Gadget Metro

So what is a “Heat Shrink“?    Its a popular tool we use in the hobby electronics industry.    It is actually is a tube which shrinks in diameter when heated.

Purpose: Heat shrink is used to insulate wires offering abrasion resistance and environmental protection for conductors, connections, joints and terminals in electrical engineering. It can also be used to repair wires or bundle them together, to protect wires or small parts from minor abrasion, and to create cable entry seals, offering environmental sealing protection between bulkheads and adding sealability to electrical junction boxes.  - Wikipedia

I guess that says it all.   For me personally,  I use it to cover solder joints.  Usually when I’m extending a wire, I cut a small piece of heat shrink tube, about 2 inches in length or enough to cover the exposed wire splice.    I then put the heat shrink tube first and then splice the wires and start soldering.

Once the wires are soldered,  I moved the heat shrink tube in position to cover the spliced part and then fire up my hot air blower (I have a hot air soldering station),  but your average hair dryer will do.   Sometimes I just use my soldering iron and quickly move it across the length of the Heat Shrink tube.

Our family keeps a couple of our personal DVDs in storage. We had our old videos from trips and events such as birthdays transferred from the old VHS format to DVD. Now of course we would like to back it up and put it in our hard drives.

A friend of mine said he uses a DVD Ripper he bought from the internet.   He says he use it so he can carry his videos to iPod,PSP. I checked it out and it can also be used for iPhone, PS3, Archos, iRiver, Creative Zen, Zune, Xbox, 3GP phone, Apple iPad, Google Android-based phones.   He actually has a Mac so he uses the DVD Ripper Mac

One of the things that caught my eye is its ability to handle HD DVDs.  I guess when I use this, I’ll be able to put in formats like  HD AVI, HD MPEG-2/4, HD H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HD WMV, HD Quick Time, HD VOB, HD ASF videos, and other HD video formats.

So I guess I’ll be doing a lot of DVD to AVI conversions in the next coming weekends.

Anybody bought this?  Was it good?

A few months ago, I went to a local car show and came across a nice looking Dodge challenger.    It has this very cool looking body kit which I think is a must have for dodge challenger owners.   I later on found out through research that the body kit was an Asanti Body Styling kit which I found in a dodge challenger accessories website.

I saw in a forum called challengertalk that the asanti kit includes the following… grille assembly, bumper, euro side vents, trunk and hood badges. I totally like the grille and the hood.

The 2010 Dodge Challenger is not bad either.

However, this would set you back by $23,695.

But for me, I’d go for a year old 2009 Dodge challenger and spend some money on the asanti kit. Having a year old 2nd hand Dodge challenger isn’t bad at all. As long as it’s being taken cared of properly, and of course it wasn’t involved in any car accident or something.