Dumb story on LED bulbs

Another crap study finds :

LED bulbs not as eco-friendly as some might think

Considering that :

- These lights will probably be burning after I am dead
(there is one in my ceiling fan)

- I don't plan to put them anywhere but a light bulb socket

Also, since LEDs last longer, there will be fewer in the landfill.

I'm not the least bit concerned. If the bulb burns out, I don't plan to pulverize it as they did in the story. What a worthless piece of journalism.

And quoting from the (stupid) story :

Incandescent bulbs, incidentally, contain very high levels of lead and mercury, while compact fluorescents are also high in mercury.

So what do they propose? We replace all our light bulbs with candles? Wait...lets do another study first...

Project : Clavinova - Ready for testing

Leaky capacitors have been replaced. I'll be replacing the main board this evening for the smoke test.

Floppy drives play Bach's Tocatta

Many levels of awesomeness here :

Flea Market find : HP Presario V6000

Picked up a laptop at a flea market this weekend....a HP Presario V6000. Powered up to a blank screen. This model had a lot of problems..specifically with the onboard nVidia graphics. The drive image was trashed, so I installed xubuntu, my current favorite distribution. Only problem seems to be a flaky Broadcom network card, soon to be replaced with an Intel W3945AWG ($3.99 shipped from eBay.) I have not been impressed with the state of Broadcom support under Linux.

Used my D-Link WUA-1340 USB wireless adapter to help complete the install. Linux works great with this adapter. This laptop will likely be used for video editing (OpenShot) and Puppy Studio 3.5 (with Rackarack guitar effects). The battery is toast, so this is effectively a portable workstation.

Dell e1505 in the media

I've been using my headless Dell e1505 for various projects. In the last two weeks, I have seen this laptop (with screen) in the media two different times : a Monk episode and a DelSym online commercial. What's the deal with this laptop?

Dent popping vs conventional body work

Had a big dent removed from my 1999 Quest van by the Dent Dominator today. GEICO pays me $775, I pay DD $200. Epic win, no bondo.

Alternative music keyboards : real or virtual

Came across a web site on alternative music keyboards. The Axis-49 keyboard from C-Thru is $439. An iPad running Musix is 99 cents plus the cost of the iPad (a refurb 16G is selling for $429). I understand that these are not the same, but this makes the virtual version quite attractive.