20260326 Bye-bye, Mr. Ring Lamp

 It's been, I would say, about 2 decades since I had this lamp. I remember buying it for about RM75 in Pasar Road. I remember my Dad asking for my Sister about the Lamp which I offered but she never took it.

What I did not remember was how deadly the UV light was to my eyes because I tend to have it near my face all the time. This was how I used the heavy but beautiful magnifying glass. And it tends to shake if I accidentally moved or bumped into it. Alas, that lens was surrounded by a 22W round fluorescent tube.

I meant to throw this away as what I thought the main metallig casing was actually made of hard plastic. And so, this area was the closes to the fluorescent tube connections, where there is minimal phosphor coating, the UV light must have contributed to its brittleness. That and the heat from the electronics.

You can see the scratches on the white cover which houses the 22W fluorescent lamp. The plastic was getting brittle which, I am sure, was due to the UV light exposure from the lamp. Despite the phosphor coating, UV light still managed to get through. I cannot explain the blackened areas as that was where my cheeks would be touching. Maybe I need to wash my face more often...

 And so, my Works Table would be without light for the time being, until I can locate the power supply to the old makeshift LED I did sometime in 22 September 2019...

20240827 The missing piece

Let's face it. I make a lot of mess wherever I go and I do not like to throw things out.

If you had the chance (not) to look at my old Works Table, what you'd see are just piles and piles of... things. The same is now happening to my new Works Table too. As I like to work on my Projects every night, putting them away before bedtime is a chore. These Projects cannot stop just like that because I know in the next evening, I would be going through them again to see what went wrong and to catch up on my notes. After a while, it can be a chore and annoying. In the end, they had to be left on the table.

A simple Project involves soldering so, out comes the soldering Iron and tools. It also needs programming and out comes the programmer. Then it needs more soldering and well, since hte soldering iron is on the table...

The Missing Piece

One of the pet peeves was missing stuff and this time, a particular plastic piece from the Revell's The Mandalorian Spaceship. It is the front interior wall just next to the toilet. I have lost it long ago and after getting it replaced from Revell, guess what happened?

When it came to designing custom PCB, the physical piece helps in making good fit. So, after the custom PCB arrived and just a few minutes of tinkering, the damn thing disappeared. And that was months ago, almost to a year. I know its somewhere on the Table and not (God forbid) in one of those mountains of model kit boxes. It was not until when I started to really clear the said table last Sunday, that piece mysteriously appeared. On the very area I had searched countless of times before.

It is a very important piece since it is used to hold up a PCB to light the frontal area of the ship (aka the bow). So now, the Razor Crest Project can continue...

Just to be safe, I've kept the piece in my pencil case which *ahem* has been lost for quite a long time. And then promptly forgot where I had placed the whole case since Sunday.