Category: Geek

Itr seems like every week now somebody is doing some crazy steampunk device, hack, or mod and getting a flash mob’s flood of attention as a result. This week starts off with Datamancer: Prestidigital Datamancery & Paraphrenalic Technofetishism’s Opti-Transcripticon, a.k.a. Rich Nagy’s scanner mod. He took a flatbed scanner and dressed it as a nifty-looking leatherbound book.

If you haven’t seen Datamancer’s site before, check out his other amazing pieces, such as the steampunk bass amp and his positively evil-looking ’64 Caddy and ’56 Ford pick-up. I just wish he’d finish the damn things.

Last night’s Dorkbot DC was wonderful, and jam-packed. There were some 70 people there! It was an amazing mix of artists, programmers, composers, engineers, museum curators, pirate/fringe radio operators, a nice range of ages, races, a lot of women. Really an inspiring mix of people.

Randall Packard did his faux gov’t dept rant showing very unsettling slides of our American slide into fundamentalism. And then for something completely different, I talked about and demo’d cute little robots you build from junk that run around and annoy your housepets. Wheeee…

The pic above is of me demo’ing my BEAMbots. A PDF of my talk can be found here. Thomas Edwards has a few more pics of the night up on Flickr.

The next Dorkbot is on Feb 20th, at Provisions Library. Mark your calendars.

The next meeting of Dorkbot DC is this Wednesday, January 24th, at Provisions Library (7pm – 9pm). I will be giving a presentation on BEAM Robotics. Randall Packer, Secretary of the US Dept of Art & Technology (US DAT) will also be speaking. What? You’ve never heard of US DAT? That’s ’cause it’s a “virtual” gov’t dept, created by Packard, a gov’t agency as an art project. He’s also the author of Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. See the Dorkbot DC website for more details.

While poking around the Web, I bumped into this site for an experimental Japanese group called The Breadboard Band. They use (you guessed it) breadboards and basic electronic components to improvise audio and video works. Most of the site is, unfortunately (for us), in Japanese, but the images look cool and you can see video of their performances. It’s more fun to watch and listen to than you might think, but probably a hell of a lot more fun to participate in.

A site called Machine Tricks claims to show how easy it is to access one of those vending machines that sells iPods, cameras, and other high-priced electronics. Surely the barriers to entry are greater than clicking on an icon and having your way with a file explorer? Are security efforts really this bone-headed? If so, this is utterly insane.

Gear Factor posted this insane image (and video) of a GameBoy that got flambed in the first Gulf War and still allegedly works. As Gear Factor points out, given the extent of the damage, it’s very likely that this is a burnt case that has gotten a new screen and innards. Still cool as a Cronenbergian “casemod,” but given the fact that it seems to be in an exhibition somewhere, rather misleading.

Our local chapter of Dorkbot, of which I am a founding member, got written up in the Washington Post. I unfortunately missed this meet-up, but Street Tech Geek Saint Alberto Gaitan was guest-host (filling in for Thomas Edwards) and has some great quotes in the piece:

“Dorks rule the world right now,” says Gaitan, from the Washington chapter. “It’s the age of the dork.”

Amen to that, my cyborganic sibling.

The amazing Limor Fried, a.k.a. Lady Ada, and the equally talented and over-extended Phillip Torrone, a.k.a. MAKE Blog, have teamed up to create a laser-etching company in NYC, called AdaFruit. For US$100, you can get a laser etching on the cover of your laptop or other device. I think for smaller things, like MP3 players, it’s cheaper. You can even give the laser etching as a Gift Certificate, which is cool. You can also spend Gift Certificates on any of Limor’s kits (the MiniPOV, MintyBoost, and other kits we’ve enthused about here on Street Tech).

It’s astounding how quickly folks have begun hacking into the Wii remote, and after figuring out it’s a Bluetooth device, creating drivers and beginning to dream up apps for it on other systems. For a a lot of the latest, check out Liquidice’s Wii Hacks Page, Wii Linux, and WiiModWii. Some of these sites are being hammered with traffic (esp. Wii Linux), so try back if you can’t get through.

You can also search on “wiimote” on YouTube and find a lot of hack demos, like the above, which shows a guy playing Half-Life 2 on a Windows PC using a Wii controller.

Wow. Check out this awesome Nixie Tube Wrist Watch. It even has a Krusty the Clown-branded battery (“Krusty sez: ‘If these suckers leak or explode, don’t blame me'”). You might not be able to build or afford to buy one of the watches (the builder sold the last one for US$495), but you CAN download the Krusty battery label to make your own.