Allright people. It’s wednesday. It’s sunny. I’m lazy
Synergy KM Switch
Synergy is a cross-platform keyboard-mouse switch. It’s also one of the most well-named pieces of software out there. Here’s why: I had a laptop running XP with a nice usb keyboard and mouse plugged into it. To the right of that, I had a laptop running Linux. Both computers are on a wireless network. Using synergy I can slide the mouse off of the right edge of the screen and onto the Linux laptop’s XWindows screen with no lag. In the process it transfers keyboard control over to the other system too. You can even cut and paste between systems. This is a great solution for using your desktop keyboard with your wireless laptop or if your laptop is sitting in the living room you could easily use its mouse and keyboard to control your home theater pc. Set up is simple, scales easily, and works with OSX, too.
Circuit Bending Guide
Circuit bending is the art (as opposed to science) of modifying audio toys to produce musical instruments. By creatively shorting circuits, adding switches and pots you can create a truly unique musical object. The hobby is incredibly easy get started in; just roll down to your local thrift store and pick up some old speak ‘n’ spells and start poking around. This comes with all the usual disclamers i.e. don’t hook house current up to your body. If you’re careful though you’ll soon be hearing the wonderful sounds of a know-it-all speak ‘n’ spell in agonizing pain. Sound like fun? Have a look at Anti-Theory’s great guide to everything you need to know to get started with circuit bending.
There is also an interesting gallery show over at Crown Dozen.
Hackaday Links
hello readers. im bedside with broken limbs but i can assure you that i have been up to some hacking, and thus, i have some fresh links for you all!
some say we don’t have love for concepts. wrong baby, we got lotsa love. thanks [rajagopal]
an ibook looking this nice deserves some props! [iraw]
go ahead, make your own ghetto electric fan
allright, another claim that this is the first electronic bar [xfred]
those cornell students are up to it again. this time making the p-p-p-palm
god help us. hack…your….undies. [eric]
add a 110v power jack to your car (not responsible for you getting killed)
DIY high altitude balooning. woohoo.
someone better figure out how to crack macrovision on p2p soon if this is going to happen…
tune in wednesday! the hackaday podcast should be up!
Cracking WEP
Tom’s Networking is running a two part series on how to crack WEP. WEP was pretty much broken from the early days of wireless networking. For starters the key length is misleading; a 64-bit key only has 40 unique bits. Some manufactures implemented poor random number generation. The seeds for the numbers are also reused which would never happen in good cryptography. This article covers the techniques the the feds used when they cracked a WEP key in three minutes. This works by grabbing a properly encrypted packet and then constantly sending it back to the access point generating more traffic. The more traffic you can capture the faster you can crack the network. Check out the article. I’ll be trying this out in the future when I get a Prism2 card and that DirecTV antenna wired up.
Hackaday Links
ahh, it’s nice and sunny out. it’s a great day for some links, especially since i got hit by a car yesterday! i’ve had plenty of time to think of some links since laying on my couch all day in pain!
anyone know how to hack pain? how about neosporin? anyone?
i know some of you still have your psone lcd laying around. put it to good use. [joachim]
again, more xbox live for the poor man. [greg]
ahh yes. in the wee hours of the night, i was watching the matrix: reloaded. wasn’t that highway chase so cool? especially since they built 2 miles of highway from scratch? well here it is on google maps. very interesting. looks like they took down the sound barriers too.
internet explorer flaws?! who would imagine.
what a rediculous ipod. though i guess it was only a matter of time…
Skype is offering you US$9 Million!
it’s about to rain…i better use this ultra-dope umbrella.
Dive Into Greasemonkey
I don’t think “nuisance breeds innovation” was ever a common phrase, but that is exactly how greasemonkey, the firefox extension, came into life. Greasemonkey lets users add their own scripts to web pages they visit. Yeah, I didn’t really jump out my seat when I heard that in January, but then I started to see people apply it. Sure there’s the standard “remove all advertising” hacks and the slightly more interesting “skip full ad pages”, but there is so much more you can do. You can beat stupidly designed web pages into submission: force Ain’t It Cool News headlines to use reasonable font sizes and turn off that stupid highlighting crap, clean up Slashdot’s ugly section colors, replace Pitchfork’s flash menu with text links. Greasemonkey can do so much more though. It can be used to combine the information of multiple sites like some sort of magical duct tape (not that duct tape isn’t already magical). Check out the screenshot of Book Burro above. You can also imbed information from IMDB into your Netflix pages or vice versa. Of course all of this rampant page modification hasn’t gone unnoticed. Greasemonkey and its scripts are really easy to install (falling down the stairs level of ease). So, there is no reason not to try it out. Check out the excellent free online book Dive Into Greasemonkey to get started.
