Joe's Personal Blog

One good source of small gift or project boxes are the various gift card tins available around the holiday times.   GameStop used to have a nice set of tins that looked just like various video games. Here is a bad picture of the set I have.  TI MSP430 launchpad and Arduino boards fit with a little metal cutting. The left column from top to bottom is a Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Sony PS2 The right column from top to bottom is Playstation 3 , Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 They all open a little differently which can change how you use them for a project. I've done some tin smithng on the PS/2 and PS/3 cases to make projects fit inside.

The Europeans seem to have large pool of aftermarket Suzuki Savage parts than we have in the USA.  I wanted to update my luggage rack from the flimsy OEM version and wanted to replace the sissy bar that I hacked off to mount my luggage rack. Finding a Sissy Bar on EBay I wanted something different than an OEM Sissy Bar and the "artistic" Sissy Bars that show up on the US EBay site. I purchased a JF Motorsport  256220000650 Aluminum SissyBar on Ebay.  The product sticker makes it look like the bar was made in 1999. Freight from Europe was reasonable and 3 weeks later it showed up.  I really like the look of the bar and back rest.  It is the same height as OEM with a larger pad. You can see it mounted on my bike here. The turn signal is loose because in preparation for mounting the luggage described later. There are, however, some things purchasers should be aware of. The padded backrest is bigger than the OEM and ...