Other What currently makes your life awesome?

The serviceability of the Logitech MX518. Scroll wheel felt a little gummed up this morning. Remove three screws (covered by stickers, I have the Rev 1, the Rev 2 use a larger glide pad which covers the screws), lift the cover off, no stupid snap fittings to worry about. Clean the dust and hair out of the scroll wheel mechanism, dust the rest of the interior. Pop the lid on and good to go. Less than five minutes latter wheel scrolling smoothly again.
One more item, did this while at work, I spent longer trying to find the correct screwdriver.

 

Learning to become a steam engine fireman, and today I got to fire this little beaut:


(This is a photo of us out today)

This engine is a LSWR Drummond T9 class 4-4-0, No. 30120. She was built in 1899 and is the only loco of this class remaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSWR_T9_class

 

Made some WS2812B strip plug into the Commander Pro, which all works nicely and is powered directly off the PSU.

30 currency for 40 RGB LED's. Pfft.

 

all goes well tomorrow i'll be the proud owner of this mighty steed

 

As far as I can tell, yarp.

There seems to be some discussion regarding the appropriate amperages and whatnot, as the software only allows you configure six strips per lighting header (Which is 60 LED's), but I've read so many things about the limitations of the available amperage I decided to do what other people seem to have done and connect the power direct to the PSU, bypassing the Commander Pro.

So currently my wiring looks like:

PSU 5v > Strip
Commander Pro Data > Strip
Commander Pro GND > Strip

I did also try grounding to both the strip and the Pro, but there appeared to be no benefit to this.

The info I found is was related to making extensions (I didn't bookmark, and now can't find it in my history - But it was on the Corsair iCue forums), so has some part numbers that might not be necessary (I didn't buy anything, as I had the two 2xfemale ended cables that came with the pro), but:

Qty Part Comments
1 Molex 50-57-9403 3 circuit Female Socket Connector
1 Molex 70107-0002 3 circuit Male Socket Connector
3 Molex 16-02-0102 Female Crimp Connector
3 Molex 16-02-0114 Male Crimp Connector

I found those more readily available in the UK than here in Germany. I had more joy finding them for sale taking the hyphens out.

Pinout wise I found a picture with some .. Interesting English, but it boils down to looking at the Commander Pro so the lighting connections are top left, they're both the same (obvs) left to right:

5V-Data-GND

It also tests out pretty easily with a multimeter.

I used some cheapy ebay special WS2812B LED's, 3-pin 5v jobbies, just cut to length. I have one run of 30 on one header and one run of 10 on the other. I tested the rainbow wave thing, the 10 LED strip is running the iCue "Temperature" thing, but the other one is just running a static colour.

iCUE version 3.18.77 if Windaz is to be believed.

Edit: Ran through all the effects from iCUE and they all appear to work as expected.

 

My diagnosis of my unbootable fileserver was correct. Gambling £85 on a new PSU paid off.

 

@MLyons I followed the same thread as @liratheal and mine too works spot on (apart from when iCue craps itself)

I think this is the right one: https://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=168504

 

Not the thread i had in mind, but it is one of the ones I read! And could then not find again. Lots of useful info in it.

 

Pleasant afternoon, so had a country lane blast in the Lotus, which is awesome for three reasons:

1) No problems starting and running after 4 months of being stowed away is always a relief
2) I was able to shift with my still somewhat dodgy left hand
3) It's a county lane blast in a Lotus

 

Well & truly stuffed after pre-birthday meal with my Dad... tonight's sleep will be a very sound one.

 

Mum: "The M4 won't go in your garage, it is too wide"
Me: "Yes it will, I have measured the door opening"
Mum: "Mmmmm Hmmm, ok..." (said in a tone that meant she didn't believe me..)
Me:


Mum: "Huh, how many attempts did that take?!"
Me: "Er, first attempt.. wasn't hard, just a pain to get out of once in"
Also Me:

 

I'm sure property developers in the UK only spec a garage in at the last minute to comply with some planning permission stating off-street parking and don't actually give a f**k if a car will actually fit or not. They always appear to be an afterthought here.

Either that or they know that a "garage" is a selling point (i.e. an extra £10k) and that no-one will ever put a car in it, it will only be used for storage.

It makes me pine for a few of the places I had in NZ which had *real sized* double garages - two of which actually had pits in them for working underneath the car!

 

Yep, we are quite lucky with our house that the garage is actually quite large. Not immensely wide or anything but it is 27 Feet in length. Saying that it is MUCH wider (and longer) than most of the new builds going up around where we live.

Would love to fine somewhere with a proper double garage but round here that would require £350K+. Even if we had the want to spend that much on a house, the bigger issue is actually finding one that a) has a double garage and, b) has not had said garage re-purposed into another room. Seems that more and more properties that would have once had double garages are now "bigger" inside (well they have more rooms), but have sod all land or room to park cars.

 

If the rear wall of your garage leads to a flat piece of ground, you could always build a stand alone double garage behind and use the current "garage" as a covered driveway?

Stand-alone garages built of wood or steel are much cheaper than a brick one.

The trick with real garages is that they should be detached from the house, otherwise you are restricted by the house (if that makes sense).

 

Snow

 

S'no

 

What's that? Just mild and wet here in West Somerset.