Its official, we’ve set a date and time for DevHouse 15. It will be located at my house in Los Gatos on February 3rd from 1pm to ~2am. So pack up that laptop, bring some snacks or drinks to share, and your projects to work on and tell your hacker friends to come! We have room for 100+ attendees and hope to fill up the house.
More information can be found at http://shdh.org
Today I decided to figure out how snow machines work, you know, the kind that the ski resorts use to make snow when its cold but not snowing. I found this cool site, http://www.snowathome.com/ which has several different plans for making snow machines of different kinds. I chose this one because it was the only one that didn’t require a pressure washer, only an air compressor. On the down side it doesn’t have the highest output but we’ll see how it works, that is of course if we get another cold enough night. I’ve setup the air compressor in the sound room so I can run it at ~4am without disturbing anybody while I make my snow.
I found most of the parts at The Home Depot tonight with Matt Jeff and Jeff. It cost me ~$34 including a new garden hose and seems to spray the water in a fine mist that will hopefully make nice snow if it gets cold enough outside. The only issue with this method for making snow, at least with the way its currently built, is the possibility that water will push back into the air hose and into the air compressor. This would destroy the air compressor and would most likely cause other problems since the air compressor is practically inside. The weather report says it wont be cold enough tonight so all I can do now is hope it stays cold for a while. You can see my pictures of this build on flickr
This week has been very cool. So cold in fact that the driveway at my house froze over and I am now unable to park my car in the garage (down the hill) for fear of not being able to drive up the hill when I need to be somewhere. Yesterday the ice on the driveway didnt melt because the house blocks the sun from the driveway all day. This picture was taken at about 1pm and only some of the ice had melted.
I remember as a child during a big freeze year we would run the hose all night to create an ice hill to sled down in the morning. I think I’ll try it again tonight and see what happens in the morning. There are sill a few more days of sub-freezing temperatures at night on the forecast and I hope to bring back some memories. Now if it would just snow so I can take some friggin pictures!
I got a new digital camera today. I decided to go with the Nikon D70s over the canon ones because of the lense selection, and by the recommendation of the guy at Wolf Camera. I went with them because they have the best warranty. The warranty I purchased covers both lenses I got, and the body, and was about $155 for 1 year, extendable anytime within its coverage period. The thing about this warranty, is that it covers anything. I mean ANYTHING. He told me on a previous trip that he had a customer who explained that he accidentally drive over the camera with his car, and they sent him a new one at no cost. I dont know how you accidentally run over your camera with your car, but apparently its covered.
The picture below shows the differnece between the two lenses I got. He knocked $100 off the camera kit, which came with a nice 18-70mm lense so I could afford to also get the $175 70-300mm lense. I zoomed all the way in and all the way out with each lense, while taking a photo from my bed of my cat outside.
