Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Miscellaneous, Science, Space, Technology

Photos from Star Wars exhibit

July 3, 2013 kleucht Leave a comment

Back in April, the Star Wars traveling exhibit titled “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination” was at the Orlando Science Center. It was pretty amazing. The exhibit is now in Indianapolis and will complete it’s 20 city tour in San Jose California later this year (2013).

They had lots of great props, costumes, and models from various movies. Plus, they had some nice interactive stations and learning stations for the kids.

Here are a number of photos that I took of the exhibit. Click below to see the entire collection of photos that I took. Flash photography was not allowed and I was just using my iPhone, so the quality of these photos is not the greatest.

http://www.leucht.com/photos-new/index.php/starwars

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Miscellaneous

Now YOU can become a walking advertisement for Kurt’s blog!

June 4, 2013 kleucht Leave a comment

Due to “popular demand”, we have created a selection of t-shirts that you can wear to proudly show that you are an avid reader of Kurt’s blog! Are you a closet reader of Kurt’s blog that is ready to come out of the closet? Do you wish that all your friends and relatives would read Kurt’s blog too? Are you addicted to strange t-shirts that you can order online and have shipped directly to your door? All your dreams can now come true by ordering one of these wonderful Kurt’s Blog t-shirts!

Click here to browse the shirt selection and to place an order!

(front of shirt)

(back of shirt)

That is all. Carry on.

Kurt

Computers, User Interfaces, Science, Space, Technology

My awesome video game watch from 1981 – Nelsonic Space Attacker

June 2, 2013 kleucht 7 Comments

This watch was made in 1981, so I was probably 11 or 12 when I first got it. It’s a Space Attacker video game watch from a company called Nelsonic. I loved this watch and so did just about everyone I encountered … both kids and adults alike. This watch made the junior high version of me pretty popular! Ha! 🙂

(click for full size)

The game is quite addictive for as simple as it is. It’s basically a simplified version of Space Invaders. One button changes the direction of the cannon launcher and the other button fires. The invading space ships march across the screen and get closer if you don’t shoot them down. They shoot at you too.

Here is a video that someone posted of the game on their watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1gwNYObNPo

This watch is built very well and it stood up to lots of junior high abuse. Please leave a comment below if you remember playing with my video game watch in junior high!

Here is a nice web article on the watch, complete with a tear down:

http://watches.gafortiby.com/watch/Nelsonic_Space_Attacker_Game_watch/

Thanks,
Kurt

Computers, User Interfaces, Science, Space, Technology

My pocket computer from high school – Sharp EL-5500 III

June 1, 2013 kleucht 1 Comment

Yep. I was the kid who had a “pocket computer” in class when all the other kids just had a simple calculator. I was recently going through some old moving boxes and found this beauty:

(click for full size)

It’s a nice scientific calculator on the one hand, but on the other hand it’s a pretty capable programmable computer.

I loved this thing. I used it in high school and junior college and also during my first year in a 4 year engineering university. I remember using it at the university during my first year there because it actually got stolen by a kid a few doors down in the dorm and the campus police found it in his backpack and returned it to me because my name was etched into it with an X-ACTO knife. I etched my name on the back and also etched my initials in underneath the glass display cover so it could not be easily removed or rubbed off. I’m awesome that way. 🙂

So I used this thing for probably four years between about 1987 and 1991. About that time, the HP RPN and graphing calculators were all the rage at the university and this old workhorse was put away in a drawer.

This thing used BASIC for it’s programming language. So it was pretty easy to program. One limitation was the single line output screen. Because of the single line, I had to get creative with my output formatting, sometimes, in order to push a lot of information to the screen at one time. The other thing I remember is that it only stored one program, and I did not have a means to transfer programs to and from it. So I always kept one giant program on the thing with a start-up menu that allowed me to run a different part of the program based on what I wanted to do. So I merged many different programs into one and every time I thought of a new program to add to it, I had to add it to the start-up menu so I could select it to run.

One really nice feature that was built into this device was the matrix math capabilities. I could create very large matrices, and it would step me through filling in the values then it could perform transformations and math functions on those matrices. I used this feature a lot during some of my engineering and math classes.

Here is a short web article on it:

http://www.leonidastolias.com/Site/SharpEL5500III.html

And here is a guy who figured out a way to record the program dump from it to his Laptop as an MP3 file, rather than the standard means of recording it on a cassette tape player:

http://www.increa.com/computers/calculators/index.html

Cool stuff.

Kurt

Health, Home, Property, Safety, Miscellaneous

Fix Your Loose Shifter With Booger Bushings

May 4, 2013 kleucht 17 Comments

I have a 2005 PT Cruiser that I bought used about 4 years ago. (http://www.leucht.com/blog/2009/06/kurts-new-car-pt-cruiser/) The manual 5-speed shifter was fairly loose compared to any of my previous vehicles, but it seemed to work fine so I didn’t worry about it. Over the past couple years I feel like the shifter has been getting looser over time, so I knew that something was going to give someday. Then suddenly I could not get it to go into reverse.

My brother in law pointed me to a website, http://www.boogerracing.com/ where they sell transmission bushings called Booger Bushings that were advertised to fix me right up. A set of replacement bushings cost only $22, including shipping. According to the website, these bushings are “injection molded polyurethane with a proprietary molded-in lubricant”. They claim to be significantly stiffer than the stock bushings but are not a “solid” bushing. Before I bought these on the Internet, I checked with my local auto parts store and they did not sell the bushings separately from the shifter cables, which ran a couple hundred bucks.

The shifter cables attach to the transmission underneath the air filter housing in the PT Cruiser. Luckily, they are very easy to get to. Just remove the air filter lid and disconnect the big hose exiting the air filter housing. There is also a small hose that needs to be removed from the air filter housing. Then just lift the whole air filter housing up, rocking it as you tug. It’s held down only by the friction of some feet sticking through some rubber grommets. Very simple.

Now, to get the metal bracket out of the way a bit, just remove the two bolts holding it down. It’s easiest to use a ratchet with a long extension for this. This allows you to slide the bracket to the left a few inches to reveal the shifter cable underneath. Now you should be able to clearly see both shifter cable ends along with the bad or missing bushings. In my case, both of the old bushings were completely gone. That explains how I suddenly lost the ability to shift into reverse. Remove the old bushings if they are still there.

The Booger Bushings are designed with a lip at the top that snaps very solidly onto the slot of the transmission shaft. As a matter of fact, they are so tight to snap on, that the manufacturer suggests that you put a dab of grease inside to assist in the installation. This photo is looking at the lip from the bottom of the bushing.

Simply slide the bushing onto the cable end. The white in the next few photos is a bit of white lithium grease that I added to help with the installation of the bushing onto the slot of the transmission shaft.

And pop it onto the transmission shaft. Use both thumbs and push down hard until it snaps into place.

It’s as easy as that. There are also two bushings under the shifter in the cabin. But I did not change those out yet, since these two bushings seems to have tightened it right up and it is a bit more work to get to those bushings under the center console. I will definitely tear into it and change those out if I feel the stick getting loose, though.

After installing Booger Bushings, it will feel like you have a brand new car if you’ve been driving around with a loose shifter for a while, like I had been doing. Now my transmission feels tight like I’m driving a race car. And it only cost me about 20 bucks and less than an hour’s worth of work! Thanks Booger Racing!

Kurt