Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from .NET programming using WPF, Silverlight, XNA, and Windows Phone, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, to woodworking, CNC and generally "making real stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
Archive for tag:
Hobbies
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I have way too many hobbies. If I retired today, I’d still be really busy :) Among my hobbies is taking care of the three aquariums in the house. I have my 55 gallon tropical tank upstairs in the transition from the hall to the living room, a 55 gallon goldfish tank in my basement home office, and then my wife has a 20 gallon guppy tank in a corner of the dining room. As the 20 gallon is really...
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Fellow Silverlight enthusiast (and great author) Chad Campbell called me out on this, so now it's my turn :) How old were you when you first started programming? That was either 6th grade or 7th grade, so I was around 12. I often question the people who tell you they were hacking systems at the age of 6, but who knows? :) How did you get started in programming? The first time I ever wrote ...
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I like to mess around with computers. Every primary computer I've owned since my first 486 has been built by me (my previous computers, a 286 and a Commodore 128 were purchased). I also run a moderately complex network at my house which I realize I have never fully described anywhere. So, thought I'd tell you about it here. Why My first server was a linux box I had in our last apartment. It w...
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One of my other hobbies is woodworking (my whole upstairs is one big project right now). Thought this was funny, but I doubt I can wear it to any client sites <g>:
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I hope you all have (or had) a Merry Christmas! I just finished up helping Santa put some presents under the tree for our boy (he'll be two in February). Now I'm down here removing all the old alphas and betas and installing the latest VS and Expression tools, as well as the latest Silverlight bits. A full uninstall of VS2008 Beta 2 followed by a full install of VS20...
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My main website is pretty disjointed from my blog here, and with one exception, is rarely updated any more. I do plan to convert the main site over, prune out old stuff at somepoint, and make it as easy to update as my blog (WSS will likely be part of that solution)Anyway, the one part of my main site that does get updated on a fairly regular basis is the wallpaper subsite. This part of my...
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I'm in the middle of a never-ending home renovation project. As such, I tend to use my two Bosch drills a lot. My son (20 months old now) was obsessed with the "brrrumba" (his name for the drill, based on its sound), and would go nuts whenever I used it. So we bought him a toy drill. Unfortunately, because it had googly eyes and looked nothing like mine, he barely would use it. Wh...
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In a previous post, I mentioned that I had won an APC Netshelter server rack on eBay. I just put in a dedicated 20amp circuit to power the computers on this rack. So far, 20amps seems to be more than enough. If not, it's easy to run another as the rack is in the same room as the main panel.Here are two photos (click for larger versions) of the rack loaded with the current equipment:&nb...
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Last year, I started getting into Festool tools. Festool is a German tool company that manufactures the tools in Germany. Almost all other popular tools these days are made in asia by the lowest bidder. You pay a premium for the tools, but like nice German cars, you just can't quite match them for less. Festool is squarely targeted at professionals in Europe and abroad. In the US, the compa...
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I've updated the kitchen cabinet plans several times over the course of construction. Here's the latest set (click to zoom):
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I installed the base corner cabinet over the weekend. I assembled this in the kitchen as the cabinet is pretty huge. As of now, the two installed cabinets are the oven cabinet and the corner cabinet. The others in the photos are the temporary cabinets.Like all the other cabinets, the toe kick was assembled separately from the base. For this cabinet, it made sense to po...
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I scribed the wall oven cabinet to the wall and permanently installed it today. After that, Melissa and I hefted that oven into the cabinet. It wasn't an easy task. I have had it sitting on a wheeled furniture mover (basically four pieces of maple with carpet over two of them and four wheels under it. I picked it up at Lowes.) We wheeled it in front of the cabinet, protecting the floor with...
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During my two week vacation, I made a lot of progress on the cabinets. I still have a few days to work before I go back, but this is what I finished:Redesigned the cabinet legs and some details. I'm very happy with the design now.Milled all the wood required for the base cabinets, minus the peninsulaRough cut almost all of the plywood pieces for the base cabinetsAssembled the base corn...
