We live in a world where everything must be portable, ranging from mobile applications to making an application able to run on Linux, Windows and OS X.  Making a C# application to be completely portable across all windows computers is a problem that Microsoft knows about and willingly admits they will not fix. [Mike] from Geek Republic has taken it upon himself to show us how to hack up some code to make your programs portable.  This code is a good push forward for people loving the portability of modern applications. He will admit that bugs may exist so be on the lookout and he would probably appreciate the feedback.  Looking forward to a fully working provider so that .NET applications can be carried wherever people go!

Just a day after Halloween and a replacement for Michael Jackson has been found, in the form of a very talented musical house. Not only does this house come close to a Michael Jackson dance routine but can mimic the voice quite well.  The house has also been known to do the Monster Mash as well as Sandstorm (Techno) by Darude. YouTube’s KJ92508 has uploaded his Halloween conquests for all to enjoy.  As of yet, he has not made a how to or even done a walk through video in broad daylight but here is to hoping he will due to numerous requests for a sneak peak.  He has mentioned that he used “4 singing pumpkin faces, tombstones, hand carved and blow mold pumpkins, strobes, floods and thousands of lights.” I look forward to what is in store for next years decor.  Just another example of what technology in everyday life and a little elbow grease can do.  Be sure to check out the video of “Thriller” as done by this house after the break.

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Ever find yourself in the middle of a Game Boy game and your hand cramps up?  Save that sore wrist for something else because now you can hack the Game Boy Advance to add Rapid Fire for the B button.  [William] has developed a way to do this by creating a simple circuit that generates a square wave on the B button when it is pressed.  To do this hack all that was needed was a short shopping list of:

• A Couple NAND Gate ICs
• 2n2222 NPN Transistor
• 0.1uF ceramic capacitor
• A Switch
• 1M ohm resistor
• Some Thin Wire

After that you’re off to the races as [William] documents how he goes about transforming the Game Boy Advance and includes a ton of great pictures and a schematic.  This operation ends with [William] placing the switch for Rapid Fire excellence next to the Right Bumper where it is inconspicuous and yet easy enough to access.

Via [HackedGadgets]

In this tutorial we are going to get up close with the Visual Studio 2010 environment. We will learn how to make a console application as well as a form to display our hello world applications.  This will give us an opportunity to view 2 types of solutions of the many available in Visual Studio.  We will start making the console application first then progress to the forms application.

First we must  understand the development environment we are going to use.  On the far left side is the toolbox panel.  This panel gives us access to a lot of controls  that can be used by the Windows Forms.  Next is the Solution Explorer that will allow us to navigate the projects and files we are going to create in this Solution.  The Properties panel is directly under my Solution Explorer and will allow us to change properties of controls and of the form we will create later on.  If any of these are not being displayed they can be retrieved from the View menu at the top under Other Windows.  For more information on the Visual Studio IDE visit MSDN and search for the specific questions you are having.

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It has been recently discovered that all of the snap decisions that your brain makes on which hand to use to do simple tasks, such as picking up an object from a table, can now be automatically decided for you.  This is done using magnetic stimulation that is applied using transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS.  This TMS will affect the brains ability to process motor movements and reduces the chances that the right hand will be chosen over the left.  This major discovery was found by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) who hopes to use this later on for rehabilitating stroke victims, making them using the limbs that may suffer from the event.  Here is to hoping that an in home product will be released in the future so children can become ambidextrous in everything they do.   It seems like that is a way off but it does seem more natural than most hacks to your body.

Via [iO9]

As technology advances forward so does the numerous ways to beg for money. [Chris Eckert] has developed a robot to do the deed for him.  With an odd  eye mounted on the top of the robot to invoke pity presumably and a tin can out front to collect change from people it may encounter this is quite the hobo robot.  On his build log, you’ll find tons of great pictures of the entire process from start to finish.  With robots sent to beg people for money, it is only a matter of time until the first squeegee robot is cleaning your car at a red light.  Make sure to check out the video after the break.

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For everyone using  a later version of Windows like Vista or Windows 7 they will probably never get to enjoy the awesomeness that was Wing Commander…until now. [Jari Komppa] has managed to use DirectDraw to his advantage and hack out a solution to this disappointing problem.  He used DirectX to do this and has even managed to get OpenGL to load from a DLL after a few problems with Windows XP and Windows 7.  This is truly a step forward in retro gaming.  No more should we have to load a virtual machine to play Starcraft.  Hopefully getting this ported to even older games such as Sim Farm or Commander Keen are on the way!