Unix Motorcycle

March 17, 2005 by 14 Comments

unix motorcylce

some of you are probably rubbing your eyes, but you read it correctly. unix on a motorcycle.

a fellow by the name of ben installed a freebsd powered pc into his kawasaki z1000.  a webcam on his helmet connects to a video capture board in the pc, which he uses to record movies of trips to the burrito store.  his future plans are to have the freebsd box control his ipod, track gps data, and potentially interconnect with the bike’s ecu.

a kick ass case mod, a unix media center, and a cool extension of the car pc theme.  if i could last more than 10 seconds on a motorcycle in the best video game ever without ejecting over a parked car, i might consider trying this out myself.  until then, i think i’ll stick to walking.

thanks for the link, xfred.

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Art Hack: Giant Rubick’s Cube

March 16, 2005 by 16 Comments

giant rubick's cube

since we are on the topic of rubick’s cube hacks, i would probably be derelict in my duties if i didn’t mention the manhattan sculpture that a crew of hackers briefly transformed into 512-cubic-feet of rubick’s goodness.

this one definately ranks right up there with the mit media lab srubbing bubbles.  art hacks are so incredible.  they have a subversive way of giving regular folks a brief look at life through hacker goggles.

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Lego Rubick’s Cube Robot

March 15, 2005 by 15 Comments

lego rubick's cube solver

correct me if i’m wrong, but technology was supposed to make our lives easier, take care of us, make us dinner, raise our children, and, fulfill our every dream.

so what has technology done for you lately?  nothing?  well, my friend, today we have a hack that will change your life forever.  today sammo sent us a link to jp brown’s amazing rubick’s cube solving robot.

the final task on my big list of things to do can finally be crossed off.  life is good.

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Make An Infrared Webcam

March 14, 2005 by 80 Comments

IR webcam hack

First off — don’t go getting all Silence of the lambs on us, aight? But if you’ve got some legitimate, non-creepy reason you want to record video in infrared, Geoff Johnson’s gonna show you how to do it. He’s gutting a fairly generic USB camera made by Sweex, and is careful to note which steps are Sweex-specific and which are not. You should be able to get this working with any ol’ USB cam you’ve got lying around with possible slight modifications.

300gig Ipod

March 13, 2005 by 41 Comments

flamingballofwreckage sent us a link to instructions for using a standard 3.5″ hard disk with your ipod.  after making the adapter, there is another howto for formatting the drive so that it will be correctly recognized by the device.

‘but j,’ you say, ‘that 3.5″ drive would make my ipod simply ginormous!’

yes.  yes it would.  but with a proper case, a small power supply, and an rca plug adapter, the ‘ipod super’ could be a really cool 300gb audio station that isn’t much bigger than a portable cd player.  that’s an awful lot of music and data storage in a tight package.

think car audio.  think brick sized dance party.  think media pc case mod.  or think different — and tell us about it.

Ultimate Gameboy Advance Game Console

March 12, 2005 by 15 Comments

gameboy advance hacks

betatester sent in a link to a sweet gba mod.  this looks really cool especially for folks like me who bought a gba before the sp came out.

This is a mod of all mods for the GameBoy Advance. Essentially converting it into a game console with an ability to attach a joystick, output video to a TV or an RGB monitor, and provide power management to get around wasting those batteries.

The result is amazing and breathes new life into your GBA, even if you only decide to do the joystick mod.

so there you go — power adapter, joystick, tv output — it’s like 3 sweet gba hacks in one!  i’m looking forward to trying this one out.

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Pocket Pc Phone Remote

March 11, 2005 by 10 Comments

pocket pc phone remote

griffen tech sells a program called total remote that lets you use your pda as a infrared remote.  for pdas without an ir port, it also comes with an audio-to-ir adapter that plugs into the headphone jack.

scotty-o’s pocket pc phone had an ir adapter, but he wanted less pathetic range and he didn’t want a silly ir adapter hanging out the side of his phone.  so he did what any self-respecting hacker would do: he took his phone apart, hard-wired the adapter circuitry to the phone’s audio output, and reassembled it all back into the original phone casing. nice!

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