Thursday, November 30, 2023

Black Friday book deals

This year’s Black Friday was all about books for us. Lulu was having a 30% off promotion and I didn’t want to pass up on the opportunity to grab some of the books I put together, as well as pick up a few Christmas gifts for friends and family along the way.

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Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Revitalizing old fountain pen ink

A couple days ago, I happened across my old stock of fountain pen ink cartridges, which we used to sell from our home fountain pen business over a decade ago. I would have thought not much could go wrong with sealed ink stored for just over a decade. I was about to find out differently.

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Saturday, October 7, 2023

Hooked on Lulu

It all started with simply wanting to obtain the first C64 programming book I ever bought for myself, “Using the Commodore 64 in the Home”. Since I could not find a copy of this book on-line anywhere, at a reasonable price and in good shape, I turned to the publishing service of Lulu.com. After that, I was hooked, as they say.

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Friday, January 20, 2023

Building the Konstruktor 35mm SLR camera

This is another nice addition to have in my collection; the Lomography Konstruktor 35mm SLR. This one is another DIY kit, which took me just a little over two hours to complete. And I have to say, this is a great little camera that takes some pretty good photos and is enjoyable to use.

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Saturday, December 17, 2022

Fast vs slow NiMH battery chargers

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been learning more about rechargeable batteries and some of the technology behind them. I’ve also learned about the chargers that support them and some of the differences between them. In this post, I review two of the more modern chargers I’ve been using the last little while.

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Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Over thirty years of rechargeable batteries

Don’t ask me why, but there’s something about the idea behind rechargeable battery technology that always fascinated me. I’ve been buying them for over thirty years. And without it being my intention, here is yet another obscure collection of technology I have in my possession.

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Sunday, November 27, 2022

My first DIY camera: the Fotodiox TLR

Before the cost got completely out of control around here in the last couple of years, I still enjoyed taking photos on 35mm film. One of the film cameras in my collection that I really liked using was my Fotodiox Twin Lens Reflex camera, which I built from a kit.

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