Hackaday Lazy Afternoons

Lazy Afternoons

good afternoon people! its hot, its muggy, and we need to get ourselves a way to chill down. here in pennsylvania, we’re in for heat all week.

after those wicked thunderstorms we had monday, this thing is looking even better. [maverick]
…but oh noes. the world’s “biggest computer hacker” has been arrested in london. Do I smell the next “FREE MCKINNON”?

[Dash] sent this in. The red screen of death? Whatever, Longhorn sucks.
Fat? Enjoy Food? Love Chess? This is for you….lazy bum. (kidding of course)

Cnet also suprisingly alerted me that there is “ a shortage of mainframe hackers“. Gee, god knows every aspiring hacker loves a huge ass IBM mainframe. HP-UX pride baby.

Now, for your little cute lazy afternoon trick/story/hack/freebie, I’m celebrating one of my math tests I took today by giving your some mathemagician skills. Think of it as hacking math and the mind all at once. So here we go, get some friends on the phone and start rocking these:

Trick 1.
Think of any number, preferably divisible by two.
Add 8
Multiply by 2
Divide by 4
Subtract the half of the initial number
Your answer is now 4.
EDIT: Stupid KEYBOARD. I accidently hit 2 before the 4 key, yeah, you’re supposed to end up with 4 everytime..which you’ve figured out by now obviously.

OHHHH. Damn. Let’s have another shall we?

Trick 2.
Roll two dice.
Multiply one of the numbers by 2
Add 5
Multiply by 5
Add the second number
Subtract 25 and you get the dice numbers.

Now go off and enjoy. I’m getting all my wisdom teeth yanked out tomorrow so I’ll post pics.
Yes, pics

Auxiliary Input For A Car Stereo

auxiliary in

Matt Gilbert was tired of using his noisy cassette adapter with his iPod so he added an auxiliary input to his factory radio. Normally this type of thing isn’t possible with factory stereos, but Matt’s 2001 Corolla has the factory CD player as a separate component from the head unit. He starts a CD playing and then uses a toggle switch to swap the sound coming from the iPod with the sound from the CD unit. This would also work with a factory CD changer, but you can’t just plug straight into the head unit because it needs to receive the “everything’s okay” signals from a CD player in order to turn on the input. You might be able to do this with “premium” factory stereos since they usually have a separate amp. All this hack needs now is a clever dock; I bet you won’t even miss that clock.

[thanks Matt]

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Hackaday Links

Links

with temps in the 90s all week, we can only assume two things:
1. we will be having ungodly lazy afternoons
2. we’ll be grillin’ links alllll week. nice and deliciously.

i’m starting off with something not really hack-related (oooh god forbid) but interesting. it’s a movie based on google becoming a huge-ass conglomorate and wiping out media. very cool and post-apocalyptic kind of feel to it. watch it here and thanks [toto]

now onto some beastly links!

add an auxilary jack to your car [matt]
google maps wallpaper (whatever, doesn’t top my hilary duff wp)
open systems for car computers? oooh, i smell innovation and trouble.

looks like we got ourselves a trend going! more wallpaper from [jamie] and [blackzero]
god, i might have to make this a weekly segment on mondays or something!

uhhh, robot paintball? is it really necessary? [magnus]
dvorak says apple moving to intel will harm linux. nobody gives a shit. stop whining!
…though he could be right.

::sigh::

Hackaday Monday Sipping

monday sipping

well good morning hackaday readers. it’s monday. we’re all back at the office/classroom/jailcell so we know you are dying to get a few good tidbits of information in before you start having to work.

got a cat? maybe, maybe not. either way, this guy has a facial recognition door for his cat. insane eh? very cool though. maybe he should use it for humans.

Also, in other tech and hackery news, there’s still some major concerns over google’s way of storing your information and preferences. I can see a cause for concern but whatever, get over it. Not only that, but it’s true that last week South Korean hackers 0wn3d microsoft’s msn site and planted a password stealer. Very nice work.

Also, a new internet possible? I scoff at the idea, but embrace it at the same time. This time, it’s based on RFID tags.

Slashdot also had a cute little link to howto build your own linux distro. hackaday linux? vince linux? sendustodefconthisyear linux? hmmm, maybe. depends how big of a fan of work you are.

This is really cool in ways. A Judge threw out a dude’s DUI charge because he could not provide the man with information on how the breathalyzer works. The company wasn’t too big on giving their information to the state. A new legal defense? maybe. I think we need more open-source things from everything to code to information. Demand it to be public!

And one guy is selling every issue of WIRED on eBay. Does anyone care? Mmmm.

Also, a monday morning wouldn’t be complete without fun tidbits right? So here’s a picture for you to gander at: Pete Cabrinha riding a 70ft wave. The largest ever. Jesus God I’d be scared.

And may I reccoment a good site to visit? PWOT is packed with humor to the first degree. Tons of content and the forum is nice. I highly reccomend it during work or free time.

Now go brush up on Aristotle and enjoy your monday. Hopefully by now it’s a bit better. fool.

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3D Scanner

spline scan

SplineScan is a cross platform 3D scanning solution. While the target object is rotating on a motion controlled turntable a laser is projected on it. A camera collects images of each step of the rotation. Using simple trig the individual frames’ line data can then be used to construct a 3D model. Andrew Lewis is in the process of porting the model generator to C from VB, but it can already be run in Ubuntu using WINE. If all goes well he will be doing a live demo at LUGRadio Live with detailed source to follow soon after. He expects the final scanner to only cost approx. $90.  Sounds like a lot of  fun. Thanks for sending it in Andrew.

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Hackaday Links

Links

good morning hackaday readers. it’s time for some fresh links to soften the blow of last night’s hurrah of binge drinking. so let’s continue shall we? I’m hittin you up with some goodies today.

yeah it’s old, but it’s still cool right? [musschrot]
…but goddamn. this blows it and anything else away. [usergentoo]

[cyber spider tech] made us a hackaday wallpaper! pretty cool, so check it out!
firefox is coming to second life. as if that game couldn’t get any more insane.
OHHHHH. WHAT NOW. 16% of computer users don’t have virii….because they rock macs. beeeyotch.
if you must, ebooks on the juicebox.

basket case. [kristina]

remember folks, tomorrow there will be…something….happening. ;)

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Lava Lamp Random Number Generator

lava lamp

That title is really misleading; this hack doesn’t require a lava lamp… anymore. I initially went googling for a 1996 project at SGI that generated random numbers by taking photos of a lava lamp. The lava lamp was chosen because of its chaotic nature. I was suprised to find that SGI had patented/trademarked the lavarandtm technology. The system required you to use IRIX, took up a lot of space, and because of patents wasn’t easy to implement. In 2000 the engineers behind the original decided to develop an open source alternative know as LavaRnd (note the capital “L” and “R” ;-). This iteration doesn’t use a lava lamp. Its source of chaos is camera with the lens cap on. The gain on the CMOS sensor is cranked all the way up to create a really noisy image. The image data is then sent through an algorithm to generate the random numbers. If you want to see the original project you’re going to have to ask the Wayback Machine.

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