Finally, a real fix for the commenting bug that crops up from time to time. Recently, as well as a year and a half ago, WordPress comments would timeout or give NGINX 504 gateway errors. There were two issues, both related to over zealous security settings: Modsecurity was treating the comment submission, by some versions […]
Author Archives: Ian
Cheap laser cutter arrives pretty busted up
Like many others we have succumbed to the urge for a cheap laser cutter. What started as a $200 purchase quickly doubled, but that’s still a fraction of the cost of an expensive one. Why do we what it? That’s a not very well hit secret. The ubiquitous blue Chinese freight truck drops the crate […]
Random Hong Kong electronics posting
Wanted a LTE SIM card for Hong Kong so ran up to Aplui street. There’s a few electronics stores here but it’s pretty tame. Once a someone said their factory contacts always brought them from China to Hong Kong to buy components, once they experienced Huaqiangbei they felt duped. If you’re in Hong Kong on […]
Hacker Camp Shenzhen vol 2: Reflux open for registration
Hacker Camp Shenzhen volume 2: “Reflux” is on! Join us from Thursday September 25 to Saturday September 27, 2014 for fun, food and solder fumes in Shenzhen, China. Tickets are available now. Come to the world’s electronics capital and experience Shenzhen like a local hacker. Tour the famous Huaqiangbei electronics markets with people who live […]
Random spottings in Huaqiangbei electronics market
In search of a powerful frickin’ laser we visited this stand. They were really up front that the 6Watt label was incorrect, but the 2.5Watt output of this little handheld laser was still impressive. For a little demo she showed us that it could melt a piece of solder in half…with a bit of effort. […]
Comments seem to be acting up again
The server is alive, but some misconfiguration seems to be making commenting difficult again. We’re in the process of building a new box and and will install everything for WordPress from scratch. Sorry for the issues, we’ll keep you updated.
Yihua and Depu electronics market visit
Today we piled into a taxi with visiting hackers to check out two electronics markets. Both are about an hour north of Shenzhen in Shajin, a very industrial area. We have high hopes of finding more equipment and tools than are available in huaqiangbei. Top on our list was a USB controlled wire cutter Zach […]
Tripping to Shajin equipment market
Cruising through Bao’on on way to Shajin tools and equipment market. I’ve never been to this one, but Oomlout and Zach Hoeken both says there’s tons of great stuff. We are looking for a wire cutter and stripped machine, as well as a small laser cutter for blasting polyimide. You can probably guess what the […]
Random Saturday electronics blog
Replacing a NIC with something hopefully high quality from Intel. Noticed that Intel uses a healthy mix of 0402, 0603, and 0805 components. Especially capacitors. Not sure if this is due to cost vs capacity, or if smaller, harder to place components are used sparingly as needed. From experience typical caps get cheaper as they […]
Site up, site down, fingers pointing everywhere…
Over the past week things have been getting really slow and buggy around here. I reinstalled WordPress a bunch of times to get rid of the slow and timeout comment bug, but last night someone said it’s back. A system admin has been working on it for the past few days. We found some corrupt […]
Tripping to South China Market in a bread van
The entire Pearl River Delta area of China is a manufacturing powerhouse. Huaqiangbei, the famous giant electronics market, is just a tiny facet of a huge industrial ecosystem. About 30 minutes north of Shenzhen there’s a giant market the size of a town that supplies not just electronics, but chemicals, materials, tools, machines, and, of […]
Random spottings on factory tour
Joined a friend on a factory audit today totally unrelated to anything electronic. Spotted a few cool thongs though. This is a metal polishing station with a red bull can full of polish. Down the hall is an unrelated factory making plastic tubing for bag machines. ABS plastic pellets go in the hopper and tube […]
Taxi death on way to Shenzhen factory visit
Took a taxi about an hour to the manufacturing area of Shenzhen, Bao’on. When we got in it seemed like there was something wrong with the car or driver, 3rd and 4th gears seemed nonexistent. Initially I though maybe we should swap cabs, its a long trip after all. But that seemed just too paranoid. […]
WordPress reinstall and server update complete
Comments have been hosed for the last few days, and posting became impossible. This happened about a year and a half ago according to the site changlog. Everything seems to be working now, please hit us up if you notice any problems. It’s not clear what caused it. Like last time, a complete reinstall of […]
Reinstalling to clear hacks, cracks, scripts, other bugs
Commenting is timing out, and the back end is really slow. Additionally we’re having daily down time during scheduled database checks. I’m currently making a full backup snapshot, then I will completely clear out WordPress and reinstall the blog from scratch. It should go smoothly, except I have to do it all from China’s terrible […]
Taco Crawl in San Francisco tonight!
In San Francisco early for the Maker Faire? Join our annual taco crawl through the mission district. Meet up at Noise Bridge Hackerspace near 17th and Mission at 6pm. Thats just off the 16th and Mission BART stop. We’ll crawl down Mission and eat tacos the whole way, ending at Rosamunde for a sausage and […]
Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 2 Video: Export, Import, Shipping, Sourcing Agents
Connie @ Arcbotics discusses import and export from China, Lily and Ben talk about sourcing agents, and Tully @ Factory For All covers shipping. Morning discussions from Hacker Camp Shenzhen 2014, Friday April 4th. The three speaker and presentations, and all the day 2 picture posts.
Site problems, update in progress
Earlier today I installed a new WordPress plugin to take reservations for Hacker Camp Shenzhen. It hosed the .htaccess file. I got that sorted, but now I can’t get the /docs/ projects wiki working again – all pages return 404 not found. No idea why. It’s a mess. Please hang tight, I’ll get it going […]
Shenzhen workshop April 3-5, 2014
Have you ever wanted to visit Shenzhen, home of the world’s largest electronics market? This year, just prior to the Shenzhen Maker Faire, join us for a soldering workshop and market tour for hardware hackers April 3-5, 2014. The main event is a two day soldering course at Shenzhen’s cell phone repair school. They’ll teach […]
Chinese New Year in Shenzhen the world electronics capital
Shenzhen wasn’t a town 30 years ago, it was barely a village. Almost nobody is from Shenzhen, people come here to make money and send it to family in other parts of China. Over the Chinese New Year, that two week period when you can’t order from Seeed Studio, tons of eBay vendors, and all […]