Off-camera flash / strobe pc sync cable hack mod

I finally bought myself a nikon sb-24 from ebay used. I have a nikon d90. I already purchased knock-off as-15 adapters because the nikon d90 does not have a pc sync port!
Now, you could buy the pc sync cable male to male. However, they are hard to find and pretty expensive. For example, just 1 foot is $10 not including shipping.

On the Strobist website, they tell you that you can buy a pc sync to household plug adapter. Then you only need to buy lamp cord in desired length and two female plug adapters, hook wires up. That was tedious to me plus electric cords are heavy.

Some other modders said you could use rca cable but you'd have to solder wires together and I didn't want to do that either.

Use a stereo audio cable to connect to pc sync cables.

You can and should buy a pc sync to 3.5mm plug (mono audio, 1/8"). For cheap. I bought two on ebay. $1.89 each including shipping. A bunch of people said not to use a stereo audio cable and to buy a mono cable. F that. Mono audio cables are rare and expensive. I bought an extension 3.5mm stereo audio cable, 25ft for $3.50 including shipping. The stereo cable works just fine. I've had no misfires.

However, there's one tiny problem. With your two pc sync cables to 3.5mm male plugs you need a 3.5mm female to female audio cable. They don't exist, or are very rare and with rarity comes expense.
So, what do you do? When you need to connect two male tips, you need a coupler. Those are female to female. Ebay has them for $1.

However, mine are in the mail. I wanted to use my flash now. I had an extra audio splitter, the type you'd use to plug into an mp3 player and allows you to plug in two headphones. I tested to see if I could use the two female sockets to send signal to each other. It worked! I put tape on the tip so I wouldn't cause any interference.

OR Use rca cables instead

Maybe you have a lot of rca cables lying around and want to use them instead of spending $3.50 for 25ft of 3.5mm audio cable. Ok. Here's what you need.
Buy the pc sync cable to 3.5mm audio. $1 Yes, buy 2. Next, buy these 3.5mm female to male rca adapters. I think you know the drill.

All kinds of these audio adapters are dirt cheap on ebay. Sure, shipping is going to take some time, it's Hong Kong. However, you won't be sorry.

Different space

We have moved to the Duplex. Next door neighbors with my mom. But across the alley from our in-progress Yellow House.

The duplex was surely not move-in ready. There were two too many tables, and a organ speaker without an organ, also a washer. All in the dining room.
In the living room was a couch that had vomit on it. A broken sewing machine.

We put those items on the curb. And after no one had taken several we had to dispose of them.

We accepted a bed from a family friend, complete with boxsprings, frame and headboard. A table with interesting legs that unfortunately needed a lot of diy tlc. We have put them in the basement and are using the table as a headboard.

We are using a 6 ft door on an old 4 ft desk as a computer table. It's pretty sweet. Credit to our friend Drew for that idea.

Since the bunnies require separate pens, we feel a bit cramped.

The kitchen sink was an old cast iron ceramic coated that was chipped and rusty. Gross! Serendiptiously we found a stainless steel sink in the basement! We bought silicone caulk, a caulk gun, plumber's putty and a new strainer. We also bought new cpvc piping since the old was metal. We also had a hard time fitting it to the steel drain pipe because it was off-center and on an axis. A flexible pipe fixed that.

The toilet wouldn't stop filling and the fill valve sprayed water everywhere so you had to put a rag on it. Today I installed a new fill valve and flapper. It worked! Easily. Also, it replaced the old style with a floating ballcock. It's quieter too.

We decided to put ceramic tile in the bathroom. It's small, 24 sq ft. At HD, there were 58 cent tiles! Non-offending beige cream color. Perfect! It became less economical when we had to throw in the trowel, float, tile cutting blade, mortar mix, and grout mix. We are still very excited.

We still need to finish putting up dry wall then taping and mudding. Who needs a shower?

Just thinking about it.

You know that warm weather I spoke of? It's gone. It lightly snowed today. It was 22 degrees today and is currently 11.
Did we go to the house? Noooo. We walked around Target and thought about the finishing touches in our house. Not the current house. We thought about the apartment we had. It was a home. It was very nice. Not having a place makes you realize that.

Ugh. Can't wait.

Warm weather!

It has been above freezing! Actually 45 today. Yesterday was in the 50s! Thursday should be in the low 60s. We have been productive. We had a good waste removal last last week. We missed this Valentine's day.
The bedrooms divisive wall has been removed and it is one large room. 23' long. We are also half way done tearing down the wall to the front door and that closet. Here is a photo. Highlighted area = drywall, plaster&lath down.

The wall has been deleted for the closet/entryway but the yellow highlight remaining signifies that 4 ft of the upper wall is still attached. We shall tackle that tomorrow.
lso, here is a photo of all the heavy electronics stuff we removed.

Ice Cold

1 degree outside. 31 degrees below the freezing point. We hadn't been working on the house for some time and we finally said we gotta do it.
Dad had already started a fire so that was pleasant. We finished pulling out the lathe and ripped out the dividing wall between the bedrooms. The wall studs are still up but you can see right through, feels like one room. Progress you can see. Feels good.
N. removed the sheet metal cabinets from the truck and he and dad put trash bins of debris into the truck. We even got the closet door removed and bagged up the sand.  It's so great! The fire was roaring. I was on fire duty. I like it. Fire is mesmerizing.
The second bedroom is unfortunately full of some heavy duty printers - dot matrix xerox machines and some other unidentifiable large electronics. But not much else. The living room remains full of wood.  It's nice the wall is open now because it provides much easier access to that bedroom.
Next, we shall knock out the entry way wall and take out the lathe on the stair wall.

The Progress

Drywall>lathe>plaster 
Years ago, my mother and aunt had taken down the walls in the kitchen and pantry/hallway to basement stairs. Growing up I always thought it looked ugly and now I'm glad because I don't have to do it!

We have taken down almost 3 complete 9' 5" walls.  In my  heading I said lathe before plaster because the plaster is so old, it's already fallen down to the floor between the studs.

My dad's method of removal is plain old smash with a crow bar. His way relies on strength and is messy.  My method is to find the seams of the drywall, cut them with a utility knife and pry it off in as big a chunk as I can. It starts slow but then I have a giant piece off and it's not messy.  Drywall removal is not messy. Plaster is messy. Old dried up plaster. Try never to sweep plaster. Dust monster!  Nick is very good at removing lathe fast.

We cut the lathe strips on the table saw to manageable lengths to feed our wood stove.  They burn fast and hot.  Easy waste disposal there.  The plaster and drywall we put into large (40 gallon) rubber trash cans.  We missed trash day this week unfortunately due to laziness and snow.

Winter work is hard.  You don't want to leave your cozy warmth to go work in the cold house, start a fire, move your butt, get dirty, get hot, stop working, get cold and then go home.  Snow is also a deterrent because Dad has a small pickup truck that may not navigate the unplowed roads so well. I also can't see working in the hot summer either. I long for March.

We are in the midst of what I am going to call 'Trash Clogged' which means the current level of trash in the house is impeding the production of more trash otherwise known as demolition.

We have gone to Best Buy with giant printers the last few days. It's always the same guy and he never comments or questions us. I like that sort of professionalism.  It's none of his business and he keeps it that way.  Thank you, sir. You have a good day too.

Here is the progress in picture format:

The yellow highlights walls that are already removed. The green highlights the next targets. You may notice we are avoiding external walls.  It's winter right now and I don't need to feel that extra bit of cold.  Save it for later.

Nick and I went to coffee and sketched out more floorplans.  We need to move the stairs to make room for a bathroom.  I am working with online stair calculators to determine feasibility.  Currently, the stairs are parallel with the floor joists but we thought about changing them to run perpendicular and then worried about floor support.  It would also be in the kitchen, shrinking its width considerably.  I was also lamenting the small living room. 12x12 essentially. We are currently in a bedroom that's 12x14.  Call me spoiled.  I gave in and listened to Nick's idea of knocking out the top bedroom. Opening it to the living room and putting a two flight stair case there. The front door (top) would open to the first flight going up about 2-3 ft then 3ft landing, turn right going up to the upstairs.  We still have to have the center support beam going through the center of the house. So the living room is not totally open. Here is a layout:

This allows the kitchen to remain rather large, perhaps we could add a small custom island.  This also allows for a larger bedroom (ours) on the main floor. In this plan we put the bathroom next to the stairs instead of the bedroom and bath swapped. We are not sure.  It makes sense to put the bathroom centrally located but then we have to enter our bedroom through the kitchen. Meh.  You can see I left a partial bit of the center wall in. We are going to have to research modifying it to have arches or something similar. Give that entryway/living room a great eye piece and open feel. The downside in this design in that there is a window right where the closet would be in the bedroom.  We put the closet there to muffle bathroom sounds and there is a window on the opposite wall. Harrumph. 

January

January just got a ton colder.  Below freezing.  I don't want to leave the house.  I have to put on so many layers of clothing. I wear thermal underwear, then my dirty work jeans and boots. On top, I have a tank top a t-shirt and a long sleeve shirt, then my windproof fleece jacket and a puffy blue coat.  We went to the thrift store and bought outer coats and hats for our project to get dirty.

We go, start a fire in the woodstove.  I go upstairs and start removing motherboards from their cases.  The cases are old and heavy steel which we will sell at the junk yard.  The motherboards and peripherals are technically hazardous and we will think about how to dispose of them. --Best Buy recyles! Accepts almost all types of electronics 3 a day per household.  I was warm doing that work. My right hand was gloved and my left was not. Neither were cold.  The monitors were another problem. They are CRT and we have to get rid of them properly.  Best Buy accepts them for $10 in which they give back to you in a BB gift card. Not as bad as the other places flat out charging you up to $15 dollars per monitor.  We have 23+ monitors up there. It's a headache. I count my blessings that Best Buy takes keyboards, motherboards, printers for free.  We have about 10 heavy keyboards, 15 printers (upstairs alone).

Then I went to my city's waste website. I discovered there is no regulation on disposing of electronics in household trash!  I feel kind of bad, but we have to get rid of them.

At a trip to Home Depot for some supplies, we got romex wiring, lined leather gloves for SO, and safety goggles.  There were no lined leather gloves for women or for my small women's hands. I tell Nick I don't want gloves and none would fit me.  I regret this later.

It's so damn cold and my dad's oily thin gloves do not help. I shove my hands in my pockets and watch SO cut up wood.  I need gloves.  It's 7 degrees.  Slight exposure to the frigid air and my fingers go numb.

Our problem isn't that there's not much to do, it's that we are stifled by our waste management situation.  We don't have enough containers to put the trash in, and we don't have enough outlets for it.  We have access to a commercial dumpster once a week.  We missed last week's because it was very cold and the roads were covered in snow and Dad worried the emptied pickup might get stuck.  We also did not take advantage of curbside pickup right in front of the house. Duh!

We tried to saw up some pieces of a dresser but the tablesaw wouldn't start, hummed and then out went the lights.  We then had an exercise in discovering which fuses went to which light fixture.

We also decided to try taking out a wall. A small wall. The drywall was easy and came out in chunks. No dust.  Then there was the lathe. Lemme tell you - lathe makes great kindling wood.  : )
We tried to use the jigsaw to slice up the lathe but it was underpowered.  We then tried a circular saw but it wouldn't turn on.  A circular saw would be fantastic though.  We set the depth to the dept of the drywall and cut out a frame of it to remove in solid pieces. Then the lathe would slice like butter.  Soon we shall do it.

But first I need some damn warm work gloves for small hands!