Author: Dave Farquhar

Fixing track that gets hot at the track joints

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

I saw a question about a Fastrack layout getting hot at a track joint. That’s a conductivity issue causing voltage drop, which in turn causes the heat. While not likely to be dangerous, it’s a sign of inefficiency and can lead to other problems, such as the train slowing down at some parts of the layout. Poor conductivity also causes motors to run hotter than they should, which can eventually damage the armature.

I can think of two fixes, none of them especially expensive or time-consuming. And although this question was about Lionel Fastrack, it can happen with other makes of track too, and even other scales.
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New Order, Joy Division, surviving and moving on

Dave Farquhar Music ,
New Order, Joy Division, surviving and moving on

I couldn’t tell you the last time I thought about Joy Division, and then one of my college classmates posted a story about a stash of Joy Division and early New Order master tapes showing up in the basement of a former bank, along with guns and gold (but presumably, no butter). Yes, the jokes write themselves.

Instead of talking about the contents of the tapes, the story talked about New Order going on tour. I was vaguely aware that Peter Hook quit the band, and another story on the site discussed that: New Order is back together without Peter Hook, and Peter Hook is planning on touring as himself and playing Joy Division songs. And he’s writing a book about his time in Joy Division.

As a guy who spent way too much time listening to Joy Division in college, and who for a time ran the largest Joy Division tribute site on the Web, yeah, I have some opinions on all that.

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How to clean heat sink compound off a CPU

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

Cleaning heat sink grease off a processor is something I hope you don’t have to do often. But if you find yourself needing to remove a processor from a motherboard, it’s a good idea to clean off whatever compound is on the surface of the chip and apply a fresh batch.

You can do it with household tools.

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Upgrade update

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , ,

My new fire-breathing dragon of a server is sitting idle at the moment. I would have liked to have had it up and running today, but now I’m starting to realize why it took me so long to migrate off my Pentium II-450. Setting up Linux web servers is a lot more complicated than it was in 2001.

They can do a lot more than they could in 2001 too, but when I first built that server, the process literally went in about three steps: Install Debian, apt-get install apache mysql php, then download blogging software, create a MySQL database and account for it, edit a config file, then start blogging. You could get it done in an hour, and a lot of that time was waiting for stuff to load off a CD-ROM or download over a 256K DSL connection.

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Model Railroad Hobbyist

Dave Farquhar model railroading

Model Railroad Hobbyist is a monthly online-only magazine about, as the title suggests, model railroading. The quality of the content is very high–I’ll argue the writing, editing and photography give Model Railroader and/or Railroad Model Craftsman a run for the money. I really think which is best in any given month has more to do with the reader’s interests than anything else.

If you’re interested in model railroading or any other hobby that involves trains, dioramas, or both, it’s worth bookmarking and visiting every month. Perhaps more frequently, as you peruse back issues for gems you missed in the past.

Vacuum Firefox automatically

Dave Farquhar Software , ,

I’ve discussed vacuuming Firefox before to make it run like new, but it’s not something everyone is exactly comfortable doing. I found an extension called Vacuum Places Improved that allows you to vacuum Firefox automatically.

Most importantly, in the options for the add-on, you can make it run, say, every 50th time Firefox starts. That way, the vacuum process happens transparently–at the expense of every 50th load being slower, the database gains automatic maintenance. I’ll gladly trade occasional slower load times for improved performance.
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Egg on my face

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , ,

I dragged my computer back over to Micro Center this afternoon. It took three of us, but we got the computer working.

It’s a long story. It would have been a much shorter story if I’d remembered my rule #1. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say the second technician, upon hearing the only thing we hadn’t swapped out was the power supply, dragged a power supply out of the back. We plugged that power supply in, and heard the sweet gimme-some-memory scream from the motherboard failing to POST. Incredible. So we powered down, reinstalled the memory, and watched the system POST.

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Lowe’s just doesn’t get hyperlinks

Dave Farquhar Copyright ,

Lowe’s has a long license to link to its site.

Let it be known that if you want to link to me, you can just do it. Link to any page you want, as many times as you want. You’re doing me a favor if you do. In fact, I find it funny that a commercial site would tangle up something as important as linking in bureaucracy like that. As much as they worry about SEO, there’s still nothing in the world that improves your search results like good, old-fashioned 1994-era links.
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The Observation Car

Dave Farquhar model railroading

I’ll argue that model railroads and toy trains are separate but related hobbies. That said, I still enjoy good model railroading material. I can still steal ideas from them and adapt their techniques.

Late last year, noted model railroaders Dave Frary, Doug Foscale, and Jimmy Deignan started a podcast called The Observation Car. If listening to three veteran modelers sit around and talk shop once a month for a little over an hour sounds interesting or useful, it’s worth bookmarking. They haven’t done their February podcast yet, but I’ll be watching for it. In the meantime, they have three podcasts up to listen to.

Why I’m not selling anything on Ebay these days

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

This story is why I’m concerned about selling on Ebay these days. The subject of the story sold a coin for $470 and shipped it via UPS, insured. The buyer claimed he received an empty envelope, filed a claim with Paypal, received a refund, then refused to cooperate with the seller, so the seller couldn’t file an insurance claim.

The seller believes the buyer is refusing to cooperate because he’s lying. But UPS can’t investigate since the buyer won’t even pick up the phone, and Ebay isn’t interested in helping him.
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