February 25, 2009
Steampunk Lamp

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on Boing Boing about steampunk lamps. I liked them and decided to build one for myself.

I used an old wooden cigar box, a few ceramic bulb mounts, a rheostat and few other odds and ends. I did get a little fancy and paint the ceramic mounts with textured copper paint. The wiring was trivial, but I got a chance to use an Underwriter's Knot.

There's a lot more steampunk I could have thrown at it, but I like the simplicity of this.

I used two 60 watt bulbs, so it can get quite bright. It's much more pleasant at a lower light level.

Here is a short video of the steampunk lamp in action.


Steampunk Lamp from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with it now, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Posted by michael at 07:20 PM | Comments (14)
Adam Carolla Gets it On

It's been a hard month for Los Angeles radio listeners.

First, Indie 103.1 goes off the air. It's online still at indie1031.com, but 103.1 is now ranchero music. A sad state for the station once named by Rolling Stone magazine as best radio station in America. Of course Michele would argue that WOXY is the best radio station.

Second, KLSX flipped formats and the Adam Carolla Show is off the air. I really enjoyed Adam's show. It was a bright spot everyday. I would listen live when I could, but mainly listened to the podcast, which was a segmented recording of the actual show.

CBS Radio, in their corporate wisdom, decided that Los Angeles would be better served by a Top 40 (CHR) format station. And so, KLSX died and Adam was off the air.

Not a quitter, Adam decided to continue his "conversation with listeners". His words, not mine. His new site carollaradio.com is now posting daily podcasts he produces at home with help from friends and former co-workers. His very first podcast, had over 200,000 downloads. Those numbers make any podcast saavy person sit up and recognize the size of his fanbase.

Adam absolutely gets where media consumption is going and is working to give it a shot and see what happens. Jesse Thorn (the man behind the wonderful Sound of Young America show) agrees and posted a good bit of Adam's rant with a little commentary. I agree with Jesse, if you think of Adam as just the Man Show/Crank Yankers guy, you are missing what he's all about. He's honest and a bit of a blowhard, you won't agree with everything he says, in fact you'll sometimes think he's wrong. But he speaks how he feels without resorting the the usual talk radio hyperbole where jocks say anything to get the audience revved up. That's a very rare thing today, where almost all radio bits are heavily scripted, edited, and basically fake.

Give it a listen. Adam curses a bit on the podcast, so I'd call it NSFW, but it's better than anything else on the radio these days.

Posted by michael at 07:03 AM | Comments (2)
February 24, 2009
Mindless Link Propagation
Posted by michael at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2009
Fix: Last line cut-off with HP Printer

Seems like I'm not the only one having trouble when printing Office 2007 documents to an HP printer and having the last line cut in half. Most of the computers in the house are running Microsoft Vista Home Premium with Office 2007 and trying to print on an HP printer.

We had continued problems in which the printer would cut off the last line in half. Very frustrating.

After a bit of research and trial & error, I came up with this solution.

Go to Control Panel
Select Printers under Hardware and Sound
Right click on the offending printer and select Properties
In the new window, select the Advanced tab
Select the Print Processor button
In the new window, select WinPrint (it's likely set to hp-something instead)
Click OK (the window will shut)
Click Apply then OK on the Properties window
Try printing a document

Hopefully this works for you. Leave a comment here is if works or doesn't so we can see if this a good solution.


Posted by michael at 12:47 PM | Comments (2)
Stuffing Sausage

Loyal Cruft Readers will recall my work on making sausages from scratch. The most difficult part was stuffing the sausage meat into the casing. I decided to get a better stuffer and settled on a Grizzly 5 lb. sausage stuffer I found on eBay. The grizzly company has a huge range of tools and machines. When the stuffer arrived, a huge catalog of all their products was also there. Everything from hand tools to lathes to welders to kits to build guitars from scratch.

I went to work prepping the meat for stuffing. On my second time around it went much more quickly. Soon the moment of truth was at hand and I stuffed the sausage. Here is a video of how it worked.


Stuffing Sausage from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Obviously I sped up a few parts, but the entire stuffing process took me less than 10 minutes compared to well over an hour the first time. A huge improvement.

This is the stuffed sausage before I twisted it into links.

After twisting into more familiar links.

Having a real sausage stuffer makes huge difference. I think I went from raw ingredients to sausage to clean kitchen in about two hours. Good fun and good sausage.

Posted by michael at 08:27 AM | Comments (3)
February 18, 2009
Palm Springs

The family was in Palm Springs this weekend for a mini-vacation. Michele was riding in the Tour of Palm Springs. She did 55 miles!

We had some great Jewish food at Sherman's Deli. The pastrami/latka sandwich was amazing. Their matzoh balls were gigantic.

Here is the obligatory tour of our hotel room:


My Hotel Room in Palm Springs from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

And here is Michele, just after she finished the 55 mile ride, waiting for her teammate Allison to arrive. I am very proud of her!

Update:

Here's a video of the ride made by Steve Mackel, Michele's coach during the ride. I have a breif cameo as the support team.

Posted by michael at 07:19 AM | Comments (1)
February 03, 2009
Owl Wrap

I don't like tangled cords or wires. Perhaps it's my career as an engineer, but cords and cables should be neat.

The iPhone headphones are good, but they tend to make a nice knot when left alone.

Enter the Owl Wrap

I found the Owl Wrap on Etsy. It's a simple device to wrap my iPhone headphones around.

It's simple, neat looking, and works. What more can you ask for? At only $5, it's a steal!

Posted by michael at 09:22 PM | Comments (1)
February 01, 2009
Superbowl Sunday Stuff

A few things to share:

I made special nachos for the game:

Nachos, Superbowl Version

Mindless Link Propagation:

I cannot stop laughing at watching Cupcake Trance Dog

Terrible news: Jack in the Box was hit by a bus in downtown LA. Keep up to date at HangInThereJack.com

The Scam behind Cash4Gold

Finally, my ride today via the cool Runkeeper app on my iPhone:

I've been enjoying riding and will probably be getting a road bike soon.

Posted by michael at 08:07 PM | Comments (1)