Cordless Soldering Irons: Hakko FX 901 & Weller's BP645

I bought this cordless Soldering Iron called ColdHeat some time back. As, long as I was not bothered with messy soldering, this was okay. Recently, I had to do some real soldering. Now this is where it got real ugly. ColdHeat is a pain. One cannot form a good drop of solder over the joints. One has to have the solder between the tip gap for it to melt. Does not work with thin solder. Heat is produced when the gap between the tip is short circuited by the the solder. If you have expensive milli-volt components - The thought of the high current frying these components may send chills down your spine. And to top it all off I managed to break the special alloy tip into 2 (the plastic separating the pieces just melted!!). Its not me, these tips are supposed to be brittle! Now a replacement tip costs half the price of the iron itself. Moreover concentrating on holding the solder between the tip separation and also concentrating on soldering just did it for me.

Realization - there is no replacement for the "True Heat" soldering irons. You can literally let a perfect drop of solder spread around your connections with a little practice (heaven). Now the hard part -- cordless and "True heat".

I narrowed down my search to Hakko FX 901 and Weller's BP645. Both are still no replacements for true "corded" soldering irons but are good enough for ordinary PCB work. I recommend you use rechargeable NiMH batteries. Weller's is smaller and uses 3 AA batteries where as Hakko uses 4xAA. Hakko is prettier. You can find good "objective" reviews here and here.




All-Spec: Hakko FX 901
All-Spec: Wellers BP860MP (It appears Weller's BP645 has been replaced with the newer BP860MP ...Took forever to arrive )

NSD PowerBall

If you as a kid sat on the chair with the spinning wheel to get a feel of a gyroscope and still had questions, welcome to the club. This toy gives you the feel of how nature resists the change in angular momentum. I'll say its ingenious how this concept is used to make this into an exercise equipment for your wrists and forearms. Even though I use the term toy, this "toy" can give your forearms some serious workout in less than a minute. The ball states that it is capable of spinning at 250Hz which is equivalent to 250x60 = 15,000 rotations/minute amazing! There are mentions on sites, where people have taken this to 16,000 rpms (these people must have "power balls"). The scorecard of top 100 speeds are maintained here. Also, there is a steel version available, capable of 350Hz. I can personally vouch for this to strengthen your wrists and fore arms. The site claims that Powerball can help in fighting carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, tennis elbow and other wrist (& arm) ailments - and I have no reason to disbelieve their claims. More over the science of gyroscopes (something tethered to space and resisting change) still fascinates me. Just think about it for a minute...



http://www.powerballs.com/

MIT's Open Courseware - Physics Lectures by Prof. Walter Lewin

"Professor Lewin puts his life on the line in Lecture 11 by demonstrating his faith in the Conservation of Mechanical Energy."

One evening after an attempt to explain relativity and the weird behavior of light to my cousin. I myself had a queasy feeling in my tummy of how little I knew. I decided to revisit some basic physics first. "Googling" for electromagnetism I stumbled upon MIT's open course ware. These videos are worth their price in gold (literally considering the tuition for one semester at MIT is about 25,000$ without scholarship). There are plenty of videos of actual courses taught at MIT. Believe it or not there are videos of the course "Introduction to Algorithms" by none other than Leiserson himself. One cannot ask for more. Just sip a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy. And while you are at it don't forget to support this initiative by giving (link on the upper right corner). I think this is a great thing that MIT has done.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity-and-MagnetismSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-03Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm

Especially, the courses by Walter Lewin are gems. You can also find courses on quantum physics and relativity, but, I don't know how comprehensive they are. Give them a try, they will definitely be worth your while.

MIT Open Courseware

Dell to offer Linux on laptops ...this time it may actually!

This has been considered a number of times, then removed from consideration, and then re-considered again by many like Dell, hp and IBM (Lenovo). It is being considered again. So what's new?...... This time the customers have asked for it and, in by no means a small measure. Dell was flooded with requests at DellIdeaStorm for Linux as a pre-installed OS option in their OS offerings. This time this may actually happen ...

10th March 2007: HP to beat Dell with Linux-loaded PCs?
14th March 2007: OpenOffice Openly Courting Dell

Reuters [Via] Engadget

Quantum Computer to be launched next week

I hope this does not turn out to be another steorm -- The perpetual machine thing remember. Anyway, the brief excitement will do for me today

D-Wave Systems is building a 'quantum' computer to solve intractable real-world problems. The secret: cooling the chip to -269 C with liquid helium.
Technology Review

...a quantum computer next week that can carry out 64,000 calculations at the same time in parallel "universes".
The Inquirer

SlashDot

Red Had advertisement - Truth Happens

This video started a train of thought. I think I read the following in a magazine called "The Week" some years back. But, am not sure so I may be off on some details. Since, it is quite old try to read it in the "old times" context, not in the current political scenario.

Once a General of some country visited America. The American General showed him around their facilities and even showed him around their research base somewhere in Nevada. The other General asks the American General - "Don't you consider this a security threat. That is me seeing all this". The American General replies "Our openness is our strength".

Open source is no different. "We have nothing to hide" its open. This is how it is. A friend of mine once pointed out - then why do they hide behind the GPL (LGPL, APL etc for that matter... makes you wonder about his intent). Well, there is foolishness and there is strength. Giving away research (and weapons) as charity will eventually lead to those being used against yourself. Without GPL someone can just borrow some open source code make some small changes and claim it to be his own work (and "close source" it). The person who creates it tosses and turns in bed because, now, he is excluded from the growth of his own creation.

The foundation of open source is to bring together honest interest and participation in creating something great. More over, one may not be free enough to show off one's skills on a payroll. There are business models around open source, but the motivation may just be a reward unmatched by any other - Fun (2).



Watch this video. The comments on YouTube are interesting too. Especially the analogy of the cake recipe does a good job.

Is GPL enforceable? Yes, it is. There have been some interesting precedents. I learn't of this during a presentation by Herald Welte in Linux Bangalore. There are couple of interesting cases you can read about at GNU Monks and GPL Violations.

Sexy Lamborghini Gallardo Promo Video

Lord I have sinned , but, I give a damn.

DIY 2: Chemistry: Potassium Permanganate + Glycerine = Exothermic reaction cool (I mean Hot)

Typical military survival kits usually have a vial of potassium permanganate. It can be used to purify water in dilute solutions, as a disinfectant when used in concentrated solutions and a marker for signaling in snow. But, it can serve one more purpose that of a firestarter. When a fine granules of potassium permanganate are rubbed with sugar or glycerine the result is an exothermic reaction. Using it in an actual survival situation, I reckon are slim. If you have access to potassium permanganate in a survival situation. It is most likely that it is, because, it was part of a survival kit. In that case you definitely have other more convenient means of starting a fire. But, sometimes just knowing a possibility exists can be a lifesaver.

14 KMnO4 + 4 C3H5(OH)3 --> 7 K2CO3 + 7 Mn2O3 + 5 CO2 + 16 H2O + Heat

Okay so what does one need to do this:
Potassium Permanganate
glycerine
glass bowl (just for effect ;-))

that's all.

Oracle 10g

Organizing my folders I came across this diagram I made sometime back to give some newbies an overview and a quick start in oracle administration. Been sometime since I have done some real admin or database work. So, don't know if this is valid, updated or even useful anymore. But, what the heck I am putting it up here. If nothing much I may look at it over and over again and decide to update it. Or may be get some constructive criticism.

Patrick Stewart on Top Gear

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS enterprise on Top Gear.



Via TechEBlog

Pepe Le Pew

Not blogged in a while. Am just bogged down with plenty of work right now. In the meanwhile feast yourself on these Pepe Le Pew videos I came across on YouTube. One of my favorite Looney Tunes character.



and here's another one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPmqaoBG23Y