Hardware Beyond the Hype
Check out this incredible mod of a PowerMac G4 Cube turned into a miniature version of a PowerMac G5 with the its distinctive aluminum enclosure. It appears, if you look at the details of how he did it (the hyperlink at the bottom), that he made the entire enclosure out of ABS plastic sheet stock. Incredible. Just to be clear, the processor inside is a G4. The only G5 thing about it is the case design. Cute little bugger, don’t ya think?
The November DC Dorkbot was held on November 1 at our new home, the amazing Provisions Library. If you live in DC, or are passing through, you’ve got to check out Provisions. It’s a gorgeous space for gatherings and an unparalleled resource for those involved in social change and art-related issues and activities.
This was our fourth gathering and it feels like the org is starting to come into its own, finding a rhythm, an identity. Thomas Edwards, who initiated DC Dorkbot, does an amazing job of geek wrangling and doing the lion’s share of putting these events together.
For the November gathering, Thomas continued his excellent presentations, with an introduction to and demo of PureData, the real-time, graphical audio/video/image processing programming environment. You can see his PowerPoint presentation here. Next, Tim Slagle gave a presentation on LEDs and their rather fussy voltage/current requirements. Then Mike Larsson showed off his Voodoo doll interface, “Voodoo Word,” an electrified plushy that spits out nastygrams onto a computer screen whenever you stab it with a straight pin. I smell marketable wacky USB device! After Mike’s presentation, Tim did a show n’ tell on his scrolling LED Belt Buckle (a babe magnet to be sure) and the RGB LEDs he talked about at the first meeting. Then we all made LED Throwies. Geekish hilarity ensued.
The next meeting is slated for December 13th, at Provisions. One of the presenters will be Paras Kaul, a.k.a. “The Brainwave Chick.” She’ll be discussing her neural artwork. If you’re in DC, we hope you can make it.
Our pointillistic pals over at O’Reilly Labs are still trying to come up with cool things to do with the data in their XQuery database of all O’Reilly Books content. The latest offering is Code Quiz. To play, you’re presented with a code snippet from a book and a list of four possible O’Reilly titles. You get up to 10 points for each correct answer, but the values decrease to 1 possible point if your guess takes more than 10 seconds. Incorrect answers subtract the remaining points from your total score. It’s a fun way to test your casual knowledge of code and O’Reilly titles.
See our previous piece on O’Reilly’s Code Search engine
“Stop playing those damn video games or you’re going to get too buff and muscley!” Now *that’s* something you don’t hear every day, but you could, if video game-based fitness ever catches on (in this case, Tetris Weightlifting). Okay, so that’s not likely to ever happen, but still, it’s an interesting proof-of-concept and relatively simple to implement.
[Via DIYHappy]
Coolest. Basement. Ever.
This guy has created an amazing Temple to Mac in his very swanky basement, with dozens (and dozens) of Macs (as well as other Apples). Truly incredible. Absurdly obsessive. This picture is of a bar that he built from 28 (apparently working) Classic II Macs.
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I wonder if he has Beyond Cyberpunk! loaded on any of these? If he doesn’t, we really need to send him a copy for the collection.
[Via Televisionmind]
Here’s one from the “Because I Can” File. Grant Hutchinson is serving this page from his Apple Newton 200, using Newton Personal Data Sharing. You can even see a frequently updated image of what’s going on with his Newton screen.
[Via Hack A Day]
There’s geek, and then there’s GEEK. This, my friends, is GEEEEK. This guy, this lonely, lonely guy, has built a clock out of the venerable Intel 8008 processor. That and a pile of breadboards, additional ICs, lots of discreet components, spools of wire, and time, lots and lots of time.
You gotta admit, as wacky as it is, the results are pretty cool looking. The project is very well documented, for those who might want to undertake it, or live vicariously through those that did.
[Via Hacked Gadgets]
Larry Smith, my former editor at P.O.V., and creator of the wonderful SMITH Magazine, has just come back from the world’s first Rocketbelt Convention in Niagra, NY. While there, he got this video of Harold Graham, the original Rocketman, strumming a Uke and singing wistfully of his “Rocketbelt Daze.”
[BTW: Larry was also the writer who did the piece for Popular Science on Rocketbelt Man, the builder from Mexico, that we covered a while back.]
Man, this is cool, and something I’d never even heard of. This builder uses a powerful induction coil to launch a model rocket.
In the early ’80s, when I was a member of the L5 Socieity and went to all the conferences of the time on commercial space dev, everybody talked about mass drivers, the electromagnetic catapaults that could be used to hurl moon material into space to be processed for colony building. This desktop induction launcher works on the same principle. When you watch the videos of the launch, you’ll get an idea for just how powerful one of these coils can be.
[Via DIY:happy]
