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BoingBoing‘s Cory Doctorow gave one of the keynote addresses at ToorCon. The video is 50 minutes and covers all the internet hot buttons like DRM, net neutrality, MPAA, RIAA, EFF, etc. Watch the video above, at blip.tv, or download the MP4.
I made it to the nostalgia panel on saturday night. It was pretty amusing. Captain Crunch joined the panel along with Dan, dnm, grey and Damon. It was a bit of a popcorn affair puncuated by ascii art(pr0n), and assembly code. Captain Crunch was great. I know he was at Defcon, but I’ve been out of the cons for a while, so it was my first chance to hear him. He talked about how he got into phreaking, his first blue box and the blind kids that inspired his phone line adventures. (Today he’s got a $10 home phone line with an asterix box combined with voipstunt connection that gives him free calls legally.) A couple highlights from Captain Crunch: He wrote a little program and left it for Woz . The next day Steve was really ticked off at him. Woz used his program to set the apple phone board to call Jobs house over and over again. He scored the CIA crisis number that seemed to get Nixon on the line. He traded it and the group that he gave it to called up ‘Olympus’ and reported that they were out of toilet paper. Damon pulled out an apple scripted apple ][e emulator.
I’m waiting for my ride on the first leg of my trip to Toorcon. I’ll be there along with Eliot and Fabienne. Dan Kaminsky will be there presenting, so we’ll be having a major HAD get together. My local (tiny) airport actualy has wireless, tables and power readily available. Security will love me – I’ve got my usual tools (soldering iron, wire strippers, meter, etc) in my checked bag. (This is amusing – the security guy is doing laps through the metal detector to dial it in.)
[UPDATE: Eliot] Toorcon is my favorite conference. Have a look at some of the neat stuff we saw last year.
The true test of the amateur astronomer is building their own telescope. Grinding and polishing your own mirrors is a long, arduous process. Instead of lapping the blank by hand, Laurie Hall built this mirror grinding machine from scratch. His site has notes covering his mirror creation machines and other projects.
We are entering our terrible twos which means we’re not above making stupid binary jokes like the one in the title. With the comments still broken, this year’s celebration is going to be pretty low key. You’ve got a few entertaining options though. Have a look at our first anniversary posts: first post and HADA01. Visit the Team Hack-A-Day forum for HAD’s Unofficial Folding@HOME Team. They do a lot more than just fold so feel free to ask for help if you’ve got a project you’re working on. You can also stop by #hackaday IRC channel on EFNet. Check out or current blogger, Will O’Brien’s how-to archive on Engadget. Engadget also got there hands on a Chumby recently. Will, Fabienne, and I will all be attending ToorCon in San Diego at the end of this month. It was my favorite conference from last year and definitely worth your time if you are in the area. Check out last year’s coverage. The staff at Hack-A-Day would like to thank all of the readers. Reader contributions to the tipline are what keep this site fresh every day.
Yesterday’s The Daily Show (8-23-06) had a segment featuring friend of Hack-A-Day Mikey Sklar. You probably remember his projects: Making RFID proof pockets, embedding an RFID chip in his hand, and his current project the high-lighter, a trampoline controlled flame thrower. Mikey is on the road to Burning Man right now so he hasn’t seen the 2 minutes they got out of the 8.5 hours of filming. It can’t be all bad though: this screen cap is right before Samantha Bee unzips her pants and he got just as much screen time as Ray Kurzweil. You can download the torrent here. Mikey’s segment starts at 7 minutes; there is some more during the credits.
UPDATE: Dan Lane (also chipped) uploaded the short segment to YouTube. Video after the break.
Scott was tired of throwing money away on cans of compressed air (who pays for air?). He decided to build a compressed air can that could be recharged. The aerosaol can that he used should be able to handle at least 200psi. The travel DC air compressor is only good for 50psi so he doesn’t expect this to turn into a frag grenade anytime soon. It’s not nearly as powerful, but at least now it’s “as free as the air you breathe”.
