:

That big chunk of metal is the transformer. It turns 220V into 24V. It's screwed on to the bottom of the casing. It's 72VA (which is 72W coz voltage (V) x Current (A) = Power (W)).

The back and the front panels. The back panel holds the socket for the mains cable and the fuse. ALWAYS use a fuse! For this project I use a 500mA fuse. This only protects the house from a power outage. To protect my equipment I should actually use a fuse of (72/220) 0.3A. I have to see if those actually exist...

The front panel holds the switch (which I'm not happy with because I thought it would be pretty blue but it's stupid blue light) and 2 connectors for the output voltage of 24V.

A close-up of the front panel, just because it's a cool photo ;-)

This is the front after putting it together...

... and this is the back.

I forgot to take a photo from the inside with all the wires attached. That might have to come in Part 2.

With this part finished, I now have 24V at my disposal in a safe way!

A new and improved track lay-out

2008-03-16T21:12:00.008+10:30

I spent a few weeks now thinking of how to improve my track lay-out. I wasn't quite happy with it, especially not with the overpass above the corner stations. As you may know, it will have to fit inside a (big) coffee table of 155x80cm. This is the result of a LOT of hard thinking:

The coils go up 3.5 levels so including the bottom level it spans 4.5 levels. At level 0 I'll put the 2 corner stations "A" and "B". They will deal with passenger trains only.

On level 2 there will be 2 stations, "E" and "C". Station E only deals with cargo. Station C deals with both cargo and passengers but the passenger trains will be 2 old ones ("glaskasten" on C5 and BR 144.5 on C6). Only small trains can be used but that's OK.

At the top level there is a big station just for passengers.

This looks rather challenging, doesn't it? ;-)

Mounting a switch on a lamp

2008-02-22T20:02:00.006+10:30

Sometimes you need something and you just don't feel like forking out the right amount of money. Or you just like the design. I ended up with this el-cheapo lamp. It was bought at Go-Lo, you can guess about the quality then. Anyway, it has a switch, but it's inside the lampshade. Fair enough, now you know why it was so cheap. We're speaking AU$9 or something. No money left for an easy to reach switch.

So I bought a switch myself. It has to be one that's suitable for mains power, not every switch can do that. Pay attention to that if this inspires you to do the same!

Right, so here's the lamp.

And here's the switch. Good thinking huh?

Top view of the lamp.

Bottom view of the lamp.

Remove the bottom first. This is ugly, sticky stuff that after removig can only be thrown away (in my case).

When it's gone there's a nice hole left and we can admire the complicated inside (not).

In the meantime back at the ranch; The Switch.

The switch requires a hole to put it in. I bought nice special drill bits that are aparently made for glass and tiles. This is the big one...

... and this is the small one. I usually drill holes in 2 stages.

Drilling. The base of the lamp seemed to be made of clay, hardly baked at all, supersoft. Oh well.

I made a nice round hole. Ever noticed that when you drill with a metal drill the holes are actually triangular?

To be able to work properly we have to pull out the wires.

This is tricky. The cord needs to be cut open. Get some wooden stick and put it through the wire effectively creating a cutting surface. Knowing that there are only 2 wires inside, place a knife in the middle and start cutting the wire open for about 5 cm. Make sure you stay in the middle otherwise you may damage one of the inside wires.

The result should be something like this.

Cut one of the wires in half. It doesn't matter which one because we're working with alternating current (meaning the + and - (ground) change usually 50 times a second (50Hz)).

Strip the ends so that about 5 mm of copper is exposed.

Twist the ends together nicely so they seem 1 thick wire.

Put the ends in the switch and fix the wire very tight.

Put the switch inside the lamp and make it stick out through the hole.

Put the switch-cover on and it's done!

N-scale test track

2008-02-18T12:17:00.004+10:30

In preparation of making my coffee table model railroad I needed a small test track so that I could test and repair loco's and see how certain things like coupling/decoupling works in practice.

I made a little trackplan first.

Put on the tracks

To fix the tracks onto the wood you need tiny little nails. Be carefull when hammering them in. To get them in all the way I used a big screwdriver, positioned it on the (flat) head of a nail and gave it a few whacks.

Expedit hack 2: Drawers phase 2

2008-02-18T09:00:00.007+10:30

This post is about making the actual drawers that go into the Ikea Expedit cupboard. In the previous post about this I showed how to make the casing that the drawers go in to.

First, get your wood together. Basically there are 3 sizes of wood required. For 4 drawers we need:
- 4x bottom panel the full size of the drawer.
- 8x front/back panels the full width of the drawer
- 8x side panels having the full drawer length - (minus) 2x the thickness of the front/back panel

The width of the front-, back- and side panels (actually the whole height of the complete drawer) doesn't matter much as long as it's about 2cm under the max. height of the drawer. If you make them any higher, you can't put them in.

Also make the bottom panel's width not too tight in between the rails. If in doubt, it can easily be 1mm less.

Before starting, take some measures. This way you know where screws for mounting the drawer on the rails will be so you don't put any nails in that spot before mounting it.

Measure the distance from the hole closest to the front and from that hole to the next hole(s).

I made a little sketch. The drawerbottom is on the left. The casing on the right. The dots are the places where the drawer will be attached to the rails.

Mark these spots on the drawer bottom panel. In my case 37mm from the front...

... and another 251mm from there towards the back.

Get some small nails. I used whatever I could find. These nails have round heads, that's not very easy to use but I really needed to use them.

Hammer them in at half the thickness of the front-, back- and side panels from the edge. Not all the way through!

Be sure not to hammer any nails near the spot where the panel will be mounted on the rails.

Fix the sides on the bottom panel one by one.

And see, the drawer is starting to take shape. This is the bottom view...

... and this is the top view.

Next, the sides have to be screwed together. Get 4 screws per drawer (16 for my 4 drawers) and get a drill a bit thinner than the inner bit of the screw.

Pre-drill the holes for the screws. Make sure to keep the panels in the correct to-be position. Wood can be a bit crooked sometimes.

When the screws are in, you should have a rock-solid drawer.

Now get the rails and mark the exact holes for the screws. This is one closest to the front...

... and the one close to the back.

Pre-drill the holes for these screws as well. Use a drill-bit suitable for the screws you use now.

These screws should be a lot smaller.

Put all the rails on this way.

And in go the drawers.

The drawers in place, sliding open and shut beautifully.

All that's missing now is a front for the drawers. At least they're functional. The front I'm going to make of 4mm plate. It has to look like the rest of the Expedit so I think I'll use a light pine and give it a good rubb of bees wax. We'll see.

The IKEA Kullen

2008-02-15T22:06:00.011+10:30

There seems to be a never-ending stream of Ikea furniture coming into my house. I -think- this is the last one for now but you never know!

This post is about the "Kullen" bed-side table. It has 3 drawers and can hold quite a few things.

The "Kullen". This is actually made in Denmark!

Opening the package, we find a nice heap of wood.

Almost everything is for the drawers except for the big panels on the right and the 2 smallest sized planks and the 2 squarish panels in the middle.

The contents of the goody bag and the tools we need. The only things you need to bring to the party are a hammer, ruler, pen(cil) and a phillips screwdriver.

Leave the cardboard on the floor to work on. Put the 2 side panels down like this and get the sliders and screws.

Screw the sliders on the panels.

Then get the 5 smallest pieces of birch coloured wood (beams) and put dowels in the ends of them. The small beams get 2 dowels at each end and the wider ones only 1.

Put the beams in place.

Put the dowels in the other side.

Position the other side-panel over the dowels and carefully attach it.

Get 2 screws and the Allen-key and fix this side onto the 2 bigger beams.

Roll the structure on it's front and fix the other side the same way.

Then get the top panel and screw in the 2 fixation screws (who knows their proper name in English or Dutch?)

Put the dowels and screw-tighteners in the side panels. Be sure to use the right ones because the designers at Ikea thought it was handy to use 2 different sizes. The small ones will not fit properly.

Then mount the top-panel.

Now get the 2 back panels and use the provided nails to attach them to the table.

Finally hammer the "feet" in the bottom.

The main structure should now look like this.

Put it upright and admire the work sofar.

Now the drawers. There are 2 bigger ones and 1 smaller one. They're put together roughly the same way. Shown is the small one. Get the pieces for 1 drawer.

Use the plastic screws to attach these 3 parts together.

Then get the bottom board...

... and slide it in. Make sure it fits properly before continuing.

Get 2 more fixation screws and screw them in the back of the front panel of the drawer.

Put the screw-tighteners into the sides of the drawer. The dowel should already be in there. If not, do so yourself.

Attach the drawer.

Now, shove the drawer into the table and pull it out again. As you pull it out the sliders will come out as well. Position the slider so that it can be screwed onto the drawer.

Fix the drawers and...

... voila!

The IKEA Flarke

2008-02-12T16:20:00.002+10:30

I had to do some serious cleaning up and needed cheap storage space. In such moments one often thinks of Ikea and so did I. After some looking around I found the Flarke book case. AU $35 only which is incredibly cheap for what you get. It's easy to put it together (and I still managed to make 1 mistake!)

Introducing: Flarke.

The contents are as follows:
- 2 big panels
- 6 small panels
- Folded, plastic back board
- Screws, nails etc.
- Another Allen key (Yay! ;-)

3 of the small panels have holes to be screwed to the big panels. The other 3 small panels don't have any holes and should be kept apart untill the book case is finished.

Together with what Ikea provided, this is what we need. So grab a hammer, ruler and pen and the party can start.

Keep the cardboard on the floor to work on. You'll have less chances on bits chipping off the panels.

Mind the sides of the panels that have more holes, those are the INsides.

Take 1 small panel with holes in the side, position it at the middle of a big panel and screw it on.

When that's done it should look like this.

Do this as well for the other 2 small panels. One at the top and one at the bottom.

And after that screw on the other longer panel after which it should look like this.

I think I know why Ikea can keep the price so low. The back board of the book case used to be (10 years ago in different shops) made of a thin, wooden panel. This is now plastic. Unfold it and place it on the back of the book case.

Nail on as shown in the booklet that came with this fine piece of furniture.

When this is done, put the book case upright and admire the work up till now.

Now the shelves. In the bag with screws were also 7 pins (1 extra) that have to be nailed into the shelves so that they can not slide out the front. To do this, mark at 35mm (picture shows 30mm but this is wrong!) from the back of the shelf...

... and hammer in the pin.

Do this for all the shelves and the book case is ready. (Forgot to photograpgh unfortunately)

Expedit hack 2: Drawers phase 1

2008-02-05T19:20:00.001+10:30

To make more (=better imo) use of the Ikea Expedit cupboard we bought, I am making 2 sets of 2 drawers to fit in the square spaces of the Expedit. The idea is to make a seperate 'casing' that fits into the Expedit nice and tight and then the drawers can be attached to the casing. This way I don't have to damage (= screwing into) the cupboard which is nice if I ever want to do something else with it.

This entry describes the making of the casing. The next entry will be about the actual drawers themselves.

[EDIT] - This post is the first in a series. The next part can be found here.

I made this picture to show the basic materials we need. I never ended up using the tape measure though. Instead I used a normal, 30cm ruler. Much nicer.

To make the casing you would usually use 4 pieces of wood. Because I am using leftovers (nothing beats using leftovers!) I had to be a bit more creative so mine have 6 panels each, 2 on the sides and a bottom and top panel. All are 16mm thick. The square spaces inside the Ikea Expedit are 335x335x390mm. These panels are required PER casing:
- 2x 380x303mm (380 to leave room for the front panels that will go on the drawers)
- 4x 190x335mm

The screws I have chosen are 3mm thick and 40mm long. The drill I used to pre-drill the holes for these screws is half to 2/3's the thickness of the screw so 1.5-2mm.

Not shown but neccesary are a thinner drill-bit (1mm) and smaller screws (2x15mm) to attach the slider with.

Kick off by marking the holes to screw the side panels on the bottom and top panel. I chose to have the holes 30mm from the front or back. Of course they have to be half the thickness of the panel (=8mm) from the bottom or top.

When that's done, take a screw and a hammer and whack little holes in the middle of the marks. This makes keeping the drill steady a lot easier.

After drilling these holes there is a nice stack of panels to work with.

This is an example slider that we will use to make the drawers with. We have to mount these on the side panels before we put the whole casing together because after putting it together you can't reach them anymore.

These are the 2 parts the slider consists of. The top part is what has to be screwed on the side panels. Always be aware that there is a right and a left panel and their mounting is mirrored.

(Click picture to enlarge it somewhat)

Finding out where to drill the holes for the sliders requires a bit of maths. Nothing a 5 year old can't do ;-)

Alright then. The area below the dotted line (16mm from the bottom) is where the bottom panels will be attached. Just put your slider on the panel to find out how far from the bottom your slider has to be. Keep the slider-part that attaches to the actual drawer on while doing this. The line on 35mm from the bottom is the center of the holes in the slider I used.

35mm from the bottom means 19mm from the inside-bottom of the casing. This means that the center of the holes in the top-drawer slider have to be at 19mm + half the total height of the casing (=186,5).

Also, with both parts of the slider together, measure the distance from the front to the first hole in the slider you want to use. In my case this is 40mm.

Mark all the panels with these lines and also mark at about 40mm from the front of the panel.

Next, mark the holes. Put the slider on the line so that the line is visible right through the center of the holes in the slider and the 40mm mark (or whatever you are using) is in the center of the corresponding hole. Grab a pencil a draw circles in 1 or 2 other holes to fix the slider at. I did it this way because the distance between the holes was completely ridiculous. To ridiculous to remember anyway.

After all this marking, whack some little holes again and then pre-drill for the little screws. CAUTION! Make sure NOT to drill all the way through the panel, but only 10mm or so, depending on your screw.

Screw the glider parts on the panels.

Now pre-drill the holes into the bottom panel.

Also make room for the screw-head to sink.

Screw the first side panel onto the bottom panel and enjoy the result. It's coming together now!

Repeat this for the other side panel and the top panel.

Screw everything together and behold: A new casing is born!

See if the casing fits your Expedit well. It should go in smooth and steady. This is a bit important so the casing doesn't move when opening or closing the drawers later.

The finished casing in it's place.

Windows Home/End keys on your Apple Mac.

2008-02-05T18:43:00.000+10:30

I recently switched from an IBM compatible PC running MS Windows to an Apple Macintosh running OS X Leopard. Up untill now I am very pleased with the system. It's fast, it's beautiful, OS X 'feels' good and somewhat more intuitive than MS Windows. There are however a few things that keep bugging me. Most of them I'll adapt to but never will I adapt to the ridiculous usage of the Home and End keys.

On OS X the Home key takes you to the start of a document and the End key takes you to the end. On MS Windows it takes you to the beginning of the line and the end of the line. I don't care where the OS X behaviour comes from, in my opinion, the latter is how it should be, period. You cannot discuss this with me. (Please do not try to start a discussion in a comment. If you like the OS X behaviour better, good on ya!)

So how can we change this? (for quite a few applications - not all applications react to the following change)

- Using the Finder or Terminal, go to your home directory. This is in /Users/.
- Locate your /Library folder.
- Look for a folder called /KeyBindings. If it's not there, create it.
- Inside this folder should be a file called DefaultKeyBindings.dict. If it's not there, create one with a text editor, I used TextEdit which worked. I don't know how other text editors perform.
- Add the following lines to this files content (If there is text like this one already present, omit the "{" and "}" characters):
{
/* home */
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";

/* end */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}
- Save the file. Changes are in effect immediately for most NEWLY launched applications.

Enjoy!

NB: This fix was taken from the following websites:
-http://www.starryhope.com/tech/2006/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/
- http://blog.macromates.com/2005/key-bindings-for-switchers/

Lay out improvements

2008-01-23T23:10:00.002+10:30

I'm a little bit of a model railroad fan (or freak). I just like the little scaled down trains and everything around it. I also happen to like electronics a lot and also woodworking. So my plan is to build us a coffee table with a microcontroller operated model railway build into it.

To most people this will sound kiddie stuff but let me assure you that this is a BIG technological challenge.

I will post my progress here. Sofar I've only been designing an apealing trackplan. This is a challenge on it's own considering the very limited space. The coffee table will be about 155x80 cm. At this moment I've reached a stage where the last design seems reasonable workable.

These are the last 3 designs. The bottom one is most recent and most likely to be successful.

The Expedit hack

2008-01-21T11:24:00.000+10:30

I "hacked" the IKEA Expedit we bought yesterday by putting 4 metal legs underneath. It makes the cabinet look a lot better. Also because we need the space we can now put stuff underneath, like our shoes for example.

For this we need the following: 1 drill, 1 drillbit half the thickness of the screws we're using, 4 tablelegs with 4 screws each, a ruler and a pen.

Start by marking at 1,5cm from the edge.

Place the top of the leg on the wood and align it with the mark you made.

Use the pen to mark where to drill the holes for the screws.

We drill these holes to give the screw some room. You will notice this helps a lot. Be careful not to drill all the way through the wood!

Screw on the legs. CAUTION: Because the panels are hollow, don't screw in the screw towards the middle too tight.

There we go, we have a hacked IKEA Expedit that looks a LOT better now!

The IKEA Expedit

2008-01-21T10:25:00.000+10:30

Not the hardest of things to put do but a good first post for this new blog. I'm putting together a piece of IKEA furniture. Most IKEA stuff comes with a pretty good manual on how to put it together, it's really not hard.

Although really simple tools are often included, for this project it's handy to have a hammer available.

So we needed storage space on a low budget, went to IKEA and returned with the "EXPEDIT".

The half version only has 1 package.

After opening.

All the little bits are hiding in a corner.

This is the contents of the bag. For this half-size EXPEDIT, all you really need are the dowels (wooden pins) and the long screws at the top. Use the (Allen) key provided to screw in the screws.

The felt pads can be put underneath to prevent scratching. All other parts are used to attach the cabinet onto a wall. For horizontal placement this is not neccesary though.

These are all the wooden panels inside the package.

Before starting, if you have a very hard floor to work on, leave the cardboard so you won't damage the wood.

Start with gently hammering all the dowels into the panels. Only in the holes told by the manual.

Put together 1 corner to start with.

Fix them gently by screwing in 2 long screws. Do NOT screw them in all the way, they should be tightened only when the whole thing has been put together.

Place 1 of the smallest panels over the dowels on the "short" side of the cabinet.

Then take a bigger panel and put it over the dowels in the "long" side.

You then fix the panel you just attached to the smaller panel by putting 2 new dowels into the holes. After this, you attach all other panels except for the fourth small panel. We'll attach that one later because it's going to fall off when we put the cabinet up lateron.

Then attach the second sidepanel. This is a bit tricky because it has to be done under an angle. Be patient and gently push it onto the small panel at the end untill the dowels from the inner panels are infront of the holes in the panel you're putting on. Then gently push the two long panels towards eachother. Also screw 2 big screws in. Do not tighten them all the way.

You may have to tip the cabinet over on it's side and lean on it to apply enough force to attach that last panel. WARNING: Do NOT try to attach it using a hammer. The panels are hollow and you could hit a hole in it.

After it's squeezed together put in the final little panel and attach the other side panel. You can put the 4 remaining screws in now, too.

Put the cabinet into the position it will be used in and tighten the screws. You can tighten them so much that they blend in very nice with the surface of the wood.

And voila, there is the Expedit!