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Government shutdown can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone. Are you prepared?

With the Government Shutdown Preparedness Kit (G.S.P.K.), you can be!!!1!

What does the G.S.P.K. look like I hear you asking? Simple! It looks like this:

Government Shutdown Preparedness Kit

The Government Shutdown Preparedness Kit comes with:

  • 5 Biggerish CLOSED
  • 10 Less than Biggerish CLOSED
  • 13 Less than Less than Biggerish CLOSED
  • 13 Smallish Polite!
  • 3 Bigger than Smallish Polite!

Nearly* everything you need to be prepared for a government shutdown!

With the G.S.P.K. you will be prepared on the streets:

Be prepared in the streets

 

Do you travel by public transit? No problem! With the G.S.P.K. you’ll be prepared on the metro!

Be prepared on the Metro

 

*competent government not included

 

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Posted on October 10, 2013

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Hi Kids!

Here is a great way to stay up on your math skills and entertain yourself on a hot summer day!

MATH!!!1!

Wait 30 seconds for lost tourists and…..

lulz

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Posted on July 21, 2013

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You know that awesome feature in Gmail where it shows you the first couple of lines of an email so you don’t have to open it letting you ignore a bunch of emails you don’t want to deal with.

It looks like this:

That is great unless you REALLY want someone to open the damn email…

If you make the top three lines:

NO SPOILERS
-~=-*’`^”^`’*-=~+,.._..,+~=-*’`^”^`’*-=~-
YOU HAVE TO OPEN IT

Now when send your friends an email asking them to do a favor they won’t see any spoilers from the email and they will be forced to click on it to figure out that you’re asking for a favor. When they go to their inbox they will see this:

Mostly I fail at ASCII art. You people get creative and make more and leave them in the comments. Best one gets a virtual gold star.

Posted on June 14, 2012

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OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Track my Fader

 

How did we track the crossfader during the Art Hack Day?!? ZOMG!! So many questions!

The answer is very simple! We used a VCA Mixer. Specifically the Vestax PMC-07 Pro. Because you know… we’re pro like that.

I hear you asking now, “But, sir! WTF is a VCA Mixer?!?!”

Well, I’m glad you asked. Allow me to explain: VCA or Voltage Controlled Amplifier means that instead of sending the audio signal to the crossfader the mixer instead sends a voltage which in turn controls the volume level for each channel. This makes determining the position of the fader very easy; simply measure the voltage for each channel.

In the case of the PMC-07 Pro the voltage that is sent to the crossfader is 10V DC. We used an Arduino Uno to monitor the voltage. It maxes out at 5V. Not wanting to explode the Arduino with 10V we used a simple voltage divider on each channel utilizing two (four total) 1 megaohm resistors. We would have been a lot better off using 100 kilohm resistors. Using an opamp would have been even more betterer but… we didn’t have any of those.

Because we’re so damn pro and didn’t have any of the parts to make a proper Y cable we just soldered everything to the crossfader.

Go team awesome!

 

Yes, I hear you. You’re wondering, “That’s all well and good, but how am I supposed to hook it all up?!?”

 

Simple! Follow these amazeball instructions. The PMC-07 Pro uses a 4 pin connector on the crossfader. The outside pins are power and ground the middle pins are for the channels. Use a volt meter to determine which pin is power and which pin is ground. Plug ground into one of the ground pins on the Arduino and the two center pins from the fader through a voltage divider and into two analog pins on the Arduino. We used A0 and A1. You do not need to hook anything up to the 10V power pin on the mixer. Got it?

 

Here I drew you a picture too!

CLICK TO EMBIGGEN

The Arduino sketch we used can be found here.

In summation here is a list of items you must procure to do this:

  • Vestax PMC-07 Pro mixer (Any VCA mixer will do, just drop the voltage to 5V or less.)
  • Four 100 kilohm resistors
  • An Arduino
  • A proper Y cable for the PMC-07 Pro. Instructable for building it is here
  • Arduino sketch found here

Build your Y cable. Make a couple voltage dividers. Hook it up like the picture above and BLAMO!

#Pro-Tip: Elliot Marx informed me that if you use an Innofader (the origional, not the Pro or PNP) it will limit the VCA voltages of the PMC-07 Pro to 5V eliminating the need for the voltage dividers. Wire colors for the Innofader are as follows:

Blue = 5V
Green = VCA1 (varies from 0 to 5 volts)
Yellow = VCA2 (varies from 5 to 0 volts, moves opposite from VCA1)
Grey = ground

Thank you Elliot!

 

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Posted on February 9, 2012

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