A few days ago at work it was snowing. I don’t have a window in my office, so I was getting regular updates on the rate of snowfall by more privileged coworkers. The terms they used were wildly inconsistent, though, and I thought there had to be a way to determine the actual rate of…
Author: Bob Baddeley
Tasty Elk
I was fortunate enough to acquire some elk from my grandpa during the holidays. Three t-bone steaks and some back strap, as well as some sausage and jerky. I wanted to do something good with it besides just eat it alone over a few days, so I invited six friends over. Only one had ever…
Jump 9
I arrived at the airport at 10:30. Larry was there, and two guys who wanted to jump. This was not enough, as we needed 5 people to jump, and a pilot. We called everyone we knew, but only managed to round up one other, bringing our total to 4. We called the pilot, and he…
A Great Weekend – Skiing, Dancing, and Skydiving
What a great weekend! I wish they were all like this. Saturday morning I woke up early so I could meet up with people to head out to White Pass for some skiing. I played around with my breakfast and ended up scrambling some eggs with cheddar cheese and smoked salmon. It was fantastic. We…
Another Great Documentary
The new year started off strong with Rize, and I didn’t think I was going to find a better documentary for a while, but I didn’t have to wait long. I don’t know if it was better, but this documentary is well worth watching. It’s called “The World According to Sesame Street,” and it’s three…
Computer Lights Show
Back in college I occasionally did DJ gigs. It was a lot of fun and I did some pretty neat things to make it easier. I had a remote control for my WinTV card and I remapped the buttons to control WinAmp, so I could control the music while I was dancing on the floor….
Bob Baddeley Memorial Fountain
At the lab a model of the campus additions was placed on display in each of the buildings so that people could get an idea of how the campus was going to change. One day I made a little addition to the model. It stayed up for at least 4 months and moved from building…
Audio Switch
I have a set of speakers that I embedded into my coffee table. This actually made a lot of sense because it moved the speakers to the center of the room and away from the apartment walls and increased the stereo effect, as well as saving room in the cramped apartment. The speakers serve both…
Steadicam
My digital camera needed some accessories, and the steadicam seemed like a perfect addition. Built out of simple parts from a hardware store (and a pie plate from ShopKo), this steadicam makes sure that while I’m taking video the camera stays level and steady. The pictures should be pretty self-explanatory as far as building it….
Composite to S-Video
With the projector in my apartment, I have a VGA cable and an S-Video cable running as inputs. However, my Playstation2 cable only has composite video output. It turns out that composite can be hacked into s-video fairly easily. By running the composite video signal to both the brightness and color parts of the s-video…