TheVaporTrail

"Truly Black" Liquorice from Espoo

Well that explains a lot.

I found this yesterday in a cabinet in the kitchen. If you read my previous post you might understand my concern.

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Liquorice receipt from Espoo, Finland

Funny, I don't remember buying that.

Salmiakki is a type of liquorice common in Finland and the nearby countries. I don't normally buy liquorice, but I was somewhere new, and this was something new to try. So, shortly after arriving in Espoo, a suburb of Helsinki, I walked to a nearby convenience store and bought a variety of the stuff. Some weeks later I was going through my receipts and noticed this.

See the big picture.

Street Dude

I found this little dude on the street, literally, in Washington, D.C., some time ago. He is made out of the same stuff as the lines in the middle of the road.

Behind the Sign in Antibes, France

I am finally getting around to posting a picture to explain the sign in the previous post. It makes a lot more sense when you can see what they might be worried about.

Antibes, France

This sign is trying to say that if you jump (or is it dance?) over the wall and fall 100 feet into the wave below that you will probably get hurt. You don't really need a sign to figure that out, especially if you are looking down.

Crossbar by OG Style

OG Style built his own version of Crossbar (post or page). I really like the openness of the 4x4 matrix. Also, since he used copper wires instead of steel, he won't have the problem I have where the solder breaks away after awhile.

Cable Électriques

Another picture from a trip to Paris this year. These old enamel signs have so much style and detail.

Along the Seine, Near Notre Dame

They are going to be so mad when they get home!

I noticed these bricked-up doorway and windows while in Paris earlier this year. Something about the way they were carefully filled-in and that the window frames and doorway have not been touched make these both cool and creepy.

See the big picture.

Medallion: Circle LED Animation

This project uses the Simple LED Animation Kit (SLAK post or page) with the LEDs arranged in a circle around the PIC16F628A. I decided to do this project after picking up some red SMD LEDs at HSC in Santa Clara, CA, last week. Although the only difference from the basic SLAK is the board design, I find that this layout to be have the potential to be more useful. It could easily be a medallion on a necklace. If I had blue LEDs this would go well in an IronMan Reactor Core package.

This board only needs 4.5V and in the video is running on only 3 AA batteries. You can see that the PIC is still in a socket.

If anyone is interested, I can easily change the SMD parts to thru-hole parts and post an updated board.

I am still refining the current set of animations for both a linear (straight line) arrangement and a circular arrange. I need to tailor the ones running on this board for a circle only. OK, so that sounds a little cryptic. What I really mean is that I want to take out the ones that don't look good to me. And maybe add some more. By the way, each animation has a name.

One of the next things on my list is to take this same arrangement and use three different LED colors, four red, four green, and four blue or maybe yellow. Then I will spend some time creating animations that highlight the color possibilities.

Downloads are available on the web page

Axe Rouge

What could that possibly mean?!?

We saw this sign while driving in the old hill top town in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, last year. I still don't know what it means. The translation is simply "Red X".

You can imagine the problem. You are driving around in another country and see an important looking sign. It must be important, why would it be there? But what does it mean? I took a picture and drove on. Fortunately I did not drive off the edge of anything or go the wrong way, well, at least as far as I know.