Yesterday (27-08-2009), we visited the Cabfablab fablab in The Hague with a small group.

A bit difficult to find it seemed, but we managed to get to the old Cabalero factory and then finally the ‘office’ of the Cabfablab. Two spaces, numbers 73 and 74. One for ‘noisy’ equipment and one for more ‘quiet’ work.

Overall it’s a nice clean place, quite light. They’ve got about the usual on machinery:

• Laser cutter for cutting wood & plastics or ‘writing’ on metal’
• Vinyl cutting plotter
• Heat transfer vinyl and the like on fabrics (e.a. for t-shirts)
• Small 3D miller
• 3D-Printer
• A medium sized CNC machine
• A wiki
• A diversity of small tools

They’re with a small group of volunteers, and their aim is mainly to facilitate students, self-employed and artists. Unlike other fablabs the Cabfbalab does not ave free days.

Usage of their equipment comes down to 25 euros per hour + materials. For the 3D-printer you just have to pay for the raw material. There are some exceptions, but see their website for that.

They do try to keep the open spirit quite alive, besides having most tings running on closed source software, it’s kind of a problem with having software that controls the machines.

I think it’s a nice workspace, good atmosphere just  too bad they don’t have free days. Certainly worth a visit.

Link: http://www.cabfablab.nl/

Pictures:

So a while back I got this little camera in whole set of stuff I picket up, and it’s actually quite a nice little thing. Build and sold in 1963, which makes it 18 years older then me :).

It’s a semi-automatic, as you can set the aperture and it will decide what shutter-time is best and notify you if you have enough light. The focussing is ofcourse manual, and has 3 presets.

It takes normal 35mm film, but can put double the ammount of pictures as it shoots everything in portrait-mode. Has a 30mm/2.8 fixed lens which provides a nice wide angle.

Besides its automatic mode there is a flash-option (the camera features a hot-shoe connection) or a manual option, where the shutter is open as long as you press it. No preset shutter times :)

The film is loaded by removing the black part from the metal part, which basicly devides the camera in 2.

I’ve shooting some cheap film with it, when I get them developed and scanned, I’ll post some.

Since a little while now, I used to have the problem of the music skipping in mplayer. I guessed bad audio or crappy I/O, but I never noticed any errors anywhere.

What was happening was that when I moved my laptop, bumped against the laptop or table it was standing on it would skip or rewind the music. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Now I have a Thinkpad X40 and it only happened with mplayer, no other audio/video player.

Since yesterday I finally realised the problem after confirming it was related to me bumping against the table/laptop.

Continue reading ‘Obscure mplayer problems’ »