» Failed Projects

Polarity
(pearoast from here)

My friend Joe and I were working on cobbling together an iPod dock from plans he found on the Internet. As part of this, we had to hook a power supply up to the dock connector. Alas, the one he was going to use didn't have the polarity marked, and he didn't have a voltmeter. A dilemma.

However, he did have a drinking glass, water, and salt. So I filled the glass with salt water and stuck the power supply wires in there. The wire that gave off more bubbles would be the electrode producing hydrogen, and therefore the negative wire.

I was pretty pleased with myself, until we tried it and observed the electrodes giving off roughly equal amounts of bubbles. After an embarrassingly long time, we read the back of the power supply again and saw the text "5V AC."

We went to Radio Shack and got another power supply. And a voltmeter.
(Sun 6th Dec 2009, 0:31, More)

» Desperate Times

Polarity
My friend Joe and I were working on cobbling together an iPod dock from plans he found on the Internet. As part of this, we had to hook a power supply up to the dock connector. Alas, the one he was going to use didn't have the polarity marked, and he didn't have a voltmeter. A dilemma.

However, he did have a drinking glass, water, and salt. So I filled the glass with salt water and stuck the power supply wires in there. The wire that gave off more bubbles would be the electrode producing hydrogen, and therefore the negative wire.

I was pretty pleased with myself, until we tried it and observed the electrodes giving off roughly equal amounts of bubbles. After an embarrassingly long time, we read the back of the power supply again and saw the text "5V AC."

We went to Radio Shack and got another power supply. And a voltmeter.
(Fri 16th Nov 2007, 22:09, More)

» My sex misconceptions

Savage Love
Savage Love is a weekly sex advice column written by a guy from Seattle named Dan Savage. Lots of weeklies in the US run it, and I believe some in Canada as well, but I'm not sure if he's syndicated in the UK or elsewhere. Anyway, he ran a column a few years ago with readers' sex misconceptions. The boys' stories are here and the girls' are here. Enjoy!
(Fri 26th Sep 2008, 0:16, More)

» Best Graffiti Ever

Friendly sidewalk graffiti
Someone here stenciled a bunch of positive-sounding messages on the sidewalks a few months ago, like "YOUR EXISTENCE GIVES ME HOPE". Someone else didn't agree:


(Fri 4th May 2007, 9:07, More)

» Failed Projects

Another vehicle-related one
I worked in a car factory for a while, and it was a pretty decent job, but their dedication to Henry Ford's ideal of the people who built the cars being able to afford one was, shall we say, somewhat wanting. Fortunately, being an enterprising fellow, I came up with a plan: theft. Not driving a whole car off the lot, of course, but sneaking parts out in my lunchbox so I could reassemble them at home.

Do you have any idea how many parts go into a car? I'll tell you--a LOT. I was years getting all of them into my garage, and when I'd finally finished, it turned out that the car company had changed the way half of them fit together. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to just take up machining and build the thing from scratch.

Anyway, after a while, we got it running, so I guess it wasn't a complete failure. Looked a bit funny, though.

--J. Cash
(Sun 6th Dec 2009, 0:13, More)