Push Pull Door Dilemma: A sticker solution.

This post got me thinking about those hundred of doors I have opened and closed in my life with the sticker of either "PUSH" or "PULL" even if they could open either by pushing or pulling.

So, for the fun of it this sticker can be used for doors that open both ways.

A new Q&A section!

I have edited the Q&A section I introduced a while back to a more, user friendly version. The last one was a Facebook plug-in called Facebook Live Stream, which was mostly useless for our need.

The new system allows you to chat in real time. Basically, it's just for fun, but if someone has a question they can write it down or answer one posted by someone else. It can be a place for engineering students to discuss projects, clear doubts or just relax after a hectic day.

Have fun on Q&A.

Facebook Dislike and Indifferent Buttons

I to write an article on a dis button, but don't know where to start. I understand that the button does what it's supposed to do; share something you on your Facebook page with all your friends.

Now, what if there is something I do not and want to share that with my friends? Would I need to click on and then specify what my actual feeling are towards the content I dis? Why, in the name of inter-web, can't I get a dis button to make my job easier. Do the people at Facebook not want us to question the ness of something?

Like many before me who have pointed out, I feel there is a need for

or better yet, a what-the-hell button

The Salvage: Pace Dgital Receiver Decoder

I had an old digital receiver which was lying around useless. You can salvage a lot of electronic parts from this.

Since it is a audio / video device, most of the soldered IC's cannot be used by themselves, and I am not interested to do so. However, there are many other parts you can use.

The Salvage: Composite to RF Converter

This is one the first in the series of The Salvage. How to salvage old electronic equipment for valuable parts and IC's. Today we will look at an old, locally made Composite video to RF converter. I bought this to connect my Playstation 2 with an old TV at home.

Moving Blog from Wordpress to Blogspot

I have moved from my wordpress installation to a blog on blogspot. This move may seem contrary to what I thought before. But I needed something simple to deliver information with the flexibility of an editable interface.

The free account on Blogspot allows you edit your basic HTML template and create HTML/Java Script Gadgets which is not allowed on the free account of Wordpress. As for my wordpress installation on the server, it was too flexible to maintain and my free hosting (www.freehostia.com) suddenly stopped parses from external IP's, in short I could not use Google Analytic and Askimet without paying them for an upgraded account. I do not want to do this for my for now.

Anyway, everything is working fine. I will be writing on a lot more topics now. Keep an eye on the side bar categories and the Pages.

PHUN simulation: Rocker-Bogie Design for CE Bot

We are working on a project by Crazyengineers.com, the CE Bot (visit the link for more information and see Appendix for more links). While discussing the appropriate suspension/chassis design, we thought about implementing a Rocker-Bogie system inspired by the Mars Roves Spirit and Opportunity Designs.

To get an idea on how the Rocker-Bogie design would work, I tried to simulate the construction on a free fun 2D sandbox physics simulator, PHUN. The simulations are 2D, i.e only lateral suspention simulation is possible, cannot simulate roll and yaw.

My visit to CNN and GeoTV @ Dubai, U.A.E. Part 2

You must have have read about my visit to CNN in the previous post where me and an old friend of mine visited the Middle East CNN office. We finished off by exchanging cards, not exchanging, she gave hers. We exited the office thinking how lucky we were to see an inside of a CNN office. While getting down the lift, we stopped on the 3rd floor because of the colorful direction boards and company names. We came across companies like Cybertronix, 7 Cube etc, but none were open, so in the spur of the moment we decided to visit Geo TV (Urdu News Channel from Pakistan). Half of the whole 3rd floor was given to them.

My visit to CNN and GeoTV @ Dubai, U.A.E. Part 1

Last week a friend of mine, an old family friend, landed here in Dubai, Emirates. His name, Aamer Mansoor Trambu, a final year student of journalism, Mumbai, India (presently in Ryerson Uni, Toronto, Canada as an exchange student). We had our friendly exchange of life stories and usual recording of random video clips for our own music video (he wanted to showoff what he learned at the school of journalism and I wanted to showoff my Adobe After Effects skills). By the end of the day, suddenly, we decided to do something I had always wanted to for a long time. Visit random companies and pester them with a million questions about their work (and ofcourse learn at the same time, while keeping their irritation at a minimum). So we decided to head to CNN at Dubai Media City.

Now before I talk about the visit, I want to get something off my chest. Generally students, as far as I know in my college, think its not possible to get companies to show them around. This might be because our college professors never encourage us nor tell us how to go about requesting companies to do that and, sharing the blame, the students themselves are never interested. Very few students have tried it (successfully, but never shared their experiences, I don't understand why) and very few professors have told us to do so (these few professors are the reason I am still interested in engineering. For sure, if you try it the right way, companies would love to show you around as long as you truthfully tell them why you are there.

PC Parallel Port Interfacing Technique – Part 2

Introduction

In this tutorial we will flash a LED (Light Emitting Diode) connected to your printer port socket. Reading the first part is recommended to get a general idea of what you are up to.

Connections
To connect a LED to your port first you have to know what it looks like. Shown below is the most common type of connector you can find on a PC.

LPT Pin Out [courtesy:
http://www.wkretak.pl/readarticle.php?article_id=5]