Tech Pages, Forum Woes. Oh, and Holiday Lights!

 Hi Everyone! I updated the Tech Pages for legacy shift lights and the RPM simulator. Check it out!  Let me know if I missed anything. 

You may have noticed the forums are only available via external link.  Yeah...  The saga continues.  After more than a year of waiting for tech support from Tal.ki to fix this junk, the forums continue to be a sore point for me.  To make matters worse, I can no longer log into my admin account. This means I can't create new threads, respond as Chippernut, or answer member questions (or get notifications apparently). I'm really over it. 

A recent poll I posted in this blog has shown the overwhelming majority of poll-respondents do find the forums valuable. My website visitor statistics corroborate these results. The forums continue to see the largest "views" among all other pages.  That being said, I'm actively looking for a new forum provider. Unfortunately, this means it's quite likely the majority of the data in the forums may be lost. :-(  Not cool.  I'll continue to work on this and keep you updated. I'll do my best to retain the data, but I wont' make any promises. 

In other news, I found myself in the market for a new tree topper. The antiquated, hand-me-down, incandescent fraken-topper warmly glowed for the last time this season. I picked up a replacement on eBay (Capiz Snowflake Twisted Wire) that I thought looked classy and robust (it'd better last 15 years like it's predecessor).  Upon receiving it, well, I couldn't leave well-enough alone.  Caution: Copious amounts of hot glue. 

I was quite impressed with the construction of the topper. The decorative front resembled a stained glass window (but with plastic). The soldered metal frame was fastened to a sub-frame with 3 bolts. This sub-frame held a set of incandescent light bulbs and winds into a coil for tree attachment. I managed to strap 60 WS2812B LEDs to the sub-frame and a Nano. Powered off a 3A 5V cell-phone charger, the entire setup took mere minutes to wire-up.  I loaded a modified version of my under-cabinet lighting "Mood Lamp" code.  Overall, for about 2 hours of modification, I'm quite happy with it.  I'm already thinking about different modes, brightness levels, etc. but I'll probably wait until next year before I try something new. 

Stay Tuned!
​- jon