Archive for July, 2010
GoPro HD!
Posted by luke in Audio/Video on July 16th, 2010
My GoPro HD arrived today! Seriously can’t wait to crank it out when i get home!
Melting Moments
About a year ago, i started making Melting Moments. If you haven’t had one, go out and try one now, because everyone loves these things! I make them fairly often because they’re quick and easy to knock up. This is a recipe i put together after fine tuning a bunch of other recipes into one big super recipe. After all, thats how secret recipes are born, by ‘borrowing’ other recipes and tuning them to your liking!
Anyway, i hope you can make these and i hope they turn out awesome. If you do end up making them, let me know what you think in the comments, along with any suggestions you might have for fine tuning the secret recipe 
Makes 18-20 finished biscuits
Ingredients
- 250g butter, cubed and softened
- 260g (1 3/4 cups) plain flour
- 60g (1/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted
- 60g (1/3 cup) custard powder
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence)
- 150g (2/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted
- 45g butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
Method
- Preheat oven to 150°C and line some baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
- Beat together the sifted icing sugar, butter, and vanilla bean paste in a bowl with an electric mixer until creamy. Sift together the flour and custard powder, then add this to the butter/icing sugar mixture and mix on low speed. After a while you’ll see it will form a dough. Roll the dough into small balls. It will help to flour your hands a little because the dough can be a bit sticky. Place the balls on the baking trays about 3cm apart. Once your done making all the balls, grab a fork and then gently press it on top of each to flatten them out a little. This should give you a disc around 3.5cm in diameter and about 1cm thick. Now, bake them in the oven for around 15 minutes or until cooked. I find mine usually need around 17-18 minutes. When they are done, they should be golden underneath and firm to touch. Once they’re cooked, cool them on a wire.
- For the filling, beat the vanilla essence, butter, lemon juice and icing sugar in a small bowl with and electric mixer until creamy. Sometimes my filling is a bit runny, so i sift in a little more icing sugar as i go. Refrigerate the filling until you’re ready to assemble the biscuits.
- To assemble the biscuits, spread the base of one biscuit with filling and then join with another. Now eat them!
Cityrail Tickets
I was going through my desk drawer at work the other day and found a heap of old cityrail train tickets. Then I started to wonder what exactly is on the magnetic stripes in these tickets. So i got a cheap magnetic card reader from eBay and found that it contains 2 tracks of data. I’ve included 3 examples below…
Example 1
Track 1: B00DF10003AF4012B551F37AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Track 2: B00DF10003AF4012B551F37AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Expires: 2010-06-27 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 21JE 1826113815
Bottom Corner: BN-01-10-INGFEDCBA987654321
Example 2
Track 1: B0364ABBB814FBA90EE2C07AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Track 2: B0364ABBB814FBA90EE2C07AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Expires: 2010-07-04 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 28JE 1948076713
Bottom Corner: M0903589
Example 3
Track 1: B06A867774D4489A3DD1F3D007466E6333FF588B3B1CC008CB
Track 2: B06A867774D4489A3DD1F3D007466E6333FF588B3B1CC008CB
Expires: 2010-07-11 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 05JL 1940877977
Bottom Corner: M0904821
If you read the ticket before and also after its swiped through the gate, it appears the data on the tracks does not change. Not sure what any of this means at the moment, but looking at the last half of the tracks on the cards i saw, it seems like these may be the stations i travel to and from? All 3 cards seem to have “CC008CB” in common. I’m also curious to see if it’s possible to clone the data of one card to another and use it through the gates.
Has anyone experimented with this or decoded what the data is or how it works? Possibly even how to manipulate the data into creating a valid ticket?
First Arduino Sketch
Just did my first Arduino sketch! Just flashes 5 LED’s on and off in sequence on a loop of 5. Not super exciting yet, but gotta start somewhere. Video and sketch are below for anyone interested.
Download: Flash5_LED_Loop.pde
Arduino!
Got my Arduino today! Only cost me $37 bucks from Toysdownunder.com! Hopefully can do some cool things with it soon. I’ll add it to the list of projects i start but never finish 
Things i plan on doing with it…
- CNC Controller (so i can build my own CNC machine)
- Make a daft punk helmet (just because)
- Control an RC car through the intertubes
If you have an Arduino, what are some of the things you’ve made?