After many years of junk collecting, I have acquired a large number of Matrox Millennium II cards. These cards have a rather unique feature in that you can put more than one of them in a computer and use them at the same time. Those of you that used to run NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP no doubt recognize this card. In all I have five of the Millennium II cards. I also have an AGP Millennium G200 which also supports the multi-card feature. In order for this to be a "worthwhile" demonstration, I...

The electronic ignition worked better than I expected. I was sure some of the fireworks weren't going to go off because the nichrome might have come disconnected from the wires since it seemed like a very fragile setup. But every item lit. It was very cool to be able to push a button and set things off, in some cases several things at once. Control panel made from arcade buttons It was also cool to light things in rapid succession, no running over to put another item down and fumbling to...

Ok, I'm a little late getting the flyers scanned and posted. I think it's because this year I already had a plan for what I was going to purchase, and I already knew I would be purchasing on everyone's behalf. Anyways, here's the flyers and links to the SacBee video and reviews: Phantom Fireworks (1M) TNT Fireworks (4M) SacBee reviews SacBee video I got a slightly early start testing out some stuff I had read about on the internet. I don't remember what I was...

With the 4th of July coming up very quickly, I remembered I still needed to modify my mini-butane torch to include a flashlight of some kind. While the torch makes lighting a fuse quick and easy, finding the fuse in the dark was a bit of a problem. I grabbed one of those mini touch-lights from the dollar store which had 3 white LEDs in it. I gutted it for one of the LEDs and hooked it to a CR2032 battery (the kind that motherboards use). The LED lit up nice and bright! The next step was to...

Last week I decided I absolutely could not go another summer driving in the heat. After a quick trip down to the dealer at the end of the street to check out the Magnums, I started searching the internet for everything I needed to know before I bought a car. I found a really good site that talked about the whole process, suggested alternatives, and included some spreadsheets so you could do lots of calculations and comparisons. I quickly discovered that a nice car wasn't out of reach like...