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Homer Simpson Mod

One of the things I often find myself doing is looking for things to do.

It usually ends up with a fallback night of gaming, or modding whatever I have near me to do something or other. We have blue LED's in every remote control in the house for example, instead of the crappy red ones that come installed by default.

I found this Homer USB mod a while back, and I really have to give the guy credit. It sometimes takes the craziest idea to make the most awesome of mods.

To sum it up, he has taken a Homer Simpson Salt Shaker, and modded it to house a USB memory stick inside of it.

Check it out Here

Make Cat 5 Cables

If you ever need to repair your own Ethernet cables, or like me purchased 1000′ of wire, it can be frustrating when you can’t remember the color code for the pairs.I’ve had and lost this bookmark over and over again, so I thought I’d make a quick post here to keep it somewhat accessable.

I had a different article bookmarked before, but I came across this link in a recent DIGG article.
Click the picture to head over to LanShack to read Tony Casazza’s guide.

LED Nightlights

I make these from time to time, whenever I get a inkling to do so I guess.On the next batch I will take how-to pictures, but this will give you an idea.

The LED’s themselves I salvage from LED Christmas lights. The one in these pictures is from a set of blue ones I bought about 4 years ago. They have a long tapered lense on them, so they work very nicely for nightlights.

I’ve made Red, Blue, Green and White ones. The white ones I use a regular white LED that I salvage from those LED keychains you find at your local *-Mart store. Usually the keychains are about $2.99 which is cheaper than the $4.99 from the local supply store.

Here are some pictures in the meantime:

Led Nightlight

This is a ridiculously simple mod.It came to mind during Christmas 2004. My mother and I were in a store and saw these “7 Color” Nightlights. They were on sale for something like $2.49 so I grabbed a couple to check them out.My original idea was to discover if they were using a single LED or 3 different colored ones. Turns out it is a single RBG LED, which I was happy about. Then the idea was to hack out this LED from the nightlights to use somewhere else.I never got around to it, and after Christmas, the Nightlight was put away, since it had a Christmas theme to it.

Then I was kind of bored one day and thought about replacing the Acrylic insert in the nightlight and re-etch a new design into it. I never got around to re-etching, but I did replace the acrylic.

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Turn over the light and note the 2 screws and the shiny sticker on the bottom.
Remove the two screws from the light, but leave the sticker intact. This will allow the two halves to open on a hinge point, and once re-assembled will leave no indication of the mod.
Once open, remove the acrylic carefully, taking care not to damage the pillars it rests on.
Cut yourself a new piece of acrylic, making sure the width is the same as the original. Thickness should also be as close as you can purchase, to ensure it fills the hole in the nightlight. You must remember that these things have 120V inside of them, and you don’t want someone hurting themselves because your new piece of acrylic is only half as thick, You can make it any height you want (within reason). The optimum seems to be about the same size as the piece we removed earlier. Drill two holes carefully where the pillars are to make it fit. Add a third hole where the LED will sit.
Line up the new piece of acrylic, and file the LED spot smooth, and the two edges as needed to make the new piece fit properly. You can see where I wasn’t careful enough and broke the acrylic where the LED sits. Apon re-assembly, it didn’t seem to matter, I suppose the LED’s focused light beam only needs the top curve of the notch to be nice.
Close the nightlight back up, SLOWLY.. you need to make sure the LED is going to sit inside your notch properly.. you may need to file it a bit more to make it fit.
All done! Still looks and works just like the factory one.
Below is an animation of the finished product.. The real nightlight holds each color about 10 seconds, but I have sped this one up to show all 7 colors.