Category: Geek

You knew it was bound to happen. A site entirely dedicated to the slow, purposeful unwrapping of expensive, brand new personal tech devices. When G4TV pulled their infamous prank of the “Geek Fantasies” porn site, with half-naked women fondling high-tech gadgets and d20 dice, little did they know, they could’ve dispensed with the woman entirely.

Thanks, Jay!

How freakin’ deep geek are these!? I found them on Lady Ada’s wonderful site (which you have to check out if you haven’t already — she has lots of cool DIY projects there). When she asked Todd about the grid of solder pads in the lower right, he said: “That’s the prototyping area.” On the back it says “electronic design & embedded systems.” I MUST have a card like this! I don’t give out that many cards (not more than a dozen a year). My card says “Writer, Editor, B.S. Detector.” Maybe I could have a lille circuit on it to build your own BS detector. Has anyone here ever gotten PCBs made? I assume it’s not cheap.

Ever since geeks discovered the sudden motion sensor in Mac notebooks, they’ve been trying to figure out what cool things can be done with it. Many dumb ideas have followed. This is another one of those. MacSaber turns your laptop into a lightsaber! Sorta. Okay, not really. It makes the lightsaber whoosh-whoo sound as you flail around, swinging your multi-thousand dollar investment perilously close to heavy furniture and cowering friends and co-workers. And no, they’re not fleeing in terror ’cause they’re overwhelmed by your Jedi prowess, they’re being repelled by the sheer pathos involved in a grown human being having stooped so slow. So very, very low.

Thanks, Jay!

Ben Heck, the hardware hacking wizard who likes to make the ’80s handhelds that never were, has done it again. He’s turned one of those NES-on-a-chip joysticks found in a thrift store into a SCHWEET handheld gaming system dubbed the nPod. See his photos of the build here.

Kotaku has the latest trailer to Will Wright’s massively anticipated Spore game. It’s adorable, with a very Jetsons/Simpson wackiness about it. On the same page, you’ll also find some leaked game footage, which offers more tantalizing hints at the look, feel and playability of this likely ground-breaking game. I don’t know anybody who’s not over the moon with excited for the release of this thing.

If this keeps up, Street Tech is going to have to open up a new Topic Area for “Digital Age Folk Art.” Artist Danielle Aubert used the ubiquitous Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as a canvas and art tool to create “58 Days Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel.” He writes: “Each drawing is in a new ‘worksheet,’ which is automatically set up as a grid. These drawings were made by changing cell preferences for background color, fill patterns, and border styles and from time to time inserting ‘comment’ boxes and letters or words.”

Especially check out the animated version of all the pieces.

[Via Make]

Just the other day, I was wondering what Steve Roberts might be up to these days. As you may recall, Roberts is the “high-tech nomad,” creator of the Behemoth, the tricked out, gadget-laden bike and trailer that used to show up at tech shows back in the day (we’re talking late ’80s/early ’90s). Roberts called the project a “no-holds-barred extravaganza of geek expressionism.” And an extravaganza it was, all 580 lbs of it — that’s how much weight was involved in hauling around the cellphones, laptops, and radio gear of the time.

Things are obviously far more portable these days, but getting together a full spectrum mobile system with phone, radios, GPS, computer, Bluetooth, WiFi, and other communications and data collection tools can still be unwieldy. So Steve’s latest project is the Shacktopus, a sort of deep geek Bond-ian suitcase, a grab n’ go mobile communications center filled with everything you could possibly imagine needing on the well-wired roadtrip. He’s started a new website and blog to document his efforts and is hoping to turn the results into actual product. [Via hack-a-day]

A European hacker named TheSpecialist, along with a team of fellow propellerheads, has successfully modified the firmware on the Xbox 360 console so that copied game discs can be booted directly from the DVD drive. The group has no plans to release the firmware (“The team advocates hacking, not piracy”), but their investigations are public, so a release of the hack is likely soon.

Here’s what Microsloth had to say on news on the hack.

In January, we told you about a guy who had started to take up a collection to pay the first person who could get Windows XP running on an Intel Mac. It may have taken longer than some people thought, and the proceedure is gnarly enough that old deep geeks need apply, but it IS doable. The question now, of course, is WHY?

BTW: When we brought you the story in January, the pot was up to US$7000. The two hackers who performed the installation, who call themselves “Narf2006” and “Blanka,” took $13,854 back to their cubicles. Colin Nederkoorn, who initated the contest, is continuing to take donations to support ongoing efforts in his Windows on Mac open source project.

We like to recognize the efforts of those who toil in obscurity, and there are none who do more for less than the lowly 404 page programmer. Here’s to you, 404 coder – one day, the world will recognize your genius. Until then, only the lost will appreciate your efforts.