I’m hiring a new ‘How-to’ editor for Engadget. We’re looking for someone who can contribute at least 2 how-tos a month. Original how-tos can cover hardware, software, and anything in between. We’ve covered software how-tos like streaming with VLC and setting up Synergy. We definitely want someone who isn’t afraid of a soldering iron and can do things like building WiFi antennas and embedding sensors in clothing.

To apply for the position you need to:

1. Post a ‘fresh’ how-to article in the style of Engadget with pictures/screenshots somewhere  on the internet (like a free blog from Blogger).

2. Write a sample post for a ‘found’ hack (like the Hack-A-Day daily feature).

3. Send both links, a little info about yourself, and 5 additional how-to ideas through the tip form before 1PM EST Dec. 27th. Use the subject ‘Engadget writer’.

For inspiration: here are how-tos we’ve done in the past. For additional inspiration: this is a paid position.

Continue reading “Want To Write How-tos For Engadget?” →

I’ve been having some serious static build up in my office so dad suggested dragging a chain? nah, I’ll just turn up the humidifier. It has been really bad though; one lightning bolt from a mislaid finger forced me to reset my iPod. It got so bad that I actually bought a static strap before assembling my latest machine. Something I should have bought 10 years ago.

My PVR-500 dual TV tuner card came in the mail yesterday. The driver and MythTV install went pretty well and didn’t require too much forum crawling. They won’t tune anything above channel 59 for some reason. Hopefully I get that figured out soon.

Team Hack-A-Day continues to dominate; we completed 6 million pints this week. Saying [yehoshua] got off to a great start would be an understatement. At last count he had 104 active processors in a completely legitimate borg. [scottpdotnet] entered his thin client cluster into the fray as well.

Continue reading “Hack-A-Day Extra” →

I’ve got my new box up and running. I assembled it on Monday afternoon and started looking into OSx86 since I wanted to triple boot the box with XP MCE and Linux. After walking into several dead ends I decided to quit for the day. Tuesday came and I decided instead of messing with OSx86 and getting a MCE bootleg I would take the easy route: install Gentoo. First, I grabbed a tarball from the Jackass! Project which offers optimized toolkits  (I’ve built them by hand before). I had laid out my partition scheme the night before, so most of the install preparation was done. I made sure to leave two 20GB primary partitions for OSx86 and XP if I decide to install them in the future. The only change I made from the Jackass default was using the “-march=nocona” compiler flag for Pentium 4 EM64T. After the base install, I installed X.org, fluxbox, and firefox. Then I immediately began folding!

Team Hack-A-Day continues to improve: Lazy_Folder started on Dec. 1st and has already moved into the top 10 for daily production. The forum is growing as well: yesterday we saw a woman.

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We’re a Top 100 Folding@HOME team! Take that Tom’s Hardware Community! No, seriously, we are that freakin‘ huge now. I celebrated by buying some more hardware to fold with. You can find out more at the Team Hack-A-Day Forum.  If you don’t know what this folding thing is all about, check the team wiki. You could always drop by our long standing IRC channel, #hackaday on EFnet.

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Yes, I was able to get an Xbox 360 on launch day. No, it wasn’t actually hard for me to get one either so I’ll spare you my story. I’ll probably sell it for a Playstation 3 when that is released, but I felt it was necessary to buy one on the first day since I’ve been missing out on all of the PSP homebrew fun. I’ll be doing a separate Xbox 360 post (with crash pictures), but if you’ve got specific questions you’d like me to answer put them in the comments.

The Folding@HOME team is still plowing ahead. They recently completed 4 million points and will become a top 100 team in less than a week. Find out more at the team forum. If you are going to be back at your parents’ house for Thanksgiving, don’t forget to start their machine folding.

Continue reading “Hack-A-Day Extra” →

My biquad how-to was up on Engadget yesterday; lots of good comments. I’d play with it some more, but it is getting way too cold outside.

The Team Hack-A-Day folding forum is growing, but where is kcrone_ (one of our biggest producers)? Found on the forum: Kit’s automated vodka filter.

Continue reading “Hack-A-Day Extra” →