Hackaday Links

Just a quick update before I head to the airport. I would have told you Amarillo folks I was coming if I had been spending more than 24 hours here.

A few have asked about the Philly meetup. I don’t live in Philly, Vince does, I live in Lincoln, NE. So, feel free to hold meetings and I will post announcements, but i’m not going to be in PA. As always you can check out #hackaday on EFnet.

Do you know the story of the late John Britten? He built a competitive GP bike from the ground up. Now you can buy one for $249K. It’s unfortunate that Britten passed nearly 10 years ago, but at least the MotoCzysz C1 is trying to recapture the spirit.

[Luke Kanies] tipped me that Paul Frank was on the cover of Inc. magazine wearing a Hack-A-Day Beanie. Uh, we don’t make beanies. I checked out the magazine and it is really difficult to make out. A little googling turned up Paul Frank’s Skurvy product line.

[under_R_run] abuses a kiosk in Baltimore
How not to build a laptop [benhou]
Cyborg name generator – because you have to put google ads next to something

I was trying to use pickupline to bypass the wireless captive portal at Denver International yesterday, but was having problems. I think they hard coded eth1 into the spoofer. Anybody else had a chance to play with this? Time for round two.

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Lyra MP3 Player Drive Upgrade

lyra upgrade

This is a hack by the most basic of definitions. Seriously, the tool list is only two items long and the second item is “butterknife”! No real technical problems here; you just need to format your new 80gb harddrive as vfat and then mirror the RCA files from the original 40gb drive. It’s nice to see someone else try this before you go knifing around.

On the topic of MP3 players: have there been any other network attached players besides the Rio Karma?

[thanks ikka]

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Hackaday Links

As you read this I’m probably riding a turboprop to Amarillo, but never fear links are here.

I’m kind of surprised by yesterday’s poll; Emacs is getting thoroughly trounced. I’m a fan of vi, but that’s mainly because I can type and never got into the whole “ctrl+meta+wang” thing. Emacs does have the capabilities of doing almost everything that isn’t text editing.

Heretic on the DS – second screen shows the map [Maxconsole]
[ACSLATER] wanted to know what to do with an old television: wave vessel .
Reading about melting an iMac reminded [Mike] of melting a NeXTCube.
John Gruber on Apple’s DRM [via Waxy]- You nearly had me Apple; now, not so much

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Build Your Own Telescope

dobsonian telescope
So, did you hear about those Girl Scouts kicking ass with their home built telescope? [via] Here I thought they were only about overpriced cookies. The telescope  is a “Dobsonian”; a design over 50 years old and named for creator John Dobson. People have been building these long before commercial telescopes were available. Here is a link to a pdf describing how-to build one of these monsters.

[thanks marc melcher]

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Pneumatic Drumming Robot

robot drummer

Here’s the latest entry in “future robot overlord watch”. Each stick is driven by a pneumatic cylinder. The control is generated using a midi file as the source. The system is completely modular. You assign instruments to individual channels based on what you have so it should be able to play any kit. My favorite quote from the FAQ: Q: What do you use to generate the midi files? A: Google.

[thanks synth-c]

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Use Cartridges With Atari Flashback 2

atari flashback

The Atari Flashback is a game system that includes 40 original Atari 2600 games for about $30. The games are placed on a rom chip just like the original except it is soldered inside the case instead of on a cartridge. You can bypass the rom chip with a couple toggle switches and add an external cartridge adapter to play any of the original 2600 games. All of the pinouts are marked on board and the site has links to get the proper connector. Time to start hitting up ebay for the big game lots.

[thanks hk-47]

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