Swimming Pool Motor

Our Pool motor didn't want to start, on closer inspection I found the capacitor
Used in the startup sequence blew.
I replaced it and whala ! Motor starting again.

Postage Stamps

I am starting to revive an old hobby of mine: Stamp collection and sorting. In the near future I will start scanning my postage stamps and post them online.

SETI is still going

I urge all of you out there to join our SETI@Home Group NSH .

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=130844

Start from small with Electronics ....

:-) Seems me my daughter likes ths "electronic" things daddy is busy with and my 4 year old build her own LED with Resistor circuit - oh and don't forget the push-button for the effect ....

Big Brother is watching ...

http://www.showmyip.com/

Look at this website for very detailed info on your IP Addr etc.

Electronics Project : Water Computer

Well, the project is started and 2 friends involved :-)
We had a lightning strike to our house and various equipment is blown so I decided to kick off my long awaited home automation project and will start with the irrigation as all my ferns is suffering ....

We decided to go with a PIC and not a Linux PC as the "intelligence" as we want something that can be self sustained even through power outages etc.
This led to the "What Chip?" and we will be using the PIC 16F84a as that was laying around at home :-)

Will keep you posted with the details of the project etc. at a later stage.

L

Well Today the dog got the chance to be Mr Barney :-) he was put on the chair and covered with a blanket ....

Microsoft SyncToy 1.4 and Windows XP 64 bit

I saw there was a new SyncToy out that is Vista compatible ... very cool only ONE PROBLEM, it is not 64 bit compatible so-long SyncToy 1.4 you won't work on my PC.... rather sad seems like the 64 bit computing is taking off slowly with lots of native 32 bit programs running in X64 architecture.

At least Windows Desktop Search is running true 64 bit mode , WOW however the user interface is no way near google desktop , pitty that is not available in 64 bit mode ....

Excel Formula Activecell.FormulaR1C1

What a mission, I was trying to insert a formula into a cell via a Macro with variables in it but got stuck with TExt values or #NUM values the whole time. I tried about anything

• (variable,
• ("variable",
• (" & variable & ",
• (''' & variable & "",
• (""" & variable & """,

but with no luck,
I then even created a string = "formula with variables" and used ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1 = string but it did not work either just to realize :

Use ActiveCell.Formula =

and not

ActiveCell.FormulaR1C1

and that solved my variable within a formula in Excel VBA Script ;-)

Our Daugter's Room

Well I got bored again and decided to add a star roof in the corner of our daughter's room, so I took hardboard, drilled some holes and painted it blue with silver clouds [First attemt at painting clouds] added LED's in there and hooked it to the ceiling and boy oh boy she loves it !

Swimming Pool Light

Well, Eventually the light decided to blow :-( after I repaired the cable the previous time, So the next challenge started ....

How do you replace that light ?

Well here is a pic of the unit as it fits into the pool , so remove the unit extract the sealed beam light from the back, replace it but make sure the seal at the back seals tight and whala !