We’ve seen these little toys called “sugar cubes” by GirlTech around for a while now. They are a toy block, with an LCD on the front and they respond to movement, button presses and they interact with each other if you stack them up. We’re just as curious as anyone else about their internals, but maybe not quite curious enough to rush out and buy one. Luckily, we don’t have to as [Joby] has done it for us and documented what he found. While it may be lacking in extreme detail, at least our curiosity is somewhat satiated.
We can see that it has a 16×16 LCD, an unknown chip hidden under an epoxy blob as usual. To determine what character is shown, you can bridge one of 4 spots on the PCB, though he has only managed to switch to a little ninja and a question mark. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas on a project for these?
Author: Greg R. Jacobs26 Articles
C# Portable Settings Provider
We live in a world where everything must be portable, ranging from mobile applications to making an application able to run on Linux, Windows and OS X. Making a C# application to be completely portable across all windows computers is a problem that Microsoft knows about and willingly admits they will not fix. [Mike] from Geek Republic has taken it upon himself to show us how to hack up some code to make your programs portable. This code is a good push forward for people loving the portability of modern applications. He will admit that bugs may exist so be on the lookout and he would probably appreciate the feedback. Looking forward to a fully working provider so that .NET applications can be carried wherever people go!
Halloween House Has Been Known To Burst Into Song
Just a day after Halloween and a replacement for Michael Jackson has been found, in the form of a very talented musical house. Not only does this house come close to a Michael Jackson dance routine but can mimic the voice quite well. The house has also been known to do the Monster Mash as well as Sandstorm (Techno) by Darude. YouTube’s KJ92508 has uploaded his Halloween conquests for all to enjoy. As of yet, he has not made a how to or even done a walk through video in broad daylight but here is to hoping he will due to numerous requests for a sneak peak. He has mentioned that he used “4 singing pumpkin faces, tombstones, hand carved and blow mold pumpkins, strobes, floods and thousands of lights.” I look forward to what is in store for next years decor. Just another example of what technology in everyday life and a little elbow grease can do. Be sure to check out the video of “Thriller” as done by this house after the break.
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C Sharp Development 101 – Part 2: Toolbox Controls
In this tutorial we are going to start finding out more about the toolbox we utilized in the previous tutorial. The Controls available in the toolbox are quite extensive and allow users to simplify a variety of everyday tasks such as manually creating and instantiating a textbox on a windows form. At the end of this tutorial you should be comfortable finding Controls in the Visual Studio Toolbox, alter or produce code to link tools together using event handlers and ultimately get a better sense of Visual Studio, it’s layout and how to easily navigate it.
GameBoy Advance Rapid Fire Hack
Ever find yourself in the middle of a Game Boy game and your hand cramps up? Save that sore wrist for something else because now you can hack the Game Boy Advance to add Rapid Fire for the B button. [William] has developed a way to do this by creating a simple circuit that generates a square wave on the B button when it is pressed. To do this hack all that was needed was a short shopping list of:
- A Couple NAND Gate ICs
- 2n2222 NPN Transistor
- 0.1uF ceramic capacitor
- A Switch
- 1M ohm resistor
- Some Thin Wire
After that you’re off to the races as [William] documents how he goes about transforming the Game Boy Advance and includes a ton of great pictures and a schematic. This operation ends with [William] placing the switch for Rapid Fire excellence next to the Right Bumper where it is inconspicuous and yet easy enough to access.
Via [HackedGadgets]
C Sharp Development 101 – Part 1: Hello World
In this tutorial we are going to get up close with the Visual Studio 2010 environment. We will learn how to make a console application as well as a form to display our hello world applications. This will give us an opportunity to view 2 types of solutions of the many available in Visual Studio. We will start making the console application first then progress to the forms application.
First we must understand the development environment we are going to use. On the far left side is the toolbox panel. This panel gives us access to a lot of controls that can be used by the Windows Forms. Next is the Solution Explorer that will allow us to navigate the projects and files we are going to create in this Solution. The Properties panel is directly under my Solution Explorer and will allow us to change properties of controls and of the form we will create later on. If any of these are not being displayed they can be retrieved from the View menu at the top under Other Windows. For more information on the Visual Studio IDE visit MSDN and search for the specific questions you are having.
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Magnets Capable Of Brain Hacks
It has been recently discovered that all of the snap decisions that your brain makes on which hand to use to do simple tasks, such as picking up an object from a table, can now be automatically decided for you. This is done using magnetic stimulation that is applied using transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS. This TMS will affect the brains ability to process motor movements and reduces the chances that the right hand will be chosen over the left. This major discovery was found by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) who hopes to use this later on for rehabilitating stroke victims, making them using the limbs that may suffer from the event. Here is to hoping that an in home product will be released in the future so children can become ambidextrous in everything they do. It seems like that is a way off but it does seem more natural than most hacks to your body.
Via [iO9]
