Basically, turning the knob raises or lowers the resistance.
I started by prying the metal tabs off the case to see the inner workings.
This isn’t the greatest picture but what we have is a metal disc that when it is rotated, increases/decreases the resistance. I used my multimeter to test the resistance and watch the level change as I rotated it.
Last night I changed the brightness by changing out the resistor, this was like swapping out resistors. I had created a light with a dimmer switch.
After looking at the way the dimmer switch worked, I realized that a volume control would work the same way. And after only two days, I get to dig into my box of broken electronics…
So I am in the middle of a ton of different projects at the moment. On top of a site redesign and a couple other sites that are in testing, I have decided to teach myself electronics as I prepare to go to school for electronics engineering.
Tonight, I started my electronics education. I built my workbench, got my tools and supplies organized and did my first experiment.
NPR’s weekly hour-long quiz program. Each week on the radio you can test your knowledge against some of the best and brightest in the news and entertainment world while figuring out what’s real news and what’s made up.
On Radio Lab, science meets culture and information sounds like music. Each episode of Radio Lab. is an investigation — a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, Radio Lab is produced by WNYC public radio.
GeekSpeak is a group of professional geeks who discuss the week’s latest news and trends. They help people with such things as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computing, digital photography, the free software movement, Web 2.0, digital video and audio editing, Adobe software, processor and platform technologies, Blu-Ray, solar technology, and much more. The Geeks also interview technologists, hackers, developers, entrepreneurs, great thinkers, and people with real information to share. If it’s geeky, then it’s on GeekSpeak!
Take two nationally respected rock critics, the latest music news, personal commentary, and exclusive interviews and performances, add a huge pile of records old and new, and the result is Sound Opinions, the world’s only rock and roll talk show.
There a hundreds of more great public radio podcasts. What are some of your favorite podcasts?
Being the computer nerd that I am, the Star Trek Computer (with a capital C) and by extension the PADD were my favorite bits of tech from the show.
If you have seen How William Shatner Changed the World then you know how much of our technology was inspired by the best minds growing up on Star Trek. Add to that list the slate, a flat touchscreen with network access.
Here is a video of a Google concept slate, thanks to techcrunch.com
and here is a Nokia touchscreen simulating the PADD.
A wave is equal parts conversation and document.People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
I have been playing with this for about a week and to be honest, I am blown away by all the ways this can be used. I am using one of the most basic forms on this and upcoming posts, the embedded wave. This is still very new and very preview only. Unfortunately at this time only other wave users will be able to view the comments wave.
Eventually, I would like to do the entire blog through wave. You setup a wave and then embed it on your website. Users comments can be put throughout instead of at the end making it more of a conversation.
As far as add ons, you have extensions, gadgets, and robots. Gadgets are things like maps and weather forecasts for planning trips, games, and just about anything else. Robots are artificial participants in the wave that can collect information or add to it. I am gong to look more into programming for wave for a future post.
check out the about info and let me know what you think. Is this something new and cool? Or just another fad?
So today apparently is the actual start of the 21st century. I woke up this morning to find that my next cell phone is going to be nuclear and that they may test hyper-drive propulsion at the LHC.
Sir Richard Branson an English industrialist, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies including Virgin Galactic and Burt Rutan, most famous for his design of the Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period.
This isn’t the greatest picture but what we have is a metal disc that when it is rotated, increases/decreases the resistance. I used my multimeter to test the resistance and watch the level change as I rotated it.
