Disguise Your Acura NSX As A Ferrari F50

January 26, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 61 Comments

We know what you’re thinking. “I have this Acura NSX, but my friends just won’t think I’m cool unless I have a Ferrari F50.” You know what? You’re right. To save yourself from that kind of ridicule, you can simply carry out a ridiculous body mod to make your poor NSX live up to your friends expectations. It only took massive amounts of fiberglass, foam, and bondo to get this NSX looking the way the guy wanted it. We have to wonder if there was any performance hit with the additional weight, then again, he may have removed enough metal panels to compensate. While we may joke about it, we really do have some respect for the amount of work he put into this thing. The finished job is simply amazing, in terms of reproduction of the original. Kudos crazy car modder guy.

Make Presents: The Multimeter

January 26, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

This video falls under the category of things we want to send people when they ask “how do I get started with electronics”, and we get asked that a lot. For those of you who have been working with electronics ~~for years~~ at all, you can skip this entire video. That is, unless you really want to watch an instructional video on multimeters. In the video, which we’ve included after the break, they talk about the differences between different meters, the common uses and how to actually use the meter to get the results you need. Stuffed full of useful information, this video will get those of you who are still reading up to snuff pretty quickly. Now go use your multimeter to do some hacking!

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Learn To Code At Lifehacker

January 26, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[Adam] over at lifehacker is putting together a series on the principles of programming called “Learn to code”. They are using Javascript as a basis to teach the fundamentals that would allow you to get stuff done in any similar language, like actionscript. After you’ve got these basics down, even moving to an object oriented language shouldn’t be too difficult. We absolutely love educational resources and hope they continue this series pretty far. They’ve already released part one and part two. We have supplied the video from each after the break, but there’s more info at the links.

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ROS Gains Full Body Telemetry

January 26, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 28 Comments

[Taylor Veldrop] has been playing with an NAO robot and ROS, mixed with a Kinect to get some pretty amazing results. The last time we saw any work done with ROS and the Kinect, it was allowing some basic telemetry using the PR2. [Tyler] has taken this a step further allowing for full body control of the NAO robot. Basic mimicking mixed with a little bit of autonomy allow the NAO to follow his steps around a room and even slice a bananna, or hammer nails. We think this is pretty impressive, especially if he were to mix it together with a motion tracking stereoscopic display. Follow along after the break to see it pull off some of these cool feats.

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Abusing HTTP Status Codes

January 25, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

Concerns over privacy online are an ever growing theme. Every day we see people complaining about the policies of facebook and the like. [Mike Cardwell] points out another method of gleaning a bit of personal data from you that you may not have seen yet. By embedding a hidden image or using some really simple javascript, he can tell if you are currently logged into Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, or Digg. While this could possibly be used for more nefarious things, he points out that you could also use it for customizing your website to better suit the experience of the browser. For example, if the “reader” is already logged into Gmail, you could have any email links automatically open a gmail instance instead of the local mail client.

VR! Now With More Kinect, Wiimote, And Vuzix

January 25, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 24 Comments

Those of us that remember when you could actually go to a mall and play on a VR game machine, tend to remember it fondly. What happened? The computing horsepower has grown so much, our graphics now days are simply stunning, yet there’s been no major VR revival. Yeah, those helmets were huge and gave you a headache, but it was worth it. With the 3d positioning abilities of the latest game crazes, the Wiimote and the Kinect, [Nao_u] is finally taking this where we all knew it should have gone(google translated). Well, maybe we would have had less creepy anime faces flying around squirting ink, but the basics are there. He has created a VR system utilizing the Wiimote for his hand position, a Vuzix display for head positioning, and the kinect for body tracking. Even with the creepy flying heads I want to play it, especially after seeing him physically ducking behind boxes in the video after the break. Long live VR!

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Refurbishing A Refrigerator For Fermenting

January 25, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

[Mikey Sklar] wrote in to show us how he refurbished a neighbors useless refrigerator as a fermentation chamber. [Mikey] is a fan of making breads, kemchi, yogurt, and tempeh. To make these, it helps to have a completely controlled temperature for them to ferment in. [Mikey] developed a temp controller for this in the past, but had to either build a control box or use a giant chest freezer. This is not optimal for limited space, such as a kitchen. He got lucky when a neighbor tossed a wine cooler into the trash. These little coolers are perfectly sized for a kitchen and even have a glass front so you can keep an eye on what is going on inside without having to open it and effect your temps. [Mikey] ripped it open, replaced the peltier cooler with a large heat lamp and his temp controller. Since he was making yogurt with this one, he needed only to heat it. The final product turned out pretty effective.