Monday 8 February 2016

Solder, Short Circuit and Surgery

I started the weekend finally trying to sort out a little board for ken to mount in his blacksmith shop, using three LEDs to give a flickering flame effect...


I can run nice pinned wires from the arduino to the header I've included here, and it allows me to change the intensity of things, the resistors help keep the different channels dimmer for the LED's and so the light is not over powering.

However, whilst working on this board I found the soldering iron was being a real pig, it took forever to get to temperature, solder would not really melt - despite being fine previously - and then I found the handle to be very warm, and the solder would instantly vapouriser if touched on the iron's shroud.

So, I powered it off, let it cool, checked the tip... Nothing seemingly wrong, I plug it all back in, and as I flick the power switch the whole house goes dark.. Yep, I tripped the house's main fuse.. WHOOPS.

But, this freaking iron, I think it's dead.... I may have to start researching and flutter my eye lids at the wife to let me go buy a proper nice, temperature controlled soldering station.

And now finally, I have my date for my ankle surgery, yes they need to go back into the right ankle joint and have a tinker around, I went for my pre-op on Friday, and they operate in a fortnight... However, right now I have an appointment with a respiratory doctor and a stinking cold... Gah.

Gaming wise, I've been playing lots of World of Warships, but I'm also still playing Crown of the Gods, a clone of Lord of Ultima.


And project-wise, for code at least, I've started working on my own SDL2 based, XML driven 2D UI, for adding overlays or creating tools in C++, this is going to be useful for high-speed customisable and internationalization tasks I need perform; both at home and at work.

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