I Would Rather #6

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Would you rather suddenly be elected a senator or suddenly become a CEO of a major company? (You won’t have any more knowledge about how to do either job than you do right now.)

CEO. I have no desire to be in politics.

Would you rather live in virtual reality where you are all powerful or live in the real world and be able to go anywhere but not be able to interact with anyone or anything?

Live in the real world because I haven’t experienced VR yet.

Would you rather have whatever you are thinking to appear above your head for everyone to see or have absolutely everything you do live streamed for anyone to see?

Have whatever I’m thinking appear above my head.

Would you rather be only able to watch the few movies with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 95-100% or only be able to watch the majority of movies with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94% and lower?

Watch the movies with a score of 94% and lower.

Would you rather wake up as a new random person every year and have full control of them for the whole year or once a week spend a day inside a stranger without having any control of them?

A new random person every year.

Would you rather know how above or below average you are at everything or know how above or below average people are at one skill/talent just by looking at them?

Know how above or below average I am at everything.

Would you rather live until you are 200 but look like you are 200 the whole time even though you are healthy or look like you are 25 all the way until you die at age 65?

If I’m healthy I’d take living to 200!

Boldport: Juice (FAIL)

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I started this build a couple of weeks ago and “finished” it today. It is supposed to be a battery replacement kit for use in prototyping if you run out of batteries. It was project #12 in the Boldport Club.

Mine, did not turn out to be a useable device, because I shorted the connections in the USB connector, which I put on last and should have done first. If there’s one complaint about the Boldport Club kits it’s that the instructions are lacking. I messed around with different desoldering techniques to try and correct the problem, but I might have been fighting a losing battle depending on how deep in there the shorted connections were. I figured something was screwy when the LED never lit up. Then when I connected a 9V battery as the power source instead of USB I knew something was really wrong. With a multimeter I was only getting millivolt readings from the board. I felt the battery and it was really hot, so I disconnected to read the battery it was down to less than 9 volts already, when it had started close to 9.5! That’s when I called it quits.

I’m almost positive I thought this kit was something else when I ordered it with credits I had. I can’t see myself using this during a project if it had been a success, so I’m not too disappointed. Even though it was a failure I figured I’d still post the video. Since it was just over five minutes long at 20x speed with all of the footage I didn’t even bother to do any editing. The camera had filled up somewhere during the desoldering complications and I was too frustrated to bother with getting a new SD card. Enjoy! Or not.

Boldport: LIGEMDIO

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A couple of weeks ago I assembled one of the BoldPort Club kits I had piled on my desk. This one was project #8, titled LIGEMDIO. It’s an LED tester and the name comes from the first letters of Light Emitting Diode, LED.

It was a cool little build after I swapped out to an old soldering iron and it’s a project I’ll actually get some use out of. Would have been nice to have when I tested all of the LEDs for the 8x8x8 cube.

Link Dump – 2019/07/25

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Bucket of Balls

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I first posted about used golf balls over 13 years ago and I’ve been using them ever since. I’ve never been able to tell the difference between a good quality used ball and a brand new one.

I don’t think I’d buy refinished balls again like in 2017, because the line wasn’t straight and the stamp looked bad. The minor cost savings wasn’t worth it.