Reubens Tube: Fire Sound Visualization


[vbrtrmn] sent in the most fun I’ve seen with fire lately. It’s really just a geeky physics demonstration, but it’s awesome. That’s a foil lined pvc pipe with holes every half inch. Propane is feeding from one side and there’s a 2″ speaker on the opposite end. You can visit the link for the video, or just see it after the break.

Remember: PVC won’t handle that sort of heat for long, and it’ll emit some nasty fumes. In fact, don’t try to make your own unless you can draw the propane molecule without using google.

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Sunday Night Game Hacks

We got news of a pair of interesting gaming hacks today. [XanTium] let us know the latest on XBox 360 kernel hacking. It’s a little catch-22, but if you have the cpu id on your 360, you can downgrade your kernel even if it’s been updated. (But, you need to have the old kernel already if you want to retrieve it.)

The boys over at engadget just put this up a little while ago. Thanks to [Noobz] and [Archaemic], it’s now possible to run homebrew on any firmware version of your PSP – but you’ll need a copy of the game Lumines.

Automatic Cable Modem Power Cycling


If you’ve got a cable modem, you know the drill when it goes offline. Unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in, reset your dhcp request. I’m pretty sure that [brian] mentioned this in a comment a while back, but now he’s written it up. He’s using a cron job on his linux box to check the internet connection, and if the test fails, power cycle the hardware with some X10 hardware and a little scripting. (Just don’t tell your friends or they’ll be outside trying to guess the code.)

DIY Beatbox

[formathirn] sent in his latest project, his Beatbox 2.0. He was kind enough to write up an instructable (Don’t whine about it, they’re giving away a friggin $6k laser etching machine.)
It features a 600 watt amp, four internal mid/fullrange speakers and it’ll run external subs, if you don’t mind carting them around. He used some p3 heat sinks to reduce the space needed by the amp and fit everything into an old ‘Grundig Bandmaschine’ case. For extra bling, he put used fiber optics in the side.

DIY Camcorder


[Jonas] sent in a surprisingly retro concept given the number of small cheap funky video recorders on the market. He built his own. At the heart is a sony Digital8 recorder, combined with a security camera and a SLR lens. It’s finished out with an LCD viewfinder and a handful of AA batteries to power the security camera.