Side Projects

There's a lot I liked about Ironman, the movie. A resourceful guy building cool stuff in his man cave using technology was right up my alley. I love a challenge. So what did I do? I went down to my man cave of course and tried to make one (which drove my wife nuts for 3 days). When I looked around online, I found a few examples of strap-on ones. Sorry, I don't plan on walking around with a light on my chest. So I did a little more thinking, and decided to try to make a usb powered arc reactor. I think I grunted a few times in my man cave.

I made it out of a tap light, some plastic bottles, faucet parts, a sink strainer, a coffee thermos, wire, solder, and of course a usb cable. After a quick Google search, I learned usb voltage is about 4.75v. The three AAA batteries in the tap light added up to 4.5v, so I needed to drop the voltage coming out of the usb a bit. I put an inline diode in the positive wire to drop the voltage, and voila! A usb powered arc reactor.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not identical to the movie version, but it's close enough for me (and it looks cool on my desk). Here are some photos.

Aside from being a designer, I'm also a musician. Here's a cover song of 'She Does' by Collective Soul.

Can't get it to play? Download the song: She Does

Here is a miniature guitar I made for my son from a solid pine step I bought from Home Depot. I put the tuning heads inside the guitar so that he would not poke his finger on the strings. It took me a while to figure out how to build it, but after a lot of cutting, drilling and sanding, I finally finished it and gave it to him just after his first birthday.

If you're a guitarist, check out the guitar site I built.