My Journal

I thought I had lost the skill of lock picking ever since my family old Mazda car has been sold.

I purchased a Southord lockpicking set years ago, but never really got to know how to use it.

I was asked by one client to open a locked drawer recently, which motivated me to re-kindle that old lock-picking spirit.

After watching Youtube videos, particularly the ones on double sided waffer locks, I've finally managed to crack the case.

With double sided  locks, you just need to gosok both gigi while holding the tension wrench with a moderate (not too strong) force (counter-clockwise to unlock in my case).

Since I installed the audio driver that came with the motherboard online, I've had problems using the windows explorer. It becomes very slow and then the Blue Screen of Death "Kernal Inpage Data Error".

So I rolled back drivers for audio and video cards. I rolled back video because while updating the audio, I took the liberty to update video as well, being not sure of whether my video driver was automated by vista or manually installed by me long time ago.

Seems to be fine now. Backing up all my important files.

On reading about water batteries like the Japanese's Nopopo, I stumbled upon one of my favorite MIT physics professor, Walter Lewin's demonstration on the Kelvin Water Dropper.

Kelvin's contraption is intriguing indeed. Using gravity on a simple and smart circuitry to turn miniscule charge differences between two separate conductors into a kind of battery.

As for the Nopopo 'toy', it works on a different principle, which is similar to normal AA batteries. It can use liquid as simple as water instead of some other chemical as electrolyte and can be filled by user with water at anytime. Designed to be environment friendly, but many consider its low power a con.