Thermaltake’s Versa H17 MicroATX PC mini tower case is an excellent minimalist case with a relatively small footprint. I chose this case, because it doesn’t have a side window or excessive RGB lighting. I wish that I could disable the power light, which is a bright, room illuminating blue, but I simply cover it with a microfiber cloth.
It’s designed to have air instake from the edges of the front face, which are covered with a fine grill, a 120mm opening at the rear bottom of the case with a magnetic dust filter for the PSU, and a larger approximately 3/4″ x 4″ opening at the bottom of the front plastic face assembly. The latter is a problem, because it’s basically a rectangular hole through which dust enters the entire case but especially in the shrouded PSU/disk zone in the bottom of the case.
While working recently on my desktop computer–swapping out video cards and installing a new SSD–I figured that I should do something about that air inlet. I used what I had on hand to create a DIY solution.
First, I took this airline supplied sleep mask. I could feel that it had foam underneath its outer fabric layer, which would work great for capturing dust before it enters the case. I used scissors to cut into the face of the mask within the sewn border.
After cutting into the mask, I found two different kinds of material. On the left is a soft 1/16″ thick white foam and on the right is a thin cotton-like material that might also be used for face masks and personal protection equipment (PPE). For my project, I opted to use the thicker foam on the left. While it might not filter as much dust as the fabric on the right, I think it will give a better balance between airflow and filtration.
I pulled off the face of the Thermaltake Versa H17 case and taped the foam over the air inlet with a piece of packing tape.
After reattaching the face, the foam covers the air inlet. It might take a few tries to make sure the foam covers it completely. The use of additional tape on either end of the foam might help.
Kai’s SuperGOO 1.0 is a program geared toward children to easily manipulate images and generate images of human faces that can be further modified using its built-in image editing tools that are accessible through an interesting but not always intuitive user interface.
The “Getting Started with Kai’s SuperGOO” text file includes this explanatory information:
ABOUT SUPERGOO
SuperGOO is organized into two basic rooms: Goo and Fusion. The Goo Room provides you with a series of distortion tools, both brushes and global effects, to create 'funhouse mirror' distortions to your images.
The Fusion Room provides you with both cloning tools- to combine faces (and other images) from your own sources- and a library of facial components to create your own face for the Goo Room.
Both rooms have an In and Out dialogue for importing and exporting saved images, or importing images from a TWAIN device such as a scanner or digital camera.
Play around with SuperGOO once you've got it installed... click a button and watch what happens. That's the quickest way to get acquainted with SuperGOO. For more detail, consult the 'Quick Reference Guide' included with your software. This brief, but thorough, card will provide you with all of the basics you need to know about SuperGOO, from input to output and everything in between. For more detail, consult the SuperGOO User's Guide included on your CD-ROM.
Kai’s SuperGOO ReadMe file includes the following system requirements:
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
PC
Pentium Processor Windows 95 (or higher) Windows NT 4.0 (or higher) 16 MB Free RAM 25 MB HD Space for Install 40 MB Free HD Space (after Install) CD-ROM Drive 16-bit video 14" Monitor
MACINTOSH
Power Macintosh MacOS 7.6.1 (or higher) 16 MB RAM allocated to application 25 MB HD Space for Install 40 MB Free HD Space (after Install) CD-ROM Drive 16-bit video 14" Monitor
I installed Kai’s SuperGOO on MacOS 8.1 emulated by SheepShaver on Debian Bookworm.
After installation from CD-ROM, the Kai’s SuperGOO 1.0 application file is 976K and has a minimum memory size of 17,290K and a preferred size of 25,482K.
Installation
Installing Kai’s SuperGOO is as straightforward as other Mac software of the era that used a basic installer. However, the initial screens shown below gesture toward its inventive user interface. To launch the installer, the user double clicks on “Kai’s SuperGOO 1.0 Installer” located in the root of the CD-ROM disc.
The first screen after launching the installer is shown above.
The license agreement screen notably has stylized round buttons for Print, Save, and Continue.
Clicking Continue on the previous screen takes the user to a traditional installer window. Clicking Install begins the installation of files to the selected folder on the user’s hard drive.
Several demonstration/prompting screens accompany the copying of files.
These screens preview key elements of SuperGOO, such as the brushes on the left and the Fusion Faces feature on the right.
This final screen reminds the user to register, but it also shows a stylized, miniature version of the user interface.
The software is installed and ready for use. In order to use the software, the CD-ROM has to be in the CD-ROM drive and mounted.
Use
When the user first launches the software, it prompts for a name to personalize it.
The main screen or what is called the “GOO Room” in the Read Me file. As suggested in that file, the UI invites the user to click on things to see what they do. Should the user find themselves backed inot a corner, there is an option to Reset in the lower right, or simply quitting the software with Cmd+Q and restarting the program. It opens with an image of Abraham Lincoln that can be manipulated using the tools on the left. The top set of tools are called Brushes.
I was left wondering why Abraham Lincoln’s face was selected for manipulation. Perhaps his image is well known and perhaps liked by children, but his important accomplishments as president and his tragic assassination seem to position his face as not deserving the more radical manipulation options available.
Using the Noise brush, I obscured Lincoln’s face as if it were seen through a primitive piece of glass.
Below the Brushes on the left are the GOO Effects. These create videos using starting image. Above is one frame of Vortex Tiling GOO Effect.
Above is one frame of the Zoom and Rotate effect.
By clicking on the bubble in the top middle of the UI takes the user to the Fusion Room (from the GOO Room) or to the GOO Room (from the Fusion Room). By clicking on the nuclear symbol button in the lower right corner of the Fusion Room gives the user the option to generate a new human face that mixes and matches elements akin to a police facial composite or E-FIT.
The results are mildly uncanny.
Most random generations result in white faces, but after many, many iterations, I arrived at this face with epicanthic folds. When using the eye selector on the left, there are three female options with epicanthic folds and two male options.
This generated face appears to have darker skin, but there’s no option for changing skin color or adjusting tone. As the various facial features are assembled, there seems to be a kind of blending that makes them work together. However, there isn’t a clear cut way to create faces outside of a narrow skin tone range using the Fusion generator. The natural variety of faces with different skin tones has to be imported.
To import an image, the user clicks the bubble in the middle to the left, which opens the “In Panel.” It can interface with image capture and scanning devices that have a TWAIN driver, open an existing file, or acquire from another device plug-in.
By clicking on the middle bubble to the right, the user comes to the “Out Panel,” which gives options to save the image, print the image, save the currently displayed Fusion generated face, copy the Fusion generated face to the GOO Room, or export the currently displayed image to a plug-in (if installed and selected by the user).
Kai’s SuperGOO is an interesting approach to generating images of people using algorithms. In this case, randomizing carefully edited pieces that seamlessly, more or less, fit together. Unfortunately, the available options for mixing and matching faces are homogeneous and tend toward lighter skin tones and limited facial features. While importing any face or image into the software is an option, the Fusion feature is crippled in terms of representation options available to the user.
While I was visiting my folks, one of the larger projects that needed to be done was assembling the Grizzly G0862 3 hp dust collector (completed in the center of the photo above) for his planer, edger, and table saw.
It began with these three boxes and their contents.
Then, I made space to put the dust collector together in a space near all three machines. Note the stack of thick rough cut boards on the left side. These will be planed and edged before being installed as the stair treads in my folks’ house.
The instructions call for having two helpers to lift the top motor assembly while a third person secures it to the supports with bolts. Thankfully, my dad’s forklift was running, so we repositioned the forks close together, picked up the top motor assembly, and positioned the stand beneath the motor assembly while we threaded the bolts.
The only trouble that we had during assembly was securing the collection drum to its lid. It only has two buckles that lock down to secure the drum to the lid. Then, you raise the drum off the floor and the suction during option keeps the lid and drum mated. However, the two buckle system–despite adjusting the buckle lengths–didn’t always hold the drum and lid together. I removed the two drum bumpers from the base, which helped the drum better align with the lid for a more secure connection. It seems that adding one or two buckles would avoid this problem. Another solution would be to run a nylon tie strap around the drum over the closed buckles to keep them from releasing.
After connecting the dust collector to 220v, we did a test run with the planer and it worked spectacularly. Now, my dad will use this to plane and edge the stair treads out of rough cut cypress boards sourced from trees that he cut down on.
Eventually, the new cypress stair treads will go on the currently roughed-in stairs between the first and second floors.
When Y and I lived in Atlanta, our house had a downstairs bedroom that we used for an office. However, it was an odd room. The kitchen and downstairs bathroom had tiled floors, and the rest of the downstairs–dining room, living room, and den–had hardwood floors. That downstairs bedroom had medium pile carpet. When our friend Masaya asked if he could visit us, we thought it was a good opportunity to refinish the downstairs bedroom as a guest room with hardwood floors. Here’s how we refinished its floor to match the stain of the rest of the downstairs.
First, I pulled up the carpet in the closet and a corner of the room to verify that it was the same kind of oak flooring as the rest of the downstairs. Having verified this, I began cutting and rolling the carpet and padding.
The padding had been glued down–thankfully not over the entire floor–but enough that I had to scrape some of it and the glue off the wood flooring using a paint scraper. However, I went slow and carefully to make sure that I didn’t gouge the wood with the tool. Whatever I didn’t get up, I knew that I could sand down eventually.
Then, I used a hammer to pull up the carpet tack strips around the edges of the room and vacuumed the floor clean.
For the next step, I went to the local Home Depot Rental Office to rent a stand-up belt sander for floors. This thing weighed about 100 pounds. It’s weight combined with a handle operated mechanism to engage the sanding belt against the floor and pull it forward made quick work of sanding the floor and removing all old paint, glue, and stains. As the wood wasn’t in too bad of shape, I used a fine grit sandpaper. Also note that when you use a floor sander like this, you want to move in the direction of the boards and give each pass a little overlap for an even finish across the whole floor. Also, you can see that I have the windows open. Even though the sander has a bag to catch the sawdust, it can’t catch it all. Open your windows and cover outlets and air returns to keep that dust from getting into places it shouldn’t be.
Halfway through, I changed out the belt for a fresh one. This probably wasn’t necessary, but I might have noticed some change in the sanded floor’s finish by this point in the project.
After using the belt sander over the whole floor, I saw some spots that needed additional work. When I did these spots, I went over the entire run as just using it in one spot might leave a dip in the floor. As I worked, I used the shop vac to keep the floor as clean as possible from the extra sawdust produced by the sander. And, around the edges of the room and inside the edges of the closets, we used a handheld orbital sander and sanding blocks to sand the 2″ or so on all sides that the belt sander was unable to reach due to its design.
After returning the belt sander to Home Depot, we cleaned the floor again and applied water to the wood with cloths to “pop the grain.” This makes the wood more receptive to the stain so less is needed to achieve the results that you want.
Before, we had taken photos of the existing hardwood floors in the house using natural light to capture the best image of the stain. We took this to Home Depot and matched it to a water-based stain and polyurethane combo so that we could finish the floor as soon as possible and give it time to cure and air out before moving furniture back in anticipation of our friend’s arrival.
With the wood damp, I stirred the stain/poly combo according to the instructions on the can and poured out some into a paint tray. Then, I dipped a foam paint/finish applicator into the stain/poly and gently worked it into the wood in the direction of the boards.
Once completed, give the floor enough time to air out and cure before moving things back in. If you don’t have to walk on it, just wait until its met the cure time as this will give you the strongest possible finish.
I didn’t want to pull up the baseboard, so I went back after the floor’s finish had cured and repainted the baseboard (putting down plastic, taping the edge, and putting enough coats to hide the stain that hit it). In hindsight, I should have taped the baseboard to protect it. However, the best option is to pull up the baseboard and reinstall after refinishing the floor.
We were very happy with the results. It was ready for our friend’s visit and we used it as an office again after he returned to Japan.
Thankfully, LEGO provides digital copies of their set instruction books online. This means that if you have the bricks, you can build anything in the LEGO catalog. Of course, it might take time and energy to hunt down each individual brick and element that you might need to assemble a given set if your collection is as disorganized and binned as mine is. Nevertheless, it’s satisfying being able to build something new with what you have instead of having to go out and buy it.
In this case, I assembled a set that didn’t buy when it came out in 2010: 8099 Midi-Scale Imperial Star Destroyer. It took a considerable amount of time to find all of the bricks that I needed to complete it, and I had to cannibalize some other sets to get all of the parts. Eventually, it came together. However, I did have to make one off-color substitution deep within and hidden from external view.
