Make Yourself an Old Fashioned Cellphone Handset

With a basic understanding of electronics, a soldering iron, and a spare phone, it isn't too hard to make a cell phone handset. Since people have been asking me how it is done, my more electronically savvy father has written up a guide to doing it yourself, which I have put on instructables for your convenience.

Enjoy!

Adapting a Telephone Handset to a Cell Phone - More DIY How To Projects

Telephonery

With the guidance of my father's superior knowledge of electronics, I've hooked up an old receiver from an old broken rotary phone to work with my cell phone.

It certainly does get me odd looks on the street.

The Playwright Box: Page 6

Still have a few more pages archived

The Playwright Box: Page 5

The Playwright Box: Page 4

I'm pretty sure this is based off one of the actual plays. Yes.

Also, I've lost my wacom pen, so I might have to leave everyone hanging about the ending. Or at least I would if anyone was paying attention or knew what was going on.

The Playwright Box: Page 3

Bonus points if you know where I sketched this.

The Playwright Box: Page 2

The Playwright Box: Page 1

Oh right, forgot about this thing. I'm all distracted by things that aren't the internet. Here is the first page.

The Playwright Box: A Tale for Confused Children

Hint: this is the cover page. Further pages will follow.

My Very Favorite Alchemist

Sure, everybody talks about Bacon and Flamel. But really, can he even compare to the wonderful 15th century alchmist Sir George Ripley?

Sir George Ripley wrote his alchemical treatises in verse. And it is awesome.

Read him. Then create the philosopher's stone.

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/ripgates.html

If anyone knows what sort of meter he is using, do tell. All I know is that reading it while right on the verge of falling asleep gives it a wonderful cadence.

Strawberry Pie

It has been excessively hot in Seattle lately. There is something about high temperature here that make them somehow much higher than the same ones in the Bay Area. I hear tell of mugginess. It might also be that the dorms never turn off the heaters.

But tonight there is a cool breeze, and I have baked a strawberry pie (the only oven is 3 floors away from where I sleep, which is inconvenient, but a bonus when it's really too hot to cook). I think this is a sign. A sign for me to eat pie.

This pie was much more organized and orderly than my apple pie, possibly due to my using a recipe.

Only slightly modified from the one I found at cooks.com. They use far too much sugar, and clearly don't cook in a dorm.

1 deep dish pie crust shell
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2-3 tbsp. sugar, divided usage.
1 1/2 qts. fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and quartered
4 tsp. cornstarch

Whipped cream

1. Prepare pie crust according to directions for empty baked crust, cool.

2. In a small bowl, combine cream cheese and roughly 1.5 tablespoon sugar, stir until smooth; spread into bottom of baked crust.

3. Puree (or chop finely, if you lack pureeing abilities) half of the strawberries.
4. In a pan, combine pureed strawberries, remaining sugar and cornstarch. Cook and stir over medium-low heat until mixture thickens (about 7 to 10 minutes).

5. Remove from heat, stir in remaining strawberries. Let cool 2 minutes, pour into crust. Refrigerate at least 3 hours (does anyone actually do that? Eat it right away, people, live a little!); serve with whipped topping. Serves 8. Well, maybe just 4.

Random sketch: Spin Out

I am back from Maker Faire with a brand new sunburn! It was good times as always, but lacking in fighting robots. Still, tesla coils, things on fire, clever people, contraptions. I cannot complain.

On a wholly unrelated note:

This is actually a page of my diary. Don't go reading it.

The odd blur/nonblur affect is stuck in to make sure it's illegible, on top of being in code, tiny, and a bit sloppy. Not that I'm paranoid about my ciphers or anything...

Dormitory Apple Pie

Ingredients:

1 granny smith apple

4 sheets filo dough (by which I mean a massive package or two of filo dough that you will be eating every day for the next few weeks to avoid being wasteful)

Cinnamon

Excessive amounts of butter

Cheddar cheese (sharp is best)

Brown sugar

1 roll aluminum foil

A knife

1 washcloth (optional)

Instructions:

1. Pile ingredients into a precarious stack and carry them down 3 floors to the kitchenette. Run back upstairs as necessary for whatever you forget.

2. Wipe mysterious substances off kitchenette countertops and lay down a sheet of foil.

3. Fail to preheat oven. If oven is occupied by an abandoned cake, hope that someone comes back for it.

4. Slice and core the apple, aiming for a largish surface to volume ratio.

5. Construct a tray from aluminum foil to hold apples and bake them at whatever temperature. Hint: pinch the corners of the foil tray in to increase structural integrity and make it possible to retrieve apples.

6. Construct a small aluminum foil bowl with handle in which to melt butter. Put on a burner set to medium to high heat. Switch to a burner that doesn't smoke when turned on.

7. Lay out a sheet of filo dough and brush with butter. By brush, I mean drizzle a bit on and spread around with the knife used to cut apples. Repeat for about 4 layers, give or take.

8. Remember that the apples are still in the oven and pull them out with the washcloth (if available) or very gingerly with ones fingers or corner of clothing. Turn the temperature to 400 degrees F if you haven't already.

9. Eavesdrop on people coming in to wash dishes.

10. Place apples in the center of the filo dough, sprinkle with cinnamon and a small amount of sugar, and slice a thin layer of cheddar cheese over the whole business. Add some butter for good measure. At some point, realize that the apple to dough ratio is off and set aside excess ingredients for later culinary experimentation.

11. Fold the filo dough around the apples and try and get it to stay in place. If it rips, cuss at it and cover over the hole with a new layer of filo dough.

12. Construct a foil tray and carefully transfer the pastry to it.

13. Put it in the oven.

14. Wait a few seconds, then reopen the oven and put some butter and, if desired, sugar and cinnamon on top.

15. While the pie bakes, use combine remaining ingredients as your fancy strikes, construct trays for them from foil, and put them in the oven, too.

16. Stare in the oven window until the pie is golden brown. Remove from oven using washcloth or ill-advised combination of fingers and clothing

17. Eat the pie using the knife while sitting on the floor staring in the oven window at the stuff that is still cooking until that, too, is golden brown. Try to remember to turn off the oven and burner.

18. Hide the remaining results of your cooking from prying eyes and carry it all back up to your room. Eat it before someone asks what it is and you feel obligated to offer them some.

19. Update your facebook status to reflect the deliciousness of the resulting pastry.

Practical Demonology

I absolutely adore The Lesser Key of Solomon (free online here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/index.htm), a 17th century grimoire detailing "the ceremonial art of commanding spirits both good and evil."

The book is surprisingly readable and fun - it combines the absurdly bizarre statements and absurdly mundane. The spirit Agares takes the form of "a fair Old man riding upon a Crocodill, very mildly" and Gusion takes that of a Xenophilus (obviously). But their powers, while often dramatic and supernatural, also cover friendship counseling and help with geometry homework.

So I've compiled a quick and easy list of which demons to call to solve your daily problems (the parenthetical numbers indicate the order in which they appear in the book, for your convenience). Cross reference with the helpful details provided here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/lks05.htm

Do you need.....

General advice?

Talk to Marbas (5), Gusion (11), Purson (20), Berith (28), or Asmoday (32)

Help with friends?

Try Amon (7), Barbatos (8), Botis (17), Glasya-Labolas (25), or Forneus (30)

Tutoring in...

Arithmetic? Ask Asmoday (32)

Mechanical engineering? Marbas (5)

Philosophy? Buer (10)

Astronomy? Morax (21)

Geometry? Asmoday (32)

English? Bune (26)

Demonology: not just for historical esoteric crazies anymore!

iChat Skills You Probably Shouldn't Have

Altering iChat logs is actually really easy.

The top is a copy of the original conversation, unaltered besides the name blotched out, and the following ones are some different ways I altered it.

I used my trusty hex editor. I can't make any one piece of dialogue longer (although I'm sure that there is a way), but to make it shorter, I just replaced letters with spaces that ichat ignored.

Should I make a tutorial or something?