For those of you who haven’t been paying attention in class, here is the best of what has hit our blog this past week:

In the #1 spot is a post about a project where some pretty ambitious hackers found a way to run Linux on a digital picture frame. Bravo!

Next up is a post where [Chris] needs some help getting his 1/10th scale, cycle accurate Cray I ‘supercomputer’ to boot.

In third place is a post about a very elaborate 737 cockpit simulator that was built over the past couple of years. This is a pretty intense build with lots of details about how it was done.

Following that is a post about a 3D-printed device that is similar to a phenakistoscope but instead of using slits to allow you to see the models in succession, it blinks some LEDs at the appropriate times.

Finally rounding things out in fifth place is a post about Makerbot Industries’ most recent release, which will let you print out your own phenakistoscope. This 3D printer is bigger than their makerbot and optionally sports two extruders instead of one so that you can do dual colors or possibly dual materials.

2011 was an interesting year here at Hackaday. We have about 24% more viewers now than we did last year. We started producing our own video content and we have shown some pretty interesting projects in our daily posts. In this post, we are gathering together the best of the best.

Our #1 post for the year with 175,000 views is about a 1 megawatt laser pulse pistol. Not only does this build work but it also looks cool. It’s definitely one to take a look at.

Coming in with 157,000 views is a post about how to insert your logo into a QR code. This one was done by our own [Brian Benchoff] and was a runaway success from the first week that we posted it.

In third place with 151,000 views is a post that could help you if you are trying to pick a development board to learn a new processor with. This post breaks down the various development boards available at the time of its writing into three different categories organized by price.

In fourth place with 114,000 views is one about an unique lock composed of color changing buttons. Your pass code is a series of colors instead of digits in an ordinary code lock. This build fits behind a standard wall plate so that it can be mounted cleanly using off-the-shelf hardware from the hardware store.

Wrapping things up at fifth place is a post describing how you can download books from Google using an utility called Google Book Downloader. We have no idea of the legality of this one. The original link is down but it seems that it is still available elsewhere on the internet.

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our top contender is a post about a giant snake robot that is modeled after a snake that we know of through fossil records that was up to 50 feet long. This one is pretty interesting.

Next in line is a post about a special setup where things are being projected onto a nearly invisible mist of water that literally makes the images float in midair.

After that we have a post about another creation by [Photonicinduction]. Surprisingly, he isn’t destroying something with this one and it isn’t dangerous. Nevertheless it is still interesting. Check out his home power backup system that also (there is some debate going on with this claim) reduces his electricity bills.

In fourth place we have a post about how to make your own aerogel. For those of you who haven’t seen this stuff in person, it is the least dense solid that exists. You can literally see through it.

Finally, we conclude with one about an animatronic Horus Guard mask. If you are a fan of Stargate, this is one to check out.