I’ve been trying to play guitar more lately, but one of the holdups is the lack of an amp for practicing my electric. A few weeks back I found a great little electronics project called mintyamps (named for the Altoids tins these projects usually end up inside).

Today I finally got my new soldering iron (Weller WLC100), so I decided I’d throw together the mintyamp board and get things together on my breadboard.

Here are the pieces of the PCB you can buy from mintyamp:

They give you the printed PCB with some caps, an amp chip, an LED (blue) and a variable resistor. The first step is solder these components on to the board:

That’s what it looked like halfway through the process, and here’s the completed board. A few things to note:

1. The caps I bought didn’t have the dark stripe - the shorter lead was the negative side.
2. For the ceramic caps, you look at the first digit of the farad capacity of the cap and match it with the number on the board
3. Dont touch the neck of the iron. It hurts.

Here’s what it looks like when it’s all done:

Next, I put the rest of the pieces together on the breadboard to make sure things were working properly. The parts I added to the mix were:

• 9V battery whip
• Guitar input jack
• 2.25″ low-profile mini speaker

When my mintyamp order arrived, the vendor had thrown in the speaker for free! Thanks Bob.

So, how does it sound? You be the judge (please ignore the supermodel I hired for this shoot: I had to get someone in a pinch):

Next on the list is using some of these mini notebook speakers I got from Digi-Key:

I hooked em up but the gain is too high - I’ll be playing with the settings to see if I can get it to work well enough. If I can, the largest component in the set would be the battery!

Tune in next time to see what it looks like in the enclosure.

What’s all the hype about JavaFX during the last few days? Andy Patrizio over at InternetNews.com seems to think its the end-all beat-all, death-to-JavaScript-and-AJAX panacea for Web 2.0.

MmmmmmIthinknot.

My initial experience with JavaFX’s demos were, shall we say, less than glamorous. Andy doesn’t seem to think so, however.

The language offers interactivity, animation and programming consistent with AJAX, Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology, but employs the Java runtimes installed on your local client instead of clumsy JavaScript.

Take a look at some of the JavaFX demos to see the magic in action. How is this less “clumsy” than JavaScript or Flash?

1. Like any bleeding edge technology, Macs are potentially left out. The Java folks post a disclaimer above the demos, warning Mac users that they might have an install ahead of them. I didn’t have to make an install, but I wonder if many do.
2. So I have to download something to view it? Okay…
3. Whoa - my computer wants me to pledge my allegiance to Sun Microsystems in order to view the demo? So now were up to two dialog boxes before I’ve seen any magic. Yes, I want to download, yes, I trust this source. Great.

Once you actually get into the demo, they look pretty good (the Motorola example seems pretty cool), but less clumsy than JavaScript? C’mon Andy.

The article also contains a few gems from James Gosling, one of the Java language developers:

“Most scripting languages are oriented at banging out Web pages. This is oriented around interfaces that are highly animated.”

Check out the JavaFX demos for some high-ridin’ animation, baby. Somehow I doubt that a JavaFX app could even come close to the latest installment of Homestar Runner.

And do you notice the respect and admiration James gives to developers who use scripting languages? Excuse the noise whilst I wield my crude stone keyboard to bang-bang-bang out another web home page, Jim.

AJAX programming inevitably requires programming by content creators. Another problem with writing AJAX applications is it inevitably forces manual code creation, a skill Web content creators typically do not have.

An apt reminder for us all: Friends don’t let non-coding friends create AJAX applications. Stop the madness.

I can’t imagine how this technology will take hold for anyone other than people already up to their ears in Java. I think “write once, run anywhere” may end up being the mantra for the same developers who only have a Java hammer in their toolbox.

ReAL Salt Lake just acquired Freddy Adu!

Last season had its bumps, but we really rocked the last half of the season. Having Adu up front with Cunningham is going to be the sweet formula for some magic next year. I hope Utah can keep those (skilled) feet firmly planted on American soil for a good long while.

This makes the winter about twice as long for me… hurry up soccer season…

Read the (soccer-ignorant and anti-RSL) report at KSL news.

W00t!

Feeling down?

Feel the need for pure steel under finger?
Air guitar not satisfying the fix?

 http://guitarshredshow.com/

Rock on.

Time for a bit of a redesign. Please pardon the dust. I’ll be back online here in a few. Let me know what you think.