I’ve got my new box up and running. I assembled it on Monday afternoon and started looking into OSx86 since I wanted to triple boot the box with XP MCE and Linux. After walking into several dead ends I decided to quit for the day. Tuesday came and I decided instead of messing with OSx86 and getting a MCE bootleg I would take the easy route: install Gentoo. First, I grabbed a tarball from the Jackass! Project which offers optimized toolkits (I’ve built them by hand before). I had laid out my partition scheme the night before, so most of the install preparation was done. I made sure to leave two 20GB primary partitions for OSx86 and XP if I decide to install them in the future. The only change I made from the Jackass default was using the “-march=nocona” compiler flag for Pentium 4 EM64T. After the base install, I installed X.org, fluxbox, and firefox. Then I immediately began folding!
Team Hack-A-Day continues to improve: Lazy_Folder started on Dec. 1st and has already moved into the top 10 for daily production. The forum is growing as well: yesterday we saw a woman.
Lumenlab has released their LCD projector
plans. I only mention this because the site comes up every time we mention the words lcd and projector
around here. I haven’t had a look yet, but the
instructions are apparently chock full of “more details in our forums”, which you have to pay for.
Linksys has started selling the WRT54GL as their
Linux model since they’ve switched to vxware on their main product line. It’s nice knowing you won’t have to guess what
is inside the box when purchasing a new router. It’s good timing too, since OpenWRT
has a new, sexy GUI. Check out
the developer’s screencast.
[bugloaf] remembered my affinity for living in shipping containers and sent along Adam Kalkin’s Push Button House:
first seen on Future Feeder
and then, with more pictures, on Inhabitat.
Usually I pass on stories with sensational headlines like “Fed wiretaps defeated by intermittent beeping”. Luckily,
Dan has the full details of how this attack works.
Cracker Jack has been finding some hardware
design weirdness in the new 360. Things like EEPROM not being found on the premium even though it appears on the
core. I’m guessing this was a running change in production, but why?
Anina is a fashion model/Unix hacker trying to
push fashion towards high tech. She was
interviewed for NerdTV #9.
QuickSynergy is a GUI for easily configuring Synergy2, a seamless
keyboard mouse switch. I never thought the original was that hard to set up, but if this gets more people to use
Synergy, more power to them. [via TUAW]
With a little soldering you can use any headset you want with the
Xbox 360. Mine has been crackling since day one. [via
Xbox360fanboy]
Extremetech has a guide
on case painting.
The Red Ferret Journal has details on the Pedgen I pedal powered
generator.
Try ruby! (in your browser) was a little too popular when I first tried it.
Also, free programming video tutorials [via
Lifehacker]
Upgrade your Dell 700m to DVDRW for just $80.
The drives look different, but that’s because Dell has added some extra cladding.
[Alex]
DIY USB Lassen SQ GPS receiver [kerry s]
Did you happen to catch our buddy [Matt Gilbert]’s
scroll bar scarf as it made the rounds earlier in the
week?
The guys from DVguru admitted that their
external SATA RAID
array how-to isn’t a hack, but they sent it in anyway knowing that we wouldn’t be able to contain our hardware
lust.
I saw links to Linux Journal’s terabyte backup server in a
couple different places. The “terabyte” in the title is just fluff. The article is really only useful to see how you
can use rsync or samba to backup your network.
MenuetOS is an OS written entirely in 64bit assembly. [Steve]
Russian hard drive clock No, it isn’t
that incredibly cool one. Turning a hard
drive into a clock seems to be very common. [Fred
dasp]
[Robert Oschler] has a demo video of using
voice commands with a Robopet robot dog.
Adding a 3.5mm audio
jack to a Treo 650 [anonimo]
I don’t think Google has admitted it yet, but others have determined that
Google’s antivirus is being provided by Sophos.
If you are planning on getting some heavy rack gear off of eBay you should
search for items near your zip code and do local pickup.
[andrew]
raphnet built a controller for a single Nixie
tube. Look around; they’ve got some
old console hacks too. [h-tech]
[adrenalin] commented on racking stuff in IKEA
furniture. I have looked into this before: the
OPPLI TV bench will fit 17″ wide audio components, but you’ll have to use the
OPPLI single unit if you want to mount 19″ rails.
I have a “WTF” label in GMail that I use specifically for tips like this:
Name: BunnyRanch Dennis
Email: dennis@bunnyranch.com
URL:
Subject: Unlock Blackberry 8700C
HACK Site: http://www.hackaday.com/
Help the stars of HBO’s Cathouse. I was given a cingular 8700C at the
american Music awards and want to use it on my T Mobile ACC.
How do I unlock it?
Help!!!!!
I’m sorry. We don’t do that kind of work here.
I live for these Hack a Day Extras thanks Elliot
Your using 64 bit gentoo, right? How is that working out so far? I switched over just after I built a 64 bit box but I ended up going back to windows *shudder* because of poor driver support, especially for bluetooth and tv cards, and in general a lot of applications just wern’t stable or they were masked. I’m looking at switching back now but I’m unsure at whether to go for the x86 or 64 version.
Well, it is a little early to tell right now, but I haven’t seen many problems yet. I did have openoffice emerge fail, so I pulled out java and am currently trying it again. I haven’t gotten a chance to chase down problems yet though and make sure things like sound and 3d accel are working. I’ll get my tv card next week so we will see how that goes. I used to use ~x86 everything, but this time I’m trying to stick with as much x86 as possible.
i’ve been running 64bit gentoo for a while now, 5 months i think, and so far it’s great. i’ve wanted to sack windows and start running linux for quite a while, but finally when my windows xp install crapped itself around summer, for no apparent reason, i decided to make the switch. although it isn’t easy, i’m very happy, and i don’t think i’ll ever run windows again (i hope i won’t be forced to).
the hardest part about switching is finding out what software you need for what tasks. i’ve installed numerous packages just to delete them after 10 mins just because i didn’t know what programs to use.
fortunately gentoo has quite a lot of packages, so i’ve pretty much found everything i need, with the exception of a good electronic circuit drawing program. i’ve tried oregano (in gentoo is sci-electronis/oregano) which even has circuit simulation, but i can’t seem to work it. now i’m using eagle, there is an ebuild in bugzilla somewhere.
using gentoo ~amd64, you encounter a few problems because of the architecture compared to ~x86. macromedia flash isn’t available on amd64, win32codecs doesn’t work on 64-bit, i haven’t been able to install sun java and so on.
to get win32codecs to work in mplayer, you can emerge mplayer-bin which is a 32-bit binary, and the same goes for firefox/firefox-bin.
as for sound and 3d accel, everything is just dandy on my system. i’ve compiled my kernel with the soundcard drivers, and i’m using the latest (masked) nvidia-kernel package.
i would definately go with amd64 — i’m perfectly happy with it :)
good luck though (you might still need it)!
was that person *really* from the bunny ranch?
hey, what happend to HAD’s lazy afternoons? Jeez, I miss those.
oh, and why when I confirm the comment, is the email FROM “Weblogs Inc. Customer Service”? I thought we went independant? Just curious.
Are you sure that BunnyRanch Dennis is not really from the Bunny Ranch? I think you should remove his email address in case it isn’t published elsewhere. (Although it would be pretty easy to guess it.)
I checked the HBO Cathouse website and there is a guy named Dennis. It’s plausible that he was invited to the awards show and given a phone as schwag.
holy links Batman
why is the photo at the top of this entry in color?
hack-a-day extra have color images
HADE IS THE BEST