Monthly Archives: October 2023

In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 31, 2023 – Uboxing of Mini Classic Game Console

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This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

Silly Job Title: Power Provider

It’s the In The Lab With Jay Jay Halloween Special! This evening: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my retro gaming console: The Mini Classic Game Console. Complete with 620 odd games!

I picked this thing up at Vinnies (the thrift store) for fifteen Aussie buckaroos.

The main circuit board looks like this:

I found the S71PL256NC0HFW5U2 which is a 64Mb flash memory. The details of the other circuitry was obscured.

Here is the list of games on this thing:

And this is the manual:

I managed to get this thing wired through an AV to HDMI adapter, then a HDMI to USB adapter, so in the last half of the video you can see me demoing a few of the games and scrolling through the full list of games.

Oh, and in this video I read “NTSL” on the manual and say “they got that wrong, it’s NTSA”, but *I* got that wrong, and it’s “NTSC”. The American video standard. In Australia almost everything is PAL.

Homework

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This is a part of the homework feature of my blog, which is an ongoing conversation with my mate S.F.

Reading counts as productivity but 100% reading is problematic.

“Raise your words, not your voice. It’s rain that grows flowers not thunder.” — Rumi

Johann Hari wrote Chasing the Scream and recorded this famous TED Talk: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong. We also discussed Hari’s other book Stolen Focus.

I did a quick search for pop3 email migration for iphone which suggests you can’t salvage POP3 email from an iPhone. I find that surprising. I’ve emailed a mate to see if this is true or not. Stand by.

As promised my keyboard unboxing video: In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 31, 2023 – Uboxing of FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition 104-key and tenkeyless keyboards.

The USB HDMI adapters I have are these ones: 4K Audio Video Capture Card USB 3.0 HDMI Video Capture Device for Live Streaming. They have HDMI in and both USB and HDMI out. Which means you can have my old Forty7 AVerMedia BU110 ExtremeCap UVC, Multi-Colour, I will bring it next time I see you.

I found Dr Peter Brain on the web.

Economists talk about normative and positive.

Here is the article about organizational structure The Tyranny of Structurelessness and the article about bureaucracy Inside Bureaucracy.

I am one day closer to being the man I will ultimately be. (A dead man!)

Checkout Last Splash, a 1993 album from The Breeders with the fan favorite Cannonball. “I’m the last splash!”

We mentioned No Surprises by Radio Head.

My hard core dancing video is here: jj5 feels hardcore!. Let me know if it doesn’t play for you and I will find the original.

The video about suicide is here: “Why Do People Die By Suicide” – Lecture by Thomas E. Joiner, Ph.D..

I found Outkast – SpottieOttieDopaliscious but YouTube won’t let me watch it because of my ad blocker.

John Perkins has a new version of his book out: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition.

Check out Mr Inbetween.

I found There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

And the last thing I have in my phone is: “Who beautiful?? It’s an ugly word” — and I have no idea what that means, I suspect I was quite drunk by that point. :P

In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 31, 2023 – Uboxing of FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition 104-key and tenkeyless keyboards

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This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

Silly Job Title: Sparky

Happy Halloween! Today: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my two new mechanical keyboards from FILCO (affiliate links):

As I mention in the video I usually like to purchase my mechanical keyboards from WASD Keyboards in California. They make excellent keyboards but just a bit too pricey for me at the moment. Instead of purchasing from WASD Keyboards I picked these keyboards up from Amazon Australia and I paid AU$202.55 (US$130) for the 104-key keyboard and AU$188.89 (US$120) for the 87-key keyboard which was roughly half of what I would have had to pay if I purchased from WASD Keyboards.

Both of these FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition keyboards come with Cherry MX Speed Silver switches. If you’re into mechanical keyboards definitely give these switches a try; now that I’m used to them I will accept nothing less.

It was a bit disappointing that while doing the unboxing I discovered some of the keys had fallen loose during shipping. I have since plugged in and tested the keyboard (I’m using it now in fact) and everything seems to be working okay, so no harm no foul.

Stolen Focus

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I have finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari (affiliate link).

I went into this book much more worried about the state of attention in our communities than I was when I came out. Having read about it I kinda don’t feel that we really do have an urgent problem with so many people on earth being constantly engaged with their smart phones.

I might have trouble now starting a conversation with a family member because they are engrossed in their phone, and I might think this is new or different, but thirty years ago it would have been the same thing if they had their nose in a book or a newspaper.

I think by and large it’s good when we’re paying attention to things and engaging with them. That’s not only how entertainment gets done, that is also how work gets done.

I suspect one of the driving forces behind the surge in ADHD diagnoses (and Hari didn’t say this) is that people are getting the diagnosis deliberately because they want access to prescription amphetamines.

Anyway. I would still recommend reading this book. Hari does a good job of covering all the bases and investigating all the topics, including:

  • context switching and its effects
  • effects on flow
  • physical and mental exhaustion
  • sustained reading
  • mind wandering
  • tracking and manipulation
  • stress and its triggers
  • diet and pollution
  • ADHD
  • physical and psychological confinement

In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 30, 2023 – Uboxing of K-CEVE AM-KVM401-K and KC-KVM401A 4-port HDMI KVM switches

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This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

Silly Job Title: Current Commander

Today: another unboxing video! I do these, not because I think that my regular viewers are going to be particularly interested, but because you really only get the opportunity to do these on the day that new equipment arrives, and I figure it might be helpful for people who search for unboxing videos for a particular product, so they can see what’s in the box before they make a purchasing decision.

This video is an unboxing of two different 4-port HDMI KVM switches. I would give you affiliate links but these don’t seem to be available in the USA, so here are the non-affiliated Amazon Australia links:

For the record I paid AU$64.56 for the AM-KVM401-K (US$40) and AU$84.14 for the KC-KVM401A (US$55). I don’t know what algorithm is in charge of pricing at Amazon but the prices seem to have gone way up since I purchased these things two days ago, now the AM-KVM401-K is AU$75.96 and the KC-KVM401A is AU$98.99, so not sure what’s up with that (but I do NOT like the idea that Amazon has a pricing system that isn’t offering all shoppers the same price all the time, which this smells like).

I reckon the K-CEVE marketing department is going to bit pretty upset with engineering or manufacturing about this, but when I was unboxing the AM-KVM401-K the front panel push button switch just dead set fell out! That’s gotta be embarrassing for someone.

Having done the unboxing I’ve decided I’m gonna try the larger KC-KVM401A unit first. Its larger size is a disadvantage but I like the fact that it has USB-A instead of USB-C inputs and I’m also happy that it has a dedicated 5V power rail, the AM-KVM401-K is powered off the USB bus which is less desirable.

I will post another article later to let you know how I went when I actually plug these things in, which I haven’t actually done yet.

In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 28, 2023 – ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen Teardown

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This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

Silly Job Title: Electron Herder

This video is a teardown of the ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen which I did for YouTube user t1d100 who asked me about it over here: Demo of the ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen | In The Lab With Jay Jay.

I made a bunch of mistakes while making this video, so please bear with me. I tried to add some captions to explain things when I went wrong.

The discharge pen that I have was purchased from Amazon Australia here: 1000V Portable Capacitor Discharge Pen High Voltage Quick Discharging Tool Constant Discharge Pen Electronic Repairs Discharge Pen ALKOY.

There seems to be a similar product available from Amazon USA here: YEKMLCO Capacitor Discharge Pen Fast Discharging High Voltage 1000V Repair Tool Discharger for Electronic Safety Intelligent (affiliate link).

In the video you can watch me break this thing open. I didn’t exactly know how to do it, and I permanently damaged the device while opening it. In the end I wasn’t 100% sure what the safe and proper way to open these things really is. Giving it a mighty pull might work, otherwise you will need to leverage off some friction locks.

Before I broke the device open I tried to measure the resistance across its probes, but all three measurement devices reported open circuit. The device doesn’t seem to engage the resistor until it detects a voltage.

Eventually I got the device open, you can see some photos of the circuit board below, and I make some attempt to identify the components.

The MB10F on the top is a bridge rectifier, the M7F in the middle is a rectifying diode, and the resistor at the bottom is 2MΩ. In the video I say that the resistor is a “two ohm resistor”, but it is actually a “two MEGA ohm resistor” (I knew that, I just misspoke).

I’m not 100% sure what the CS01N100 A3R is, but it seems than an CS01N100 A4R is a silicon N-Channel Power MOSFET, so I think that’s probably what that is.

As I broke this device during the teardown I have purchased myself a replacement device for AU$23.02.

In the video I use the following equipment (affiliate links where possible):

Mini Digital Tweezers Miniware DT71 Mini Digital Tweezers Smart SMD LCRDVF Tester Multimeter Signal Generator for Measuring Components
SMD Digital Tweezers UNI-T UT116A Digital Tweezers Smart SMD Tester Electrical Multimeter Resistance Capacitance Continuity Diode Test Meter
Component Tester FNIRSI DSO-TC3 Digital Oscilloscope Transistor Tester 10MS/s Sampling Rate 500kHz Bandwidth Support Diode LCR Detect Signal Generator
Soldering Station Horusdy 2in1 Soldering Station Solder Iron Rework Hot Air Blower Digital SMD Display + 11 Tips, 4 Nozzles & Tweezer Set
Mini Screwdriver Set Legion Tools Precision Mini Screwdriver Set 11pc Jeweller Laptop Phone Watch Repair Tool
Repair Mat Kaisi Heat Insulation Silicone Repair Mat with Scale Ruler and Screw Position for Soldering Iron, Phone and Computer Repair Size: 13.7 x 9.8 Inches
Desoldering Pump Kaisi Professional Solder Auxiliary Tool 6 piece double-sided repair tool with Desoldering Wick & Desoldering Pump
Craft Knife Precision Craft Knife Set 52pcs Professional Razor Sharp Knives for Art, Hobby

In the video I have trouble with the connections into the DSO-TC3, the connections are documented here: FNIRSI DSO-TC3.

In The Lab With Jay Jay – October 27, 2023 – Stetmann Cosplay Costume Reveal

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This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

Silly Job Title: Craig Entertainer

Here it is! As planned, my new costume! Just for fun when I record electronics videos in my lab I’m gonna dress myself up like Egon Stetmann the scientist from StarCraft II:

The cosplay costume reveal is in this video. Also some news and discussion about the goals for the channel over the longer term.

As mentioned in this video I will have a new job title for my ID card for each video. The inaugural job title is Craig Entertainer, for my only regular reader, Craig. :)

Here are some affiliate links to the bits and pieces I got for the costume:

Johann Hari

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Johann Hari is definitely a crank. I like him already! He wrote a book about drugs and addiction called Chasing the Scream, and there was a famous TED talk he did about that. I haven’t read Chasing the Scream, but this evening I am going to read Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again.

Note: the links to Amazon above are affiliate links. I recently signed up for an affiliate account with Amazon. Is that cool? Is that not cool at all? What sort of disclosures are appropriate when you use affiliate links? I have never used them before and am not expecting to make any significant amount of money with them, so maybe I should just not use affiliate links at all? I dunno. Would be happy to hear from you if you have an opinion.

Hardware debugging

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Read a bunch of stuff about hardware debugging. Learned a thing or two, but I have much further to go!

Books by Kevin Kelly

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Here is a list of books from Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired. This is just notes for Future John. I’m planning to read the first two, and maybe the last one; the others are old and hard to find in ebook or audible forms.