Continuing on our streak of Friday coverage of cool hackerly events, we would like to say a few words on Dorkbot and Artbots.  Dorkbot started as a New York City monthly meeting for robot and homebrew interactive device aficionados.  It has now spread to many cities, perhaps even one near you.  Guests are invited to speak and afterwards, the hardware hackers mix and mingle to the geekery beat.  The collection of projects presented in the past are stored on their site with linkage for you to peruse.  We at Hack A Day are a bit sad that neither Paris nor Nebraska hosts a monthly Dorkbot.  That said, you are invited to start a new Dorkbot chapter near you if you so desire.  The next New York City Dorkbot meeting is on Wednesday, October 5th at 7 pm.  Check the listings and/or mailing lists for the city nearest you.

As if Dorkbot’s artsy tech scene wasn’t cool enough, once a year Douglas Repetto also organizes Artbots: The Robot Talent Show.  We had a chance to attend Artbots 2003 at the Eyebeam Gallery in NYC.  Particularly marking that year was Stijn Slabbinck’s scratchbot which has been covered rather extensively elsewhere. LEMUR – the league of electronic musical urban robots — was also in attendance in 2003.  This year’s Artbots was held in Dublin, Ireland and included workshops: a MIDI scrapyard challenge and a 60 minute bot building course.

Some of our favorite artist installations from this year’s Artbots include:

Continue reading “Event Coverage: Dorkbot Meetings And Artbots 2005” →

Well, it doesn’t look like the PSU meeting happened. Moving on:

Yesterday I was moaning about the price of Cobalt Flux‘s dance mats. [SilentCircuit] says the cheaper mats from LikSang work great. There’s always the really cheap option.

I’ve been avoiding a the Flying Spaghetti Monster links, but I couldn’t help chuckling while playing the new FSM flash game. [via] To bad I’m already a minister for a different religion.

Did anyone pick up an iPod nano yet? Have you started hacking? Here is the iPod nano disassembled.

Every so often someone suggests we adopt the hacker emblem from Conway’s Game of Life. I guess I was always adverse to it since a glider in a 3×3 grid would die in the next timestep.

[lain]’s buddy built a drill powered bike. Includes “automatic” transmission.

External hard drive case from an old tape player. [thanks Gene kaufman]

Another OSx86 install. It discusses compatible hardware you should purchase if you’re building a box from the ground up. There is no way to tell if you’ll need the TPM chip with future OSx86 functionality though. [via]

The facebook list keeps growing.

Thanks for all the links.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links” →

The other day I mentioned that Jason Striegel is a robot. Well, the situation was given a little bit of clarity when a Slashdot commenter said Googling for “sex bots” turns up Jason’s Hack-A-Day article. At one point someone told Jason he was “worse than Eliza”. Funny you should mention that since the second google link is a sex bot built on Eliza and then turned loose on the IRC. Hilarity ensues.

[Hermann] built a laptop ventilador out of cardboard.

[mike forbes] provided some links for hacking the Netgear DG834G here and here.

You can transcode movies and use your CVS camcorder as a cheap video player. [enigma-]

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on your MAME cabinet. [tIM cATCHPOLE]

[Haon] started working on our Wikipedia stub.

[PK]’s better way to add a garage remote to your car.

This Linux DDR machine looks cool till you price the mats. [Incudie] I guess that is the price you pay to avoid getting carpal tunnel doing this. [via]

Also [via Dirk], a good roundup of USB key friendly software.

Don’t worry [smouldering dog] your gift arrived safe and sound.

Over 225 Hack-A-Day readers have added me as a friend; at least 4 are girls. The Folding@Home team has grown too.

Keep sending us the quality links.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links” →