Wat the SHIT?!?!

I swear that I'm a joke. I DROPPED MY GC INTO THE TOILET BOWL!!! Shall not go into the details of how me GC end up in toilet bowl. Worst thing is that it was TOTALLY submerged in the toilet bowl water and i could see bubbles coming out. DARN!

I went home and knew that i had to open the damn thing up to dry it. BUT I HAD NO SPECIAL KEY TO OPEN IT. It did not use the standard philip crosshead screws but instead some weird screw. Fiddle around with it and was lucky enough to find a flat screwdriver that is of the right size to manage to twist open the screws. Phew. Opened it up and boy oh boy. It was wet like dunno what. I removed the PCB and brought it to rinse under a tap to clean it. Then used tissue paper to absorb the moisture and then proceeded to placing the whole PCB under rice grains as i heard that rice grains had the effect of absorbing water. I was really hoping that the chip wasn't fried or anything.

Had to use a hair dryer to like bake the thing a little to purge out all the remaining moisture and then i tried to turn it on. The first few moments were kind of scary. The screen was totally dark but after a few seconds it said ram cleared and all was working well (: Wah must be my damn unlucky plus damn lucky day.

This Week.

This week has been one of the more productive week. Okay, it has been the MOST productive week for the entire June holidays. Went to school almost EVERYDAY to mug form 10 to 5 in the library. Only day that we did not meet up in school to mug was monday.

Monday, Berd, Bong, Jin Xuan and Vivian came over to my place to mug. Woah! I tell you my place is the worst place ever to hold a mugging session. Just too much distraction. With music that can be blasted like damn loud and a laptop... I guess its totally a very hard to study in environment. So it wasn't very productive. Haha. JX, Berd and I ended up watching Taxi 2 towards the end of the session, but we sure laughed our heads out. Had KFC for dinner at my place and we watched SuperBand together. Laughed and laughed at all the "cannot make it" band. But i admire their courage to go in front of national television and perform. Respect!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Today. Went back to school to mug. Mug from like 10-5 having lunch in between. Been doing chem for the past 3 days. Spend so much time on chem cause i want to finish that organic assignment that was given to us. Left with nitrogen compounds and i am done with it.

Holidays are going to end. What have i done this June holidays? OH MY TIAN! NOTHING LA!

Yet Another Audiophile Post (YAAP)

And its Yet Another Audiophile Post.

I had a dream last night. I dreamed that i forgotten to pull out the power cord for my Nelson Pass Preamp and left it running overnight. True enough, when i woke up the next morning and went to check, it was seriously plugged in and that means it has been running for like 16hours straight? And the bad thing is that i run them on disposable batteries. My immediate reaction was to run to my room and take out my multimeter to check the voltage. 15.5V on both sides. What a relieve. At least it didn't drop to like 10V. When the batteries are new, they should measure roughly 18V.

So i thought that i should do something about it, like an indicator to let me know if are they turned on or not. So i got down to it right after breakfast. Fitted 2 separate super bright blue LEDs to each channel of the preamp. Hid them behind the big knob so that it looked like the knob was glowing.

Had to drill the 2 wholes for the LED but i did not have a drill-_- I only had the drill bits. So i used my hand to slowly twist and turn the drill bits till there was 2 holes-_-


So this is the final product

Did some internal rewiring too to make it neater

No more messy wires. Okay maybe still a bit messy but at least its neater

The 2 blue LEDs. Wait, it seems like one side is brighter! Shit.

Upon further probing, i realised i had actually used 2 different resistor for the LEDs. This was the dimmer LED's resistor. It was a lot more larger in value compared to the other resistor, so had to swap it out for a smaller value resistor.

After swapping out the resistor, i had to test if did it still work with the modifications

And a nice blue glow(:

Shall take a photo tonight when its all dark and see how the glow effect looks like.

Was feeling very very emotional. Couldn't stop myself being that way. Decided that i must stop being so emotional and I've got to do something about it. Ran through my head of what to do to flush out the emotional me and this is what i came up with.

Its a power supply for my Nelson Pass JFET preamp.

LM317 voltage regulators

Schottky diode for conversion of AC supply to DC



Final product. Dual transformer, separate power supply.

However got problem. No voltage when i first turn on. I suspect its the schottky diodes that are fried. Didn't have the time to debug the problem.

Added a new component to my audio system

Horns to go with my corals (:

Fostex D252 horns. The board at the side is the crossover for the horns

Not the prettiest setup but heck, it gives good sound!

The diaphragm of the horn

Also redid my battery supply for my Nelson Pass JFET preamp. It looks so much more neater now.

Overall the sound improvement with the horns is very good. Now my Corals still run full range but with the Fostex horns crossing in at around 8kHz. At first the sound is a bit too bright, very ear piercing because of the additional high frequency energy. So did some measurements using a Real Time Analyser (RTA) and figured out the frequency that was causing the problem. Adjusted the EQ on my laptop audio out and ah ha! It sounds a lot more better already.

Now with the Fostex horn, the highs are crisper but not to the extent of ear piercing. I can now also pick up the not so obvious breathing sounds of the singers when they sing. Overall a good improvement la. Only problem is that now when i want to listen to music, i need to use my laptop cause i dun have a graphic equaliser! So its a bit troublesome.

Okay its more like a geek or audiophile post liao, okay it is.

Jesse McCartney - Why don't you kiss her

We're the best of friends
And we share our secrets
She knows everything that is on my mind
Lately somethings changed
As I lie awake in my bed
A voice here inside my head
Softly says

Why don't you kiss her
Why don't you tell her
Why don't you let her see
The feelings that you hide
'Cause she'll never know
If you never show
The way you feel inside

Oh I'm so afraid to make that first move
Just a touch and we
Could cross the line
Everytime she's near
I wanna never let her go
Confess to her what my heart knows
Hold her close

Why don't you kiss her
Why don't you tell her
Why don't you let her see
The feelings that you hide
'Cause she'll never know
If you never show
The way you feel inside

What would you say
I wonder would she just turn away
Or would she promise me
That she's here to stay
It hurts me to wait
I keep asking myself

Why don't you kiss her (tell her you love her)
Why don't u tell her (tell her you need her)
Why don't you let her see
The feelings that you hide
'Cause she'll never know
If you never show
The way you feel inside...

Why don't you kiss her?