What's going on here? Is it Halloween again already?

Halloween 2006 came and went fast. Halloween 2007 went by even faster. As of today, about 10 months until next Halloween.

Last year year, I improved the dungeon by adding a second wall, and covering them with a much better brick pattern backdrop. I also stepped up to a 1000 watt fog machine, and fed the output of the fog chiller to a plastic pumpkin with lights in it. The effect was surprisingly good.
I also added some more lighted decorations. Those cheap "portraits" they sell look decent, but they don't light up. Now I have a ghoul that winks, a mummy with a pulsing red heart, and another ghoul with a flickering torch. It's all done with mirrors. Or magic. or LEDs.
The chiller helps to even out the flow of the fog so that the pumpkin is always fogging, and when the timer kicks in, huge amounts of fog came out. As long as the air is still, it hugs the porch floor just like in the movies.
I also added more colored lights to set a more appropriate mood.
I also got my picture in the local paper. They asked for pictures, so I sent a few in.

------ Halloween 2005 -----

Even Kosta showed up with his family!

For 2007, I ran into a problem with the porch. Now that it's enclosed, I can't have any hooks in the ceiling.
In order to have a place to hang the decorations and lights, I built a prefab room which fits inside the porch. It's a bear bringing all those panels in through the front porch door, but I was able to design it so that it's free standing. It's made up of 1X2 framing painted flat black, and covered with black cloth, with black plastic to keep out the daylight. Even during the day, the sheer blackness of the room is an awesome sight, and only a very small amount of light is needed for the decorations.

This photo was taken during the day with a flash. It's not easy taking a picture of the dark.

Many of the visitors loved it, except for two older teenage girls who were afraid to come on the porch. They were afraid that something was going to jump out at them.

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Goings-On

Party in the Hollow pix. Click on the Blue Hat to check out some pix.

The prototype home-brew TV is running.

Details on the Home Brew TV page.

The Rochester Hamfest has come and gone. For 2007, the fairgrounds was torn up for a renovation, and the parking lot was paved, but the flea market was on crushed stone. A lot of people left early and didn't plan to come back. This year, it should be all paved.
Paul & I heard that the AWA meet in Bloomfield is better than the Owego hamfest, so we went there. It was awesome in spite of being rather small. As soon as we got there, we headed for the outdoor flea market, but Paul followed me. I told him that we'd do better if we split up, and I was soon on my way back to the car with the first load, and Paul had already set a pile of radios in the front seat.
Lots of great finds, including two console radio cabinets in excellent condition for free, but I only had the Neon. Inside was even better - lots of tables full of radio related stuff, and no computers or junk. Some of the cathedral radios were very steeply priced, but lots of table radios and chassis units.
What we didn't know about was the museum junk sale. We waited in line for the door to open, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on, but Paul got right into it and started grabbing sets and piling them up and grabbing more. The general idea is to grab what you want, pile it up, then pay for it. I caught on right after someone picked up a power amplifier chassis I just set down, but I made up for it.
After the feeding frenzy, all the leftovers went for $10. each, then later $5. Paul & I loaded up again. Outside, I got a great deal on several boxes of tubes, but the Neon was getting full, and there were still radios on the front seats. I guess it's just as well that we didn't get anything at the auction because I didn't bring enough duct tape to fasten more radios to the roof of the car as Red Green would have.
But that's not all - there was the AWA museum which is an awesome place - crammed full of radios from just about any age, including Armstrong's experimental transmitter, and the first transistor radio - not the Regency, but a lab prototype.
Still more - the museum annex is stuffed even fuller - more radios, TV's, military radios, ham equipment, test equipment, and the most densely packed tube room I have ever seen.
What blew me away was the DuMont Royal Soverign. At first it looks like an ordinary 1950's console TV, but the picture tube is about 27 inches, and the cabinet is literally the size of a clubhouse. You literally feel like a little kid standing in front of this behemoth.
This year, we have to go to a wedding, so I'm trying to talk Paul & Mel into going because Mel will surely enjoy it.
Elmira 2007 was also outstanding. I missed out on enough tubes to literally fill the pasenger compartment of my Neon for $60. - very cheap. They were sold to someone who was only interested in the boxes. If I had known, we could have gone halves - they would take the boxes, and I could pour the tubes into the spaces between the radios & other gear. Don't laugh too hard - I really have done that several times.
Someone had a box of over 100 Meissner RF coils & IF cans, all new in the box. I was hoping he wouldn't want too much, but he only asked $3 for all of them. They did get interspersed with all the other goodies. Can't make Elmira this year either due to a cruise, but I will be able to make it to the Utica hamfest.
Today we went to the Newark (NY) hamfest. A great ice-breaker, and for once the weather was very warm. I got rid of a lot of quality merchandise, and picked up several boxes of tubes.

I've been a member of SMUG (Syracuse Macintosh User's Group) for a while now, and for those of you who would like to know what I'm up to, read on.

I tried posting the 2003 vacation pix but......

Problems with the beach and Disney Cruise pictures - for some reason, the files which I processed with Photoshop Elements will not download from my Tripod site or from Prohosting. They were all ready, I spent two nights uploading the files, all for nothing. I tried using Paint Shop Pro (a much older photo editor), and it works fine. All I need to do is to do it all over again. Thanks Adobe!!!!

I found out that the "Save as Web" function in Photoshop Elements actually strips off needed information, which causes problems in most web browsers. For now, I'm going to keep using Paint Shop Pro.

So what happened to Bob's site at A-ZNet.Com?