Flux welder (FCAW) converted to MIG (GMAW)

I got a nice welder from my wife Sunniva this christmas that was flux core only. After reading a bit about welding I decided to check if it was possible to convert my welder to MIG with gas shielding (Argon or Argon/CO2). This is attractive since you could make much nicer welds, poisonous fumes are minimized and you should in theory be able to weld both stainless steel and aluminium.

After opening up the torch I found that it contained a gas valve that had a threaded hole. I bought a small bottle gas kit for a different welder, made threads on the straight part of the quick coupling and bought a longer nylon tube for the quick coupling with the same diameter. Now I am able to do both flux core and gas shielded welding.

Error with CDrom in xp (Code 32) finally fixed

As an action oriented man it is a little bit embarrassing to admit that I have had problems using my hp laptop cdrom drive for several years now. I have not done anything about it since I thought it was a hardware problem and data can nowadays allways be transferred in other ways (usb, wifi).

Yesterday I got surprised when I saw that I was able to boot from an ubuntu linux cd without problems. When I on top of that saw that no virtual cdrom drives (virtual clonedrive, magicdisc) were working either I was determined to fix what now was a windows problem.

I saw that all cdrom drives were registered as active in windows device manager, but all had an exclamation sign suggesting something was wrong. When looking in properties I got the following error:

(Norwegian)

En driver(tjeneste) for denne enheten er deaktivert. En alternativ driver kan gi samme funksjonalitet. (Kode 32)

(English)

A driver for this device was not required, and has been disabled (Code 32)The first suggestion was that I should include CTFMON.exe in the startup, but this did not change anything.

I finally found Microsoft's Q314060 showing me how to fix the problem:

Step 1: Start Registry Editor

Start Registry Editor.

Step 2: Delete the UpperFilters registry entry

1. In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click UpperFilters.
   
   Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click UpperFilters only.
   • If you see the UpperFilters registry entry in the details pane of Registry Editor, go to step 6.
   • If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to "Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry."
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7. Click Yes when you receive the following message:
   Are you sure you want to delete this value?

The UpperFilters registry entry is removed.

Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry

1. In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click LowerFilters.
   
   Note You might see a LowerFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click LowerFilters only.
   
   If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this content is unable to help you any more. Go to the "Next Steps" section for information about how you can find more solutions or more help on the Microsoft Web site.
2. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
3. Click Yes when you receive the following message:
   Are you sure you want to delete this value?
   The LowerFilters registry entry is removed.
4. Exit Registry Editor.

Step 4: Restart your computer

Mini review of "The renaissance soul" by Margaret Lobenstine

I had this book on my wish list since I picked up the title when reading comments to the blog post "The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades" from Tim Ferris' blog. I was happy when receiving this as a christmas gift and started reading it immediately. During my recent vacation to the Canaries I got the chance to finish the book. Here are my personal impressions of the book:

• I was expecting to learn a practical time management system from the book. Time management is covered in 22 pages and is not very practical in my opinion. Margaret basicly says that you should put down up to four focal points, calculate how much time you have left for them and put them in your calendar. I don't like using the calendar when it's not necessary. I rather put up my most important tasks for a day and try to finish them. These are all prioritized according to my focal points. This makes you focused, but still flexible. I picked up this tip from "zen to done" from Zen habits.
• The book is written more like a novel than a practical guide. It is full of stories of clients that Margaret succesfully helped out after coaching them.
• The title is "The renaissance soul", but I didn't expect the author to use this phrase as much as she does. OK, so the test said that I am a renaissance soul - this does not make me some special, rare creature that should behave differently than any others. Most people need some kind of structural aid to be effective in their day to day work.
• Even though I didn't like the book very much I found some metaphors quite good: A) When trying to find which focal points to pick then think of them as ice-cream that you can pick a four-flavor sampler from and change whenever you like. B) When faced with a situation involving change you are like a lobster breaking out of it's shell in order to grow: First the shell is a thin membrane without protection and you fear this before you leave your original cozy shell. You later realize that your new shell is bigger and harder and more protective than the old shell.

iPhone VPN connection to Vista is now working

Something strange happened the other day. I haven't used the iPhone VPN connection since the post was written because I had no use for it. Now I wanted to try it again. This time I got access to all the other ip adresses that were previously hidden for me. I tested this from work so I know I wasn't locally connected. Three things were changed since the last time I tried: The iPhone got new firmware (2.2.1), the wireless network administration was changed from RALink to Windows and Windows Vista probably got some new updates. That's really strange, but oh so cool!

Nondestructive cooling for Dreambox DM800 HD

I got sick and tired of the Dreambox DM800 HD locking up all the time and read several places that this was due to heating problems. This happens especially when you run HD channels.

The Dreambox DM800 HD does not contain a fan, so I decided to include one myself. I did not want to destroy anything or cut any wires so I started looking at different pins/connectors that I could connect a fan to. Two options were candidates: the header next to the Broadcom cpu (JTAG header?) and the power supply to the internal SATA harddrive that I have got. Neither were easy to find any good information as to what voltage they had or if they could source sufficient current. I decided to use the same trick that everyone else are using: Connect to the USB port.

I found an old 12V cpu fan that I salvaged from an old computer and stripped the wires. I had a spare USB male to USB female cable that I removed the shielding from, cut the red and black wires, stripped them and connected them to the wires for the fan. Now the fan was running ok. The wires for the fan now goes nicely through the hole where the eSATA connector earlier was connected.

The USB 2.0 standard gives a maximum current of 100mA. At 5V this would be 0.5W. My fan was supposed to draw 1.5W at 12V, but the DM800 has no problem running it. It even seemed to have no problem booting up the first time I connected the power plug.

VPN connection from iPhone to Windows

After some fumbling around I finally figured out how to make a VPN connection from my iPhone to my Windows Vista PC.

To start out I used the guide "Setting up the Vista Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) Virtual Private Network (VPN) Server". It is a great guide on how to set up a Windows to Windows PPTP VPN connection. The client side is not very well covered, but could easily be found elsewhere on the internet.

I had to set up port forwarding on both the ADSL modem as well as on my wireless router for port 1723. No other changes of settings were necessary on the routers.

After finishing the guide I could not get a VPN connection from either a windows client or from my iPhone. Some web guides have the advise to set the "account" on the iPhone with the syntax "Hostname\Username". This does not change anything. The trick to get a connection is to connect through a different subnet than the VPN server is connected to. This means connecting the iPhone via 3G or a different WiFi Network than the server is physically connected to. This makes sense since you do not need to go to the internet to make a VPN connection if you are allready connected locally.

Now I have a VPN connection from my iPhone to my Vista PC, but I still haven't figured out what I can use the connection to. The iPhone does not have any browser software to browse through local folders on the VPN server and when pinging the subnet I only get reply from the two local adresses for the VPN gateway and the incoming VPN client. I have tried making a port forward to a vnc server, but that didn't work out. I have thus so far not been able to do anything useful with the connection. If anyone have suggestions on how to make it useful, please publish a comment.

PIC desulfator

Look what I got in the mail today: A PIC based desulfator from
courtiestown marine. It took a few hours to solder it, but now it is
ready. Now let's ressurrect some old batteries!