I keep getting these spam emails which are making it past Gmail’s spam filter. Basically, it looks like a ‘delivery failed’ notification, with an HTML attachment which you are supposed to think is the original email. So you click on the attachment and open it, to find out which email you sent failed to go through. I finally got curious enough to see what exactly was going on. Here’s how the email looks like in Gmail:

Here’s the actual full contents of the email (some ip / email addresses removed to protect the innocent)
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I just found this service which provides very inexpensive PCB’s for hobbyists. His pricing structure is very simple: $5 per sq inch, you get three copies of the PCB, and there’s no setup fees and free shipping. He’s doing kind of a BatchPCB thing, but somehow has made the cost less expensive. (BatchPCB is $2.5 per sq inch, you get one copy of the PCB, and there’s a $10 setup/shipping fee). I haven’t tried it yet, but he says he needs more people to use his service, otherwise he loses lots of money, so I think I’ll give it a go.

Oh, and did I mention, it’s with 6 mil minimum trace/spacing?

At Amazon. Free shipping & no sales tax for most people, it’s a pretty good deal. Back when I bought mine in Jan 08, they would routinely sell out within 15 minutes of getting more stock on Amazon. I guess now that most everyone in the universe has one, the price is getting reduced

Excellent games I’ve played and can recommend: Super Mario Galaxy 1 or 2, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band 2, and Dokapon Kingdom

Got this error message when trying to delete a partition / volume in Windows 7 Disk Management. Zero hits on google for the error message, so in case anyone ever gets this again, what I had to do was first assign a drive letter to the partition. For some strange reason, on a dynamic disk, windows wont let you delete a volume if it doesn’t have a drive letter.

Here’s a comparison chart I’ve been working on that compares various PC-based logic analyzers. I made this mostly for myself because I’ve been wanting to buy a logic analyzer, but most of them are very expensive for a hobbyist’s budget. PC-based ones are a good compromise…they can be cheaper than standalone units since they don’t need all the processing and display hardware. I’m currently leaning towards the $120 Zeroplus unit, it seems to provide the best bang/buck. There is the $50 open source one, but I think I’d wait a bit for more reviews of it, to see how good it really works.

View Chart Full-Screen

I’ll write a review when I do decide on one. Also I know someone designing his own Logic Analyzer, if/when he finishes, I’ll give a link to that too.

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