Notacon Call For Papers

November 24, 2008 by Eliot 4 Comments

notaconbadge

Notacon has just announced their first round of talk selections. The Cleveland, OH area hacker conference will be celebrating its sixth year April 16th-19th. When we attended this year we saw talks that ranged from circuit bending to the infamous TSA bagcam. Self-taught silicon designer [Jeri Ellsworth] presented on FPGA demoing. [Trixter] covered his demo archiving process. You can find a video archive of this year’s talks here.

We’re really looking forward to the conference. [SigFLUP] is already on the schedule to cover Sega Genesis development. Get your talk in soon though; they’re already handing out space to the knitters.

Hey, Look There, A Dancing Robot.

November 24, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 2 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH2n-7b0UIs]

People often accuse the computer of cheating when it is the opponent. This could be partially attributed to the fact that you don’t have a physical representation to identify with, the computer seems like an all knowing adversary that divines your moves from the aether. The chief cook actually does try to cheat though. They’ve trained it to play pong, all the while trying to distract you. Upon winning, it lashes out the insults pretty well too. We’ve seen the chief cook before. Last time, he was learning to cook. What will his next adventure be?

[thanks Eric]

Bicycling In The Fall

November 24, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

bicycle

Every year, as it gets cold, many of us put our faithful two wheeled companion away for the winter. Despite that, there have been a veritable smorgasbord of bicycle related projects posted to instructables this last week. In honor of our human powered transportation, lets take a peak at a few projects.

Bicycle safety is always paramount. They can be fairly difficult to see compared to a car. There are many ways to make them easier to spot, such as wrapping them in reflective material, or adding blinking tail lights. Even if people do see us, they often have no idea where we are planning on going. To remedy this, we can always add turn signals. It can also be hard to see where you are going at times. Adding a head light, or helmet light can really help. If you’re not a big fan of LEDs and want a little retro flair, you can always add an oil lamp.

For those who live in warmer climates, or just can’t give up their bicycles, you may wish to add some festive decorations. Covering your bike in Christmas lights doesn’t look too difficult, and a CFL lit wheel is a cheap way of adding some cool effects.

A Basic Stamp Supercomputer

November 24, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 149 Comments

basic_super

Hobby super computer building isn’t something you hear about every day. This project is even more peculiar due to the fact that it is a supercomputer built with BASIC Stamps. [humanoido] posted some great pictures and detailed info about his project. We’re not completely sure what definition of supercomputer he’s using, but he states that it beats out the others in 10 categories. Those categories are: smaller, lighter, portable, field operable, runs on batteries, has greatest number of input/output, has greatest number of sensors/variety, lowest power consumption, lowest unit cost, and easiest to program. Those sound a little more like features than supercomputing categories to us, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is one cool jumble of wires.

You may be wondering what it does. Well, so are we. From what he says, it talks in Chinese and English and has a plethora of other input and output devices. It also displays status of its internal communications. Catch a video after the break.

Continue reading “A Basic Stamp Supercomputer” →

TISCH, Multitouch Framework

November 23, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

[floe] wrote in to tell us about his multitouch based thesis work. While many projects have focused on the hardware side of multitouch, TISCH is designed to promote the software side. TISCH is a multiplatform library that features hardware abstraction and gesture recognition. This takes a lot of weight off of widget developers since they can specify known library gestures instead of writing the exact motions from scratch. Using TISCH also means a standard set of gestures across multiple widgets, so the learning curve will be much easier when a user tries out a new app. If you’re researching multitouch, check out this project and help improve the codebase.

BlackBerry Storm Click Screen Teardown

November 23, 2008 by Eliot 10 Comments

clickscreen

RIM has decided to venture into the touchscreen phone market with the new BlackBerry Storm. Unlike other companies’ offerings, the Storm has a touchscreen that clicks when you press it. phoneWreck disassembled the Storm to see what magic was involved in the device. There’s not much too it, it’s just a big button. pW notes that the entire phone board is very compact mostly due to RIM using Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 chip. Items like bluetooth, GPS, and USB are all included in the processor instead of appearing on the board as discrete components.

phoneWreck recently launched and promises many future teardowns. They’ll be adding to their archive which already includes the Motorola Krave and the venerable Nokia N95. We’ll definitely be watching for their future releases.

[via Engadget]

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope First Alpha Released

November 23, 2008 by Eliot 9 Comments

ubuntu

The target release date may be over five months out, but the Ubuntu team is already pushing the first alphas of Jaunty Jackalope out the door. The new release is not for the weak and is intended solely for people who want to vet bugs and contribute to the project. The release is designed to bring Ubuntu back in line with Debian. One of the areas they’re working on is the ARM port (we saw the Debian version on the G1).

[photo: Kordite]

[via Download Squad]