I proposed in front of the Atomium in Brussels. I think I picked a pretty romantic spot It was snowing softly and the lighting was very pretty.

Check it out! Isn’t it awesome?! It makes such cute noises too!

For those of your who don’t know or haven’t guessed, the Roomba is a cleaning robot that automatically vacuums your house. It’s about a foot in diameter and as you can tell by the video, it’s pretty quiet compared to a full size vacuum.

Inside it, it’s got two counter rotating brushes which pick up large bits of dirt, then behind that, there is a vacuum which sucks up the remaining dust. It’s a pretty clever system because it means the vacuum doesn’t have to be as powerful. Oh yeah, and it’s got like robot AI n’shit.

I put the charging station under the cupboard at the back, so it’s got it’s own little home When it’s done cleaning, or when it needs recharging, it automatically finds it way back and docks

When it first arrived, I was so excited! Now, I’m not an extremely excitable person, but I have to admit, when I first saw Roomba go, I actually (yes, for really reals yo) jumped up and down with excitement! When it’s backing off it’s docking station it makes a beep beep reversing noise like a lorry does, it’s pretty cute.. then when it’s done cleaning and it’s docked successfully, it plays a little happy “Tar dar, I’m done!” tune.. It’s like the pet I never had! Plus, it’s cleaning the house! I heart Roomba.

In other related news, I also ordered myself a RooTooth. This is a Roomba bluetooth interface that plugs into Roomba’s little expansion port, so now I can hack it with my PC, mobile or other bluetooth devices Watch this space for a mobile phone controlled Roomba rolling around my house

Gone are the days of beige! Shiny new Logitech Z-10 speakers arrived today to complete the panoramic beauty of my desktop

They’re gorgeous! and sound awesome too! They’ve even got a little LED panel in on them, so when I’m playing music it shows up the track info on the speaker!! and it’s got play/pause fast-forward/rewind and skip track touch sensitive buttons all on the speakers! Tres coolio! Definitely the pièce de résistance of my 20″ widescreen desktop.

Inside the case the shiny looking goodness continues

For the techies who care, it’s a 2.4Ghz Intel Core2Duo with 4Gig of PC2-8500 DDR2 1066Mhz RAM.

I built my new computer with two things in mind #1 was Photoshop. I wanted my new computer to eat 50meg tiff images for breakfast and #2 was silence. My old computer buzzed and rattled like crazy and it drove me mental. This new computer is totally silent! The motherboard has a heat pipe cooled chipset, the ram is heat piped and the case is a Arctic Cooling T1 Pro Silentium.. See their clever use of word play there It’s an awesome case. Shiny black and all the fans have little rubber shock absorbers, so it’s totally silent I love it!

In my quest for silence, I missed one thing.. the graphics card. The fan on the graphics card that I got was crazy noisy! So I ordered a ZeroTherm GX815 cooler for it. It arrived today. Now what I wasn’t expecting when I turned it on was the fact that it’d look like this:

How cool is that!?! It’s got blue LEDs inside it! Why, I have no idea! I’ve seen some case mods on the net where you can stick a transparent side panel on your computer.. but that seems a bit chavy to me. I must admit, the cooler is a tad on the enormous side! It’s supposed to cool super high end graphics cards, so it does dwarf my little graphics card a bit..But still.. it’s pretty, isn’t it!

This omnipotent holy relic was created by the three goddesses of Hyrule; Din, Farore and Nayru. Imbued with their divine essences, it is the ultimate manifestation of power, wisdom and courage in Hyrule.

It is influenced by the heart of the one who touches it, whether good or evil, and possesses the ability to grant that person’s deepest desires.

It consists of three distinct entities represented by the three smaller triangles, each of which is also referred to as a Triforce when considered individually. Counter-clockwise from the top, these are the Triforce of Power, the Triforce of Wisdom, and the Triforce of Courage.

.. and here is the Triforce, held aloft by the great hero; Link!

  so, now that you’ve got the background story, my mate Robert asked me to make him a little Triforce for the chain he wears.

Step one was to mark out a triangle and then see how small a triangle I could cut in the center. My dremel cutting wheels are just over 15mm in diameter, so cutting a really tiny hole is next to impossible. Luckily I found a worn down cutting wheel that was only 8mm in diameter! That’s absolutely tidily!.. and perfect for what I needed.

Next I cut it out. Queue Sparks!

I left a little tab on the side, so I could keep it clamped while I cut it out and filed it.

I then ground down the edges to as close to the center as I could, leaving enough metal to keep the three triangles strongly together. Then I cleaned up the edges, so it’s not insanely sharp and cut the tab off.

One snazzy looking Zelda Triforce, complete with tiny hole to stick a chain loop on

So I present to you, my D.I.Y. Shuriken!

Check out the pic below:

1. Draw shuriken on paper. I made this design myself by first drawing around the base of my optic (the only vaguely triangular object I could find!), then connecting bits up using the side of a handy credit card as a ruler (Hey I was pressed for time!). Then I cut out a section of my old exhaust and used a rubber hammer to flatted it out.
2. I used a cd labelling pen to draw round my paper template, then cut out the lines with my dremel. I went through about 5 cutting discs! Chromed exhausts are THICK!
3. The back of the metal was insanely filthy.. but I guess that makes sense since it used to be the inside of an exhaust! So I put a grinding attachment on my dremel and cleaned it off.. then I immediately stopped and went to put on a face mask so I didn’t choke to death!.. then I finished cleaning it.
4. Using the grinding attachment I cleaned up all the edges and then grinding at an angle, sharpened up all the points (though not that sharp as I don’t want to chop my fingers off!.. plus that’d probably be illegal!)
5. Push shuriken into wood for that authentic, thrown into wood look and take picture

The end result, one pretty nifty birthday present and all done in 2 hours