Money Mining

In the good ole days, you could be a pretty successful Bitcoin (cryptography based currency for geeks) miner simply by running a program on your desktop computer. But with the way the algorithms work and the increasing complexity of the cryptography, these days you need dedicated hardware to be successful.

I'm too late to this game to make any significant coin, but I figured that since I am both a computer geek and a financial type, I should at least be able to say that I have mined a Bitcoin.

So I bought a couple of ASIC usb miners and gave it a try.

First I used an old Windows XP laptop to get the mining software, pooled mining account, and bitcoin wallet all set up since I don't necessarily trust all of the programmers and participants in all of these operations. Downloading these kinds of things always makes me a little nervous.

Once I had everything all sorted out, I switched out the relatively power hungry laptop for the versatile, trendy/nerdy $35 computer-the Raspberry Pi. The powered usb hub is powering the 2 miners, the Raspberry Pi, and the cooling fan. The whole operation is running off the hub's 3 amp power supply. This makes for a very low power consumption rig. I can log into the Pi from another computer/tablet/phone to see how things are going.

I found a space for the rig next to my printer and wireless router. Now I just wait and watch the Bitcoins roll in.

DIY Mattress

The modern american mattress is a ridiculous thing.

People have been building and destroying empires for thousands of years all while sleeping on various sorts of mats and piles of animal hair and plant fibers. For a while there, they strung ropes across wooden frames with a bag of animal hair on top. Every so often they would untie the ropes, tighten them and re-tie the knot so that the bed wouldn't sag down to the floor where the bugs were. "Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite."

In some parts of the world there are still craftsmen that make mattresses for a living. The man makes you a mattress once and you keep that mattress your whole life, occasionally taking it back to him to be re-carded and re-stuffed.

When we got married, we did the sensible thing. We went out and bought an innerspring mattress from a department store. It wore out. Rebuilding it is not even an option. Which is a shame considering what we paid for it.

So I did some thinking and some research (how I found out all those tidbits above) and decided that the only group of people who seem to be even remotely happy with their beds are the foam mattress people. And I discovered that there is an outrageous markup on foam mattresses and that you can buy the foam direct from the foam manufacturers as opposed to the mattress companies.

Long story short: I made my own mattress out of 6 inches of high density polyurethane foam for the base and 4 inches of 5 lb memory foam. I encased it in a soft, stretchy jacquard velour case (similar to Tempurpedic's) I found on ebay. If I really wanted to be tricky, I could have ordered a replacement Tempurpedic case, but they want too much money even for the cases. If you were to buy a basic name brand memory foam mattress you would get pretty much the exact same thing, only the two slabs of foam are glued together, and they put a slightly nicer case around it and of course you would pay 3 or 4 times as much as I paid. I chose not to have the slabs glued together so that I can change out one layer or the other if needed. Once it is all zipped up, you can't tell the difference anyway and since altogether it weighs over 130 pounds, being able to move the awkward floppy slabs separately helps.

The finished product:

The memory foam test:

I considered a cheaper knock-off memory foam mattress, but I learned that they use inferior grades of foam. My mattress was only about $100 more than the knock offs I found online, but I knew that I was getting the top grade foam for both the base/support layer and the memory layer.

Wired Networking

Sometimes you fix one problem only to create another. After having built such a nice system in the living room for recording cable TV (see previous post), the bedroom TV was feeling a little left out. Fortunately, by adding a "Windows Media Center Extender" like an XBOX 360 to the bedroom TV, we can extend all of the living room HTPCs functionality into the bedroom. That is, we can schedule a recording in the living room and watch it later in the bedroom, or vice versa. This works out much better than having two HTPCs because you only have to schedule a recording once, you don't have to worry about "oh I set it to record in the living room, but I want to watch it in bed right now." And XBOXs are cheaper than HTPCs.

So the second part of the problem is that while wireless technologies have come along way, there are times such as when streaming high definition video when it is just better to have a wired network connection.

I've gotten some good practice at wiring the house with ethernet cable. Shortly after we moved in, we realized that with the wireless router in the office, we didn't get a very good signal in the bedroom. So I set up a router in the office and another in the living room with a wired bridge in between. I use an existing coaxial tv cable to pull new cable up into the attic. I then cut a hole for an "old work" electrical box, and pull the other end of the cable down in another room again using an existing coax cable. In addition to providing better coverage, the two WiFi router setup has the added advantage of being able to plug in several wired devices (desktop, printer) in the office and also in the living room (htpc, blu-ray, gaming systems).

So I decided to run another ethernet cable from the living room to the bedroom to supply the XBOX/Media Center Extender with a reliable wired connection.

Here's the dirty work in progress:

And here's the end result:

 

Home Theater PC (HTPC) Build

I've worked with a lot of computer hardware over the years, but I've never had a need to build a computer from "scratch" .... until now.

I finally gave in and decided to get cable so Rachel can watch HGTV. So I had to get a CableCARD and cable tv tuner so that we could continue to use the Windows Media Center DVR system I had setup to watch Netflix and record over the air high definition broadcast television. I just couldn't stomach paying even more money to the cable company each month to rent cable boxes from them so that I could watch the service I was already paying them for!

Unfortunately, the 6 year old dell desktop wasn't powerful enough to record 5 HD shows at once, so it was time to build a new machine. It is quite a bit more cost effective to build your own computer if any of the following apply: you already have some components, you have a special application in mind, or you need above average performance. All three apply here as I already had a good power supply, blu-ray drive, and several hard drives. Home Theater duty has some special requirements beyond the typical desktop. And, though not as demanding as a gaming enthusiast, HTPCs are working 24/7 and need to respond the instant you press the remote.

So I selected a quad core processor with good integrated graphics, 8 gigs of dual channel RAM, a motherboard with plenty of 6 Gpbs SATA ports, and an attractive enough case. I moved the power supply, remote control, and various drives and TV tuner over from the previous computer.

We've been very pleased with the results. It is quiet, responsive and goes weeks without needing a restart or exhibiting any quirky behavior. It has a 3 TB drive that holds waaaaaay more hours of recorded HD television than we'll ever be able to watch. We can watch/record up to 5 channels at once (3 cable, 2 OTA broadcast). We can ff/rw/pause/commercial skip just like commercial DVR systems, except I own the system and don't have to pay rental fees or monthly charges to anyone. Blu-Ray, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc. are all there too.

You have to be willing to do a little work at the front end. If you don't have a computer geek in your house, it may not be the best option, but it works pretty well for us.

Except for the case, here are the 3 essential parts of a system build/upgrade that usually have to be matched together: Processor, Ram and Mother Board. The technology doesn't evolve as rapidly in cases, drives, etc.

 AMD is still using pins on the bottom of the processor. Intel has moved to contact pads that are less likely to be damaged or bent. But Intel is the innovator, AMD the bargain.

 Here's the (almost) finished machine. Getting this far only took about an hour. And to my dismay, it actually booted right up on the first try! In the old days, you would get it all put together, then spend several hours troubleshooting why it wasn't booting. Invariably it would be because a jumper or dip switch wasn't set properly. These days it is pretty much plug and play. Software work of course took several hours getting windows and all the drivers and other software loaded and configured.

New Bike

When you picture a serious cyclist, the image that comes to mind is most likely not one of a 5' 10" 200lb chubby pale guy. However, I spent a lot of time on my bikes in college and I rode quite a bit when we lived near the Riverside trail.

These days I probably spend more time working on bikes than actually riding them, but as a habitual tinkerer, I'm OK with that.

I got into bikes because they're fun to ride, but also because they were an affordable alternative to cars. If I had the money, I'd have a garage full of old cars to work on. For now I'm satisfied with a garage full of old bikes to work on.

I've built up a number of respectable bikes from parts over the years, including a fixed-gear "fixie" that I built from the frame up out of hand picked new parts, but I decided it was time I had a modern road bike. I debated building a road bike from new parts like I did with the fixie, and I debated carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium and steel. I shopped around and found a great deal on a new complete bike. I couldn't have built one for less money, so I ordered it. 

Schwinn is not the company it used to be, 99% of the bikes are heavy, poorly assembled imported piles of gas pipe. For what its worth, the vast majority of all branded bikes, even high end Treks, Specialized, Cannondales, Giants, etc. come from one of 3 factories in Taiwan. However, there are still some quality Schwinns being made like the Paramount (handmade in the historic Waterford factory if memory serves). I liked this bike because it has the old school look, but has a nice selection of modern components including Shimano 105 running gear. It also has a steel frame and fork. Steel is maybe a pound or two heavier than some of the other materials out there, but as a 200 lb rider, I have no business discussing the weight of my bike. In addition to the "sweet ride of steel" and the "steel is real" mantra, steel has a definite advantage over carbon fiber in that it is much less likely to kill you because you failed to notice a stress crack in the carbon layup. Aluminum or titanium would be nice, but they often come with carbon forks, and I don't feel right about throwing away an expensive carbon fork and replacing it with a steel one. This is the tag that came on the carbon seatpost:

Since I have no desire to examine the seat post for pinch, crack, splinter before and after each ride, I replaced the carbon post with a trusty aluminum one. If anyone wants a carbon post, I'll sell it to you cheap.

The bike comes partially assembled. A normal person would remove the packaging, bolt everything together and go for a ride. But as you can tell by the picture below, I'm no normal person. I disassembled the bike down to the frame so I could give the inside of the tubes a good coating of FrameSaver rust preventative spray. Really not necessary if you don't park your bike in the ocean, but I figure it couldn't hurt.

Here's the end result. Notice the aluminum seatpost, Brooks tensioned leather saddle and my own clipless (pedals that use snap-in cleats are called clipless because they do not have toe clips and straps that were used to secure riders feet in the old days, not to be confused with flat platform pedals). The tensioned leather saddle is by far the most comfortable saddle ever made. Forget gel and foam padding, tensioned leather is the only way to go. Most people have never experienced these saddles because they are expensive and require more maintenance than plastic saddles, but they are so worth it.