Carlitos’ Contraptions

My girlfriend had an old toast oven (about 20 years old). Slowly it decayed and eventually, broke (the timer did not work any more but it still heating).

What to do in such a situation when you find yourself to be the most amazingly kind boyfriend in the entire universe known to man?

The answer is simple, and it can be reduced to three easy steps:

1. Find another toast oven in the trash (it must be the exact same model than your girlfriend’s).
2. Clean it thoroughly (and I mean THOROUGHLY. It should shine like a mirror, inside and out).
3. Give it to your girlfriend.

Note: in step No. 2, you should make sure the oven is in excellent working condition. There would be no point in cleaning it if it was broken (besides the intrinsic pleasure of cleaning a 20 years old oven).
IMHO, the easiest way to clean it is to take it apart, clean each piece, and put it it back together (but I have not tried any other method).

Enjoy some before and after shots:

Before…

After…

Project

I was tired of the red LED in my Logitech optical mouse, so I changed it. It took me less than 10 minutes (including searching my house for an LED).

It is very simple, just open up the mouse, desolder the LED, replace it by an LED of your choice (blue in my case), put it back together, and thats it!

I also slightly bent the spring in the scroll wheel so it scrolls much smoothly and quietly.

By the way, I noticed a better performance of the mouse on surfaces where it failed to work properly in the past… weird, but cool.

LED Specs (for the curious):

Emitted Colour : OCEAN BLUE
Size: 5mm
Forward Voltage : 3.2 V ~ 3.8 V
Luminous Intensity: 6000 mcd
Max Continuous Forward Current : 30mA

Project