As promised, here are some photos of my hardware project as it is
so far. Before you look at the photos, please excuse the dirt
underneath my fingernails :$



My breadboard, from Jaycar, with the power plug already hooked up, and the wires ready to plug the BlueSMiRF in.



The Bluetooth host module, plugged in to a USB extension cord. No my
fingers are not abnormally large – it really is that small!

More photos to come, I just don’t have the time to fiddle with them
right now…check my photo gallery if you desperately want to see them
now

Also, today FedEx dropped by to deliver my LCD from Crystalfontz, but
no-one was home 🙁 . I’ll have to ring them up and tell them to
deliver in the afternoon rather than mid morning.

In other news, I scored a free UPS from work today. According to
the manufacturer’s website, its a 300VA model, which isnt too shabby I
guess. It’s got a serial port for communicating with my computer,
but my serial ports are already used, and the manual seems to imply the
software for it is extra.
Anyway, heres the catch. The battery in the UPS was dead.
Now, a UPS with a dead battery isn’t much use. So I left work
early, and dropped in to batteryworld on the way home. I picked
up a generic Sealed Lead Acid Battery, 12V, 7.5Ah, which is basically
the same as the original battery. It cost me $45, which is pretty
expensive I guess, but its not like you can just go to Woolworths (TM)
and pick up a Sealed Lead Acid battery.
So it took around an hour to pull it apart, try and get the battery out
the wrong way, figure out the right way, take the battery out, put the
new battery in, and put it all back together again.
I tentatively plugged it in, and stood well back in case of any sparks,
explosions, or other releases of magic smoke. Fortunately there
were none, so I plugged my computer in, and away we went 🙂