Siggraph Best-Of 2005

September 2, 2005 by 12 Comments

bwhaptic

Siggraph is a hot bed for tech prototype research and crazy art each year. [Dan Kaminsky] attended the conference last month and graced us with tons of pictures and descriptions of his favorite projects and pieces. Thanks Dan! Many of the exhibitors at Siggraph are hardware hackers and handheld gadget modders. Where possible we’ve linked to project pages and videos. We’ve gone ahead and added a few more of our personal faves as well to round out this round-up. Get your groove on at this visualization and interaction party.

by Dan Kaminsky

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AppleCrate: Apple II Based Cluster

September 2, 2005 by 14 Comments

cluster

The author purchased a box of 8 Apple //e main boards at auction for a dollar each. He then assembled this simple crate for them to live in. He wanted to use the burn-in connectors to supply power but they weren’t consistent. Power is delivered to the buses through a threaded rod along the bottom. Each board is net-booted by a more equipped Apple //e. It is a unique project, but I can’t think of what you would do with it.

[thanks exparrot]

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Vacuum Forming

September 1, 2005 by 12 Comments

vacuum forming

Vacuum forming involves heating up a sheet of plastic and stretching it over a mold known as a “buck”. A vacuum is applied to pull the plastic up to the mold surface. The major parts are a table top grill and a shop vac. The author uses this set up to create studio props, but it can be used for a lot of other things. The acrylic bodies on RC cars are manufactured using this process. So, if you want to start generating your own custom bodies, this is where to start.

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TUAW Trys Out OSX86

September 1, 2005 by 27 Comments

Our friends over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog decided reinforce their name by trying out the OSX86. After some bumbling they got it installed (I don’t think they’re going to be Linux converts anytime soon). Conclusion? They were thoroughly impressed that it worked and how incredibly slow it was, deciding that it needed some more tweaking. I’m just happy someone else did this before I had to bite the bullet and sacrifice my only running laptop in the name of hacking.

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HOW-TO: SSH HTTP Proxy Setup

August 31, 2005 by 66 Comments

putty config

We’ve been linking to a couple proxy options in the links posts recently and [tom] thought it would be a good idea to write up how to use Privoxy. In [tom]’s case he wanted to route all of his internet surfing at work through an encrypted tunnel to his home machine. The guide is Windows based, but it won’t be to hard to translate to your OS of choice. It starts by setting up an OpenSSH server and new user on the home machine. Then Privoxy is installed. Next PuTTY is used to establish the secure tunnel from the work machine. The last step is to configure the browser to use the proxy. You can use this for IM too. You may not need this at work or school, but it should offer you some decent protection if you’re out using open access points.

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BlogDay 2005

August 31, 2005 by 6 Comments

I guess today is BlogDay. No, I wasn’t holding my breath for this either. It seems like a good idea though: introducing your readers to other blogs you read, that aren’t necessarily related to yours. So here are five of my favorites that really have nothing to do with hacking.

The Kneeslider is a great motorcycle blog. Paul does a really good job covering the latest news and interesting topics like alternative engine designs.

Preshrunk is a t-shirt blog. This is the place I go to find non-black t-shirts to wear to hacker conventions. They’re also good about pointing out Threadless sales.

Drawn! is dedicated to illustration, art, cartooning and drawing. I read a ton of webcomics so this blog was pretty much a given in my eyes.

The Drunken Lagomorph is the only personal blog I read where I don’t know the author personally. It is written by a former EMT turned RN and is consistently hilarious

Pneumatic Antenna Launcher

August 30, 2005 by 10 Comments

antenna launcher

I’ve always wondered if HAM radio would be an interesting hobby. Well if I got to design as many antenna launching devices as these guys it would be worth it. The pneumatic gun fires a tennis ball that trails a fishing line. Once the line is in the tree it can be used hoist the actual antenna. The site has plans for a large number of devices with different triggering mechanisms and sizes. Some are even small enough to fit in a ten gallon tub.

[thanks wasted_druid]

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