Review: TACKLife Paint Sprayer

If you've painted a wall before with a roller and a brush its not an easy task.  With having just replaced my back fence, I decide to purchase a paint sprayer to see if I can stain the fence more easily than rolling or brushing.  The one I got is a Tacklife SGP15AC.  I've used another Tacklife product before in their tire compressor and was very happy with the results so I decided to give their paint sprayer a try.  This sprayer retails for about $75.  It comes with 3 nozzles to match the thickness of your paint.  It has 3 spray pattern as well with vertical, horizontal and a direct focus spray.  It also comes with the cleaning needle and brush as well as detailed color instructions on troubleshooting the device if its not working properly.  The weight of it is not that heavy at around 2lbs.  But that's without paint in it and not constantly holding it as I will be spraying my fence.  It's rated at 400watts and 800ml/min flow rate.

The project I have is staining a 60ft fence, front and back.  It took about 15mins to spray one side.  Not bad at all.  Overall, I'm happy with this product and would recommend it to anyone.

          

Summary Specs:

https://tacklifetools.com/products/paint-sprayer-3-spraying-patterns-with-3-nozzles-sgp15ac

Vinyl pickup: Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt 2013

In continuing my quest to get all the Pearl Jam's official studio album on vinyl (original pressing), I get to cross Lightning Bolt off the list today.  This one doesn't have a repress/reissue as of today so its still the original pressing and its still quite easy to find new from online stores.  I wanted to jump on this one since its easily attainable.  Pearl Jam has always put some great thoughts on their album packaging.  And as far as Lightning Bolt is concern, it holds true as well.  It is not however, my favorite album packaging/artwork design out of all Pearl Jam albums (No Code is my favorite), but it won a Grammy for its artwork.  Now, for the downer.  The album arrived 3 weeks after I ordered it.  3 weeks!  Not sure what happened there but it was a third party seller from Walmart.  But the length of time it took to arrive wasn't the biggest issue.  The biggest issue was that it came damaged.  Three of the four corners were bent.  One of them is severely bent.  Seems like it was dropped and stepped on.  I can only attribute it to USPS incompetence.  The record itself was fine but I'm just annoyed about the sleeve.  I decided to keep it instead of returning it as it took 3 weeks to arrive.

                     

                    

Nevertheless, the album sounds amazing.  Loved the songs on it.   I don't think Pearl Jam has made a bad album yet.

• Ten
• Vs
• Vitalogy
• No Code
• Yield
• Binaural
• Riot Act
• Pearl Jam
• Backspacer
• Lightning Bolt
• Gigaton

Review: Composite/S-Video to VGA converter.

If you're into retro video gaming, you probably know that these games look better on a CRT screen vs your modern LCD TV screen.  That's because all retro games render their images using 2D sprites.  Modern LCD TV display everything in pixels and displaying 2D sprites in pixels simply makes it look like a mess.  I was looking for a good CRT TV but wasn't able to find one.  I do have an old PC CRT that I have lying around.  So I thought what would it take to display my SNES video to that CRT?  

PC CRT's are different from regular TV CRT's in being that they have much higher resolution and their input is via either VGA or DVI.   The CRT I have is a 17" SONY 200ES.  I remember picking this up at CompUSA for $400 when it was new.  It was a higher end model at that time when the standard was a 15" screen.  It has a top resolution of 1280 x 1024 and a low resolution of 640 x 480.  Even at 640 x 480, its resolution much higher than what the SNES puts out which is about 256×224.  Other consoles like the Dreamcast might be easier as it has native VGA adapter.  That's obstacle number one.  The second obstacle is how to plug it into the CRT's VGA port to a Composite/S-Video connector that my SNES had.  The solution I found is this little Video to VGA converter box I purchased on EBay for $15. 

Composite video to VGA adapter

Without knowing how the box internally works, I'm assuming it converts or upscales Composite/S-Video signal to VGA.  The end result is that it works great for me. The VGA port is a 15pin D-Sub connector with a Red, Green and Blue signal coming out of its individual pins.  Whether this little device separates the Composite/S-Video signal to its individual colors to VGA, I'm not sure.  But probably not.  That's all thats need to make it display on the CRT.  Another down side to using this method of connecting a PC CRT monitor over a regular TV CRT is that most if not all of them don't have built in speakers.  You will need an individual external speakers if you want sound.  Overall, I'm happy with the result and I didn't have to of scour for an old TV CRT from a yard sale or flea market.

Sony 200ES display SNES video