POR-15 is a product designed specifically to help fix rusting metal. Unlike most paints, POR-15 is a moisture curing epoxy that, when painted directly onto rust, will suck the moisture out of the rust and seal it up, preventing further growth. Traditional paints just trap the moisture, letting the rust continue unhindered and out of sight.

Continue reading for a picture-heavy description of the process.

Using POR-15 is best done in four parts, removing existing paint and loose rust, cleaning the surface, prepping the surface chemically, and finally applying the POR-15. Not all of these steps are required for all applications.

Here is some rust on my Mercedes’s driver’s side front fender. Someone put some touch-up paint over it, but the rust has continued to grow underneath, spreading outward and bubbling the paint. The whole car needs a paint job, so in this case we will just be removing the rust and sealing the damage so that body filler can be applied without worrying about trapping moisture.

You can use any abrasive tools to remove loose, flakey rust, and existing paint. I chose a power drill with the two abrasive wheels, and a small abrasive brush from my dremel tool. Wire brushes are handy as well. Remember that the goal is not to remove all the rust, but to remove the crumbly surface rust. POR-15 bonds very well to rusty surfaces, and in fact is meant to do so.

Here is the surface with all of the surface rust and surrounding paint removed. I’ve gone down to clean metal in some areas, and in others left the hard rust alone. The goal is a rough surface that the POR-15 can bond to securely.

The surface must be very clean for the POR-15 to properly adhere. Use a good water soluble degreaser such as Marine Clean, a POR-15 product. In this case I diluted it with 3 parts hot water and sprayed it onto the surface. I rinsed well with clean water, and patted dry.

For rusty metal it is best to prep the surface with POR-15 “Metal Ready”. Metal Ready consists of Phosphoric acid and Zinc phosphate. These chemicals remove rust and coat rusty areas in a layer of zinc, which makes a perfect surface for the POR-15 to adhere to. This step also helps prevent future rust. Apply the Metal Ready directly to the surface with a brush, and wait 10-15 minutes. For heavy rust, wait up to 30 minutes. Use clean water to completely rinse the Metal Ready off after the time is up. Then pat dry.

POR-15 comes in a paint can that is a real bitch to open. But keep at it, and you’ll get to the goods. Mix well until the POR-15 is completely blended. Do not shake, it will work bubbles into the mixture which you do not want. After mixing, pour or scoop a working portion of the POR-15 into another container. Work from this container with a foam-style brush to apply a thin coat of POR-15 to the surface. Once the coat has become tacky, in 3-5 hours, apply a second coat. You may continue to apply coats to build up the surface if necessary.

After dispensing your POR-15 into another container, you must seal the original container immediately by placing a layer of plastic wrap over the container, and then pressing the metal lid back on. If you omit this step, the POR-15 will cure in the can, and seal it closed forever. Always keep the POR-15 sealed, and reseal the can as quickly as possible after mixing and dispensing.

After you have applied at least two coats of POR-15, you are done! It is recommended that you apply a traditional paint over the top of POR-15 because UV radiation will discolor POR-15 (though it will not compromise its protective abilities. You can also apply body fillers over POR-15, or sand it smooth. I chose the Silver POR-15 for two reasons, it matches my car better, and it contains metal fillers which help it to fill holes and bridge gaps. POR-15 comes in several colors, including black and clear as well.

This creature does not sleep, and is not bound by the rising and setting of the sun. All day and all night it sends its tentacles forth, seeking food.

What would you do if such a terrible freak of evolution were to lay its slimy tentacles on your own home? How would you react to such a thing??? Why, you would eat it. Because our freakish friend is no foe, but fungus. Specifically Pleurotus pulmonarius AKA, the Oyster Mushroom.

Despite being tasty and nutritious, this particular fungus is well known for its virulent behaviors. It will colonize nearly anything, and consume a surprising range of foods, including used motor oil and diesel fuel. Paul Stamets and friends at Fungi Perfecti have been working on using mycoremediation to cleanse areas affected by oil spills and other toxic contamination.

The particular oyster mushrooms that are growing in my house began their life as a jar of spawn (mycelium, the true body of the fungus, growing on birdseed or other grains) given to me by Will. A suitable substrate was found (dry, tall, ornamental grasses from our garden), which I pasteurized in the microwave. The grain spawn was broken up, and used to colonize two bags of moist straw. In less than two weeks the straw was completely colonized.

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One bag of colonized straw was placed in the fridge to ‘rest’ for a while, while the other bag was immediately fruited. I stabbed a bunch of slits in the surface of the bag, and began to illuminate the fruiting chamber for a few hours a day. The fresh air combined with the light indicated to the fungus that it was time to fruit. Pins (tiny immature mushrooms) are beginning to reach out of the bag and develop.

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This first bag will be fruited normally, and the fruits enjoyed as food. However, the second bag will be part of an experiment. The glycerol byproducts from biodiesel production are technically fermentable by fungus. However, what concentration will they accept, and will the methanol or catalyst be a problem for the fungus? I’ll be ‘feeding’ the mycelium some byproduct soon to see how it reacts. I may or may not eat those mushrooms.

Next on the list is a jar of Reishi mushroom spawn, a woody mushroom commonly grown for medicinal use. What wonders lie beneath its wispy white surface?

The drive I purchased is an “I/O Magic” from Office Depot. Normally I would never recommend that one purchase and I/O Magic, because that company just buys other random stuff, re-badges it, and sells it in office supply houses. However, sometimes they buy from a good company and re-badge a good product. In this case, the drive I purchased is actually a BenQ 1620A, which is a high quality and respectable drive.

It burns DVD-R and DVD+R at 16X, DVD-RW and DVD+RW at 4X, CD-R at 40X, and, get this, Double Layer DVD-R at 2.4X. Double layer DVD-Rs are the newest type, which hold a full 8.5Gb, allowing a direct copy of any commercial DVD Video. Excellent.

The best part about this BenQ drive is that they offer firmware upgrades on their website. The latest firmware update raised the Double Layer DVD-R write speed from 2.4X to 4X. Excellent!

If you are looking for one of these drives, check your local Office Depot. The drive is an I/O Magic, and the model number is IDVD16DD. Make sure that it mentions a 2.4X DL DVD-R speed somewhere on the box. I bought mine for $89.99 w/ a $30.00 rebate.

If you want a drive like this, they are available for around 70$ from various online retailers (search Pricewatch for DW1620 to get current prices). If you buy the drive in anything except a BenQ labeled retail box, you have an ‘OEM’ drive, which needs OEM firmware, and if you have a regular BenQ retail box, you need regular firmware.

Both types of firmware can be had at the BenQ firmware page. Drives like mine need the firmware for the DW1620A Generic, and BenQ retail drives need the DW1620 firmware. They are the same firmwares, except that the retail edition gets updated first, and then they move that update to the OEM version. If you want the highest possible firmware, it is possible to use a hacked firmware to downgrade a 1620 OEM to a 1600, and then re-upgrade it to a retail 1620. However, that advanced technique will take some research on your part. Don’t be saddened though, the major updates, giving us the 4X DL DVD-R speed, for instance, are common to both drive types. You don’t really need to be on the bleeding edge.

She told me this shortly before Madalene and I drove from Missouri to Colorado, as a warning to keep an eye on my vehicle’s condition. I was unconcerned, because the car was in tip-top shape, and had just recieved a complete tune-up. However, upon arriving in Colorado, I realized there was a problem. Normally I ignore my mother’s crack-pot ravings, since they are usually the shameful result of a diseased mind, worthy more of pity than consideration. However, this time I looked up to the sky and felt Mercury’s baleful gaze upon my engine. With the car in Colorado and half our trip completed, I began to have trouble starting the car. With each crank of the engine, and each failed start, I got very uneasy.

I applied to my skin a tincture of essential oils, and marked myself with ashes. Clutching a dream-catcher in one hand and my trusty digital multimeter in the other, I attempted to open the hood of the car. As I pulled the hood latch, I heard laughter in my ears as the latch snapped off in my hand.

20 minutes later I had utilized a bless’d charm and some zip-ties to repair the hood latch, and was finally able to reveal the engine compartment. With a zealous fervor, I began troubleshooting the electrical system. The engine would crank fine, but the pre-glow lights were not lighting up, meaning there was a problem in the glow plug system. I disconnected the relay and began checking the glow plugs one by one. Lo and behold, plugs #1 and #3 were open-circuit. A diesel engine will start when one glowplug is out, but with two out, the engine could not preheat enough to overcome the chilly weather and malevolent planets.

That evening I eventually was able to start the car by boiling a few gallons of water, and slowly pouring the hot water over the cylinder head. As the temperature of the head rises, so to does my chance of starting on only 3 plugs. A few solid cranks later, and my brother and father who had come out to help me cried out in victory as the engine sprung to life. It misfired horribly, and the smoke of unburned fuel belched from the rear, but it ran. After several minutes, all 5 cylinders were firing, and the engine smoothed down. I allowed it to idle until it reached operating temperature, and drove it to Madalene’s.

Our prognosis was clear, keep the engine warm until replacement glowplugs could be aquired. Fortunately, Autozone carries a Bosch plug, P/N 80006 that is a good fit. Checker also carries a suitable plug, of the Autolite brand.

The car got us to and from Boulder and Denver, starting just fine as long as the engine was not allowed to return to ambient temperature. Upon arriving home, my dad and I ripped out the offending plugs and replaced them. I’ll be replacing the other three soon, since once one plug goes, the rest usually follow close behind. With new plugs, the car started like it was brand new, and has continued to do so ever since, safely returning us to Missouri. Even this morning when the weather was a bitter 18 degrees F, it started on the first try.

Clearly Mercury’s vile retrograde is no match for a little perseverance, and a holy multimeter.

I’ve always been happy with their service, and especially their very forgiving use policies and support for technical individuals like myself, like fully endorsing connection sharing and multiple computers (services most DSL providers charge extra for, or prohibit entirely). They even offer technical support for Linux users!

Recently they released a service called OneLink that lets you have DSL without a voice phone line! Until now, you needed a regular phone line in order to have DSL, but with people using cell phones more often, they often wish they could do without the 30$ a month it costs to maintain a regular local line. OneLink lets you have DSL without phone service, through some incredible technical trickery and a clever installation technique. Gotta love it!

Plus, and perhaps more exciting, they just today released a service called Speakeasy Voice which is a VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service. Instead of using an analog phone line to carry a digital signal, as is the current method, your digital line (installed as part of the OneLink service), can now carry a phone signal. Why is this different from your regular phone? Well, instead of going through the regular phone switches, your call is routed through Speakeasy’s networks until it reaches its destination, and then the call is transferred into the regular phone dispatch system, meaning every call is a local call!

Speakeasy’s voice system includes a telephone adapter that connects to your existing DSL modem, and plugs into your current analog phone. Because of number portability laws, you keep your existing phone number. Your phone dials in and out the same way that it did before, but because the voice information is now digitized and routed through the Speakeasy network, you get unlimited long distance anywhere in the country, and low rates on international long distance (because the call can be internet routed to the part of the country with the cheapest international rates before being connected to the regular phone system). How about that? Thats the beauty of digital. The bits are already there, so it doesn’t cost any more to leave them all zeros than it does to make them carry voice data. Use it once or use it every day, and the load on the system is the same.

Their system claims to give high packet priority to voice data, which theoretically means your voice calls will be as instantaneous and clear as regular telephone calls (or clearer). Downloading or browsing on the internet connection also shouldn’t affect quality of calling, because the voice data will take the higher priority.

OneLink services are 5$ a month more than regular DSL, but free you from the need to have a regular phone line. Speakeasy Voice services are 40$ for installation, and the first three months are free, with a 29.95$ charge per month after that. That is the same price as residential phone service from SBC, and it includes unlimited long distance (US and Canada), voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, three way calling and more. Plus, it interfaces with local 911 dispatch systems, so emergency calls are still routed as normal (and in some cases, better than normal, because name, address and phone number information is guaranteed to be transferred to the dispatcher via Speakeasy, which not all phone companies can guarantee).

If you sign up, do not cancel your regular phone service yet. You will be assigned a new number to start with, and then very soon, when they get the local number portability finished, you can transfer your existing number to Speakeasy. Then you can either switch to Speakeasy’s OneLink service which does not require a regular phone line, and then cancel your existing line, or switch your existing line to a ‘metered line’ service, which usually costs something like 6$ a month, and is a completely stripped down local service, enough to keep your DSL. The wait before porting your existing number will make for a good trial period, to make sure the service works the way you want before being stuck with it.

Anyway, not to sound like a goddamn commercial, I’ve just been really pleased with Speakeasy’s services and support over the years, and I’m excited that they are offering these two very hip services. If I’m going to be paying one company for my phone and internet, its sure as hell not going to be one of the bastard Bells, who’ve screwed more friends of mine than I can count, but rather a company I trust, like Speakeasy.

P.S. If for some reason you actually sign up for one of these, use us as a reference (username: ley). Thanks.

The bike has been given some hard use, including single track downhill, urban curb assault, hard trail riding, and even some river fording and surf riding. All of these things add up to a great amount of wear on a bike. My derailleurs are sadly out of alignment, and in great need of overhaul. The brakes were shredded, and also in need of overhaul. The cables are rusted and the housings are coming apart. My front hub was dry as a bone, having been thoroughly infiltrated with water and grit from the river fording. The whole bike creaked and ground as I rode it, and if you know anything about the mechanical world, you know that noise = friction, and friction = wear. I replaced the chain a while back because the original one broke. You are supposed to replace all your cogs and chainrings at the same time as the chain, but I couldn’t do this for cost reasons, so the new chain is having its way with the old cogs, shredding them at a furious rate.

I’ve also noticed a grinding sound coming from the crank, indicating that the bottom bracket has probably been infiltrated in the same way as the hubs. Unfortunately, that will require the purchase of some tools for me to properly overhaul. Also, I’ve noticed that the cogs on the rear cassette wobble back and forth now. Not cool. Oh well, that cassette was probably due for replacement anyway. I just hope that the hub is OK.

One thing about working on a bike, or any mechanical thing, really, is that if you fix one thing, it results in a cascade of stuff you have to do to complete the repair. For instance, my bike works at the moment, but if I investigate the rear hub, I may find that the cogs are shot, and that I need to replace the cassette. Then, as I’m opening the cassette, I may find that the freehub is damaged. If the freehub is damaged I’ll need a new hub, but if I replace the hub I’ll need to use new spokes and buy a new rim, since its not a good idea to reuse rims of this age. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I actually dismantle it. Risky business. The same is true with nearly all of the bike. If I replace the cables and housings (which should be pretty easy) I may find that the derailleur is too far gone and needs to be replaced too.

I’m going slowly, overhauling bit by bit as I move over the bike, hoping to get it all working with a minimal cost outlay (so far, 5$ for hub cones, 1.50$ for bearings and a few dollars for tools, not too bad).

Tonight I overhauled the front hub (easier than I expected, though touchy to adjust), and overhauled the front brake calipers, fully readjusting the brakes on the way. Unfortunately, my front rim is out of true, meaning I couldn’t perfectly adjust the brakes, having to live with some extra slack to make up for the wobbling wheel. Thats another thing I have to learn how to do, true up wheels… That was my goal for tonight. The next step is overhauling the rear brakes, and doing a full adjustment of the derailleurs. Then I replace the cables and housings. Then cassettes and rear wheels, then chain rings and the bottom bracket. Then headset, stem and shift/brake levers. Then, uh, I hope that will be it!

I’ve found that working on my bike is fairly enjoyable. It requires several specialized tools, which annoys me, but the fact that the entire workings are visible to me makes it enjoyable to work it over, just getting greasy, and feeling worn, gritty parts turn to smoothly operating machines with your gentle touch. I recommend it! Its actually quite easy to get into bike maintenance on your own. Nearly anyone can do basic things like adjusting brakes, replacing tires and chains, lubricating and cleaning parts, and so on. The basic tune up offered by your local bike shop is something that nearly anyone can do if they try. Then, its just a quick jump to doing more advanced work, like rebuilding hubs and overhauling brake systems. You may find yourself doing nearly all the work on your bike short of things like wheel truing that require specialized tools. And maybe you’ll even find yourself doing those things! Its certainly addictive.

For an excellent shop manual, I recommend this Barnett’s manual that is available online in PDF form. The entire manual is over 300 double sided pages, and is incredibly detailed. You can find it at the BikeForums.net Mechanics forum. The entire forum is actually a great resource, with loads of information discussed in the past and available through the ‘search’ function, and lots of helpful people who will try to answer your questions for you. You can also check out books from your local library that will get you started on basic bike mechanic’in. Enjoy!

The computer has been nice so far for playing music in the living room on my nice speakers, watching videos over the network, and best of all, playing game emulators. I picked up a couple of gamepads that look very much like Playstation controllers at Best Buy that use USB (and are supported by XP’s native joystick controller drivers). These combined with emulators like zSNES for emulating the Super Nintendo, and ePSXe for emulating the Playstation.

Emulation involves replicating in code the hardware environment of a game system. Then, the data on the game cartridge, called the ROM, is downloaded onto a computer, and loaded into the emulator. The game ROM is fully tricked by the emulator software into thinking its running on a real game console, and runs happily. So with one computer, the Nintendo and Super Nintendo game worlds are open to me, as well as Playstation, N64 and literally thousands of arcade games.

Last night, armed with two controllers and an emulator equipped PC in the living room, Dennis and I played quite a rousing game of Super Mario Bros. 3. Good times… Good times… Nostalgia has never been so much fun.

Poi is a Maori word for a type of food, but we aren’t making food. The way poi is made is by taking a tuber, placing it in a sock-like bag, and then swinging it around in circles, banging it against a rock to soften it. This process of swinging and object around that is on the end of a flexible chain or rope, is now an art form/dance, and the apparatus used is still called ‘poi’. If you’ve been following along, you’ll notice that I use poi for fire spinning, lengths of chain with a wick on the end.

Anyway, these poi are to be LED powered, so that they can be used in places where fire is less kosher, like the living room, or small rooms, or a dry forest floor.

The basic premise for these poi is that they will have red, green and blue LEDs, and will be capable of mixing them in different brightnesses so as to make the full spectrum of colors.

The poi will also be equipped with an accelerometer so that it can detect how fast it is spinning, and change color accordingly. The current implentation uses an Analog Devices ADXL150 accelerometer which is micromachined into a 14 pin SOIC chip. It measures accelerations of +/- 50 gees along one axis. This is very convenient, because as you’ll recall from your high school physics class, a spinning object is always experiencing an acceleration perpendicular to the direction of rotation. My back of the envelope calculations suggested that poi at full tilt whirl experience about 35 gees.

Dann has some experience with AVR microcontrollers, which are to be the brain of this project. A microcontroller is basically a computer on a single chip, that can be programmed to perform whatever actions your little brain can dream up. In this case, the accelerometer outputs a voltage proportional to the acceleration it is experiencing. This voltage is sampled by the ADC (Analog to Digital Converter), and read into memory. Then, based on this value, the red, green and blue LEDs are flashed at different rates to mimic a color. If you take an LED light, and flash it on and off at a frequency too fast for your eyes to see, but vary the ratio of time it is on to the time it is off, you can change the apparent brightness. That process is called PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). In our case, a timer counts out 256 steps, and the LEDs all turn themselves on at the beginning and then turn themselves off again at their preset time, the longer they stay on, the brighter they appear.

For right now, we have basic functionality on a test board. The accelerometer works beautifully, and the chip programming is coming along at a decent pace. After several hours of work, Dann and I had a working prototype, that when spun, changed the PWM for the three LEDs, producing a shift in color from blue to red as the poi sped up. Not bad!

Further design issues involve speeding up the PWM, optimizing the code, and tweaking the values to produce the smoothest shift in color from slow to fast. Further design ideas involve changing things other than color in relation to speed, and even doing image display.

Imagine if there were a row of LEDs all the way up the chain. As the poi spin, the row of LEDs shows a different set of pixels in an image, so as the poi makes a full circle, it draws a picture in the air. Of course, the pixels would be in a polar arrangement, meaning conversion from regular images would be odd. Then there is the issue of synchronizing frame rate with spinning speed, but we think we know how that could be done. At the bottom of a poi’s circle, it is experiencing the acceleration of the spin, plus 1g due to gravity. At the top of the circle, the poi is experiencing the acceleration of the spin, minus 1g due to gravity. This results in a 2g difference between the top and bottom of the circle. This would oscillate in a neat sinusoidal pattern, and comparing high and low values could yield a frequency value, from which a frame rate could be derived. Complex, but with very cool possibilities.