3D Printing

I accidentally broke the Official scoop for my Technivorm Moccamaster coffee maker. 3D printing is an area that interests me, and I had been looking for a starter project, to get my feet wet. Proud to say, that instead of buying a replacement, I made my own!

android

BlaCKBERRY ❤

I've had lots of phones over the years. My friends think I have a problem... :)

Windows Mobile and iOS, Symbian, and Android. I know them all. Recently, I'm alternating between Android (rooted OnePlus One with Cyanogen nightlies) or a Windows Phone (Lumia 640, running whatever the latest software currently being served up through the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build).

For years though, the austere and humble Blackberry has always appealed to me. My complete list of devices over the years is Bold (9000, 9700), Torch (9800, 9810), the beautiful Bold 9900, Z10, Q10, and most recently the Android-powered Priv. 

Official OS releases were no fun. Many nights in college were spent playing within the java system installation files for Blackberry 7 OS, swapping out COD's ... all to make the smoothest and fastest hybrid OS possible.

This video was summer a few years ago. The Q10 had been recently released, and after installing an early beta build of 10.3, I tossed a quick YouTube video up, showing how to remove the carrier SIM lock. 

BITCOIN

As a hobby, a few years ago I started dabbling in Bitcoin. It’s just for fun more than anything. I like the emerging technology and community aspects of it. I’ve definitely found that mining helps understand the technology better. There is still a ton of fascinating and exciting stuff happening in cryptocurrency and Blockchain technologies.

Anyway, I purchased a Butterfly Labs 25 GH/s ASIC Bitcoin miner on May 2013, and received it Nov 2013. This is an old video I recorded of the unboxing, I figured maybe it would be of interest to someone. I stripped out the audio too, because I didn't end up saying anything more than just what I was seeing. Plus, people don’t watch Unboxing videos to hear some random dude rambling.

In terms of performance, when I first started mining, my default payout (0.05 BTC) was being reached almost twice a week. With both the increase in collective mining force, along with sequential coins being incrementally more difficult to discover, production has dropped consistently over time.

The miner is still functioning, which says something good I guess about Butterfly Labs build quality. However, the 25 GH/s mining rate is yielding me maybe 0.005 BTC per month.

In case you want to toss a little coin my way!  :) 

1MwKYUUKYkGDbriqsLttTv3KC7Ua6sxcx6  

(Bitcoin wallet address...for those who don't know)

I designed and built a wind turbine 

I won't go into tons of detail here. If interested, I've linked to the project site in the Projects tab above, also here. Basically, there is a list of pros and cons when considering a wind turbine. Vertical axis of rotation, as opposed to the traditional horizontal axis has a different set of pros and cons. As such, there are situations where a vertical turbine makes more sense. The first video below is a fun animation, and the second is the actual turbine working.