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Resistor storage

At the hamfest back in February, I picked up a big bag of resistors that’s been sitting on the shelf since then. They turned out to be 50 strips with 50 resistors each. The values are conveniently printed on the paper strip, which saves me time decoding the stripes on the resistors.

Strips of blue 1% precision resistors

I don’t have room in any of my storage bins to hold them all, and searching through them in that pile isn’t the most convenient thing. Then I remembered reading a while ago about someone using pill bottles to store components in. It seemed like a workable idea, and I happened to have a bunch of them sitting around. I don’t have enough for all of the strips, but I can get more pretty easily.

I wrote down the resistor value on a sticky note folded in half, rolled up a strip of resistors and stuck it into the pill bottle. I had enough bottles on hand to do 21 of strips, leaving 29 left to go.

Resistors organized into pill bottles for storage

I figure I can order them into three groups, 100 (Ω), 103 (kΩ) and 106 (MΩ). The big printing should make it pretty easy to find the ones I need.

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Charleston Eats: Swig and Swine

We made a stop at Swig & Swine for lunch today. Between the two of us, the 2-meat platters let us sample almost all of their smoked meat offerings. If you can, sit toward the back at their “meat counter” where you can watch the guys pulling and slicing slabs of meat to fill orders. Fun place to sit and watch.

While we were waiting, the guy slicing meats was nice enough to give us a sample of the pork belly. So delicious.

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Soon after came our platters: Pulled pork/house made sausage with cheddar grits and pickled vegetables, and smoked turkey/brisket with brunswick stew and beans with brisket.

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For dessert, we split a chocolate pecan pie.

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Be hungry when you go. You’ll probably leave with leftovers.

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MeSQUARES and MePADS

After seeing Dave/AA7EE‘s many amazing builds using the MeSQUAREs from QRPme.com, I finally got around to ordering a few for myself to play with. Ordered 2 sets (600 pads) of MeSQUAREs and a set of MePADs. The order arrived today along with a couple of bonus sheets of copper clad PCB. Very thoughtful of W1REX to include them.

Although I’d seen them in all of the pictures Dave posted, their size still surprised me a bit.

A panel of QRPme MeSQUARE pads with a ruler laid on top for scale. Each pad is about 6x6 mm square.

Each square is about 6 mm (0.2″) on each side, so not too terribly small to work with. The MePADs come in a slightly smaller sheet and are used for making the pins of smaller ICs a little more accessible.

A panel of MePADS for adapting surface mount SOIC integrated circuits to through hole

Looking forward to experimenting and building things with these. I don’t know if I’ll be able to match Dave’s aesthetic, but it gives me something to strive for.

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Rest in peace Leonard Nimoy

I learned that Leonard Nimoy died earlier today. It was sad news to hear for me and countless other fans out there.

Leonard Nimoy’s Mr .Spock on Star Trek was one of my favourite characters and served as a huge inspiration to me in many things. Spock’s logic and rationality heavily influenced me as a kid, and his narration of In Search Of… catered naturally to my curiosity about everything (even though young me found some of the episodes really creepy).

Much later, I discovered his photography which gave me yet another thing to appreciate about Mr. Nimoy.

He made appearances at Dragon*Con, and although I never got to meet him there, other people I knew did and always spoke about how he enjoyed meeting his fans.

As Bones says at the end of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, “He’s really not dead, as long as we remember him”.

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Charleston RadioShack closings

After my RadioShack on Folly Road closed, the next closest one was further away over on Sam Rittenberg. Stopped by there on Friday and discovered that one had closed in advance of RadioShack’s bankruptcy announcement. Signs on the window point you to the nearest RadioShack over in Mt. Pleasant.

Made the trip out to that location Friday evening to find a reasonably well stocked store (probably full of stuff from the other store), but no sale or clearance items other than RC toys.

According to this list I found via a Twitter posting, the only two stores in the immediate vicinity slated for closing (this round anyway) are located near Tanger Mall and Northwoods Mall (surprised that one is still open considering the one at Citadel Mall closed long ago).

That leaves three stores (Mt. Pleasant, Goose Creek, and Summerville) that may become Sprint stores with an embedded RadioShack or which may eventually go away altogether. The one store up in Summerville (Hurricane Electronics/RadioShack) I believe is a franchise store and would probably (hopefully) stay, probably dropping the RadioShack part.