The latest Make podcast is video from the recent Seattle Dorkbot meeting where SMART (Seattle Mindstorms and Robotic Techies) showed off a bunch of collaborative bots built with Mindstorms, some with the upcoming NXT system. The bots use line-following (among other sensing) to travel from one bot to the next transferring a load of balls as they go.
Introducing: The Corruptibles
The EFF has put together an awesome little animated vid to demonstrate the perils to consumers of overly restrictive copyright laws. Take THAT Captain Copyright!
The only thing that would make this better is if Mark Frauenfelder had done it. It’s great that Mark has been given the opportunity to show his stuff as a writer/editor via Make, but it’s a shame we don’t get to see more of his wonderful art (of which the style of this EFF vid is vaguely reminiscent).
Blue Foam Sneakers for Core’s Birthday
Street Tech pals Core77 are celebrating their 11th birthday (gee, I can remember when they were still breast feeding). To celebrate, they teamed up with Fila and designed some awesome sneaks. At first glance, they might not look that unique, but designers, architectual model builders, and even makers of wargame terrain will recognize the “blue foam” material the shoes are made to look like they were carved out of. They even replicate the all-too-familiar black diamond logo. (Coinicidentally, as I write this, I have a pile of the stuff a few feet away from me.) I still covet my Core77 T-shirt. I wonder if they have any free sneakers to give away to former judges of their design competitions who traveled all the way to NYC for zippo compensation (save aforementioned groovy Tee).
The Well Turned Out Nerd
Never ones to pass up suggestions for playing dress-up to the sartorially impaired among us, we bring you black tie and twisted pair, via these DIY geek chic cufflinks made from Ethernet jacks and wire. Nice, but do you have anything in a black boot, the clear plastic jacks are so… ’70s lucite.
[Via Boing Boing]
Artifacts from the Future
One of my favorite features in Wired has always been the Found column, the backpage crystal balling of artifacts from an imagined future. Palo Alto-based Institute for the Future has stolen …er borrowed this same idea as a way of getting its corporate clients to read its annual forecasting report. A great idea, in that future forecasts aren’t usually worth the tender tree meat they’re hammered into, and I speak with *some* authority, having put in my time at that bastion of future falderaldry, the World Future Society. Anyway, kudos to the Institute for appropriating a great idea. One of their clients, Proctor & Gamble, says some of the mocked-up future products in the report have actually inspired real products. Now that’s a kind of forecasting worth paying the big bucks for.
[Pictured above is the RFID Locating Lamp (shines a spotlight on RFID tags in range) and an RFID Blocker whose slogan reads: “Keep Them Out of Your Stuff!” Ahem to that, brother]
Elegant Universe Online
NOVA’s awesome three-hour documentary, The Elegant Universe, based on Brian Greene’s bestselling book about string theory/bleeding-edge physics, is now online. There’s also a really nice companion website. If you haven’t seen this yet, you really should check it out. Gorgeous, lucid, and tripped out. Who needs drugs when our universe is possibly this loopy (literally)?
Homebrewed Built-in iPod Nano Dock
[It’s apparently DIY Monday here at Street Tech.] This enterprising fellow, Simple Simon, hacked up the Universal Dock adapter that comes with the iPod Nano to create his own built-in docker for his desk.
BTW: While you’re looking at this project on Flickr, check out some of Simple Simon’s other projects, especially his clever little USB Switch. It uses the power provided by the USB port to switch on a relay (on system start-up) which turns on a 120v circuit to power other devices (think: a big-boned transistor).
Xbox Remote Controls PC Too!
Via Hack-a-Day comes this link to a fairly simple and cheap way of adding a wireless remote to your PC. This guy used a US$20 Xbox DVD Kit (basically a remote and an IR receiver), a space USB cable, and the free AutoHotKey program to create a remote for his PC that can execute all sorts of control commands. The receiver can even still be used on your Xbox for movie control. Nifty!
Quick N’ Dirty Ethernet Cable Runs
I’ve been wanting to run Ethernet from my home media center in the living room to my office in the back of the house for a while now, but doing this means running Cat5 cable through the floor, above a drop ceiling in the basement, and up through the office floor. It also means buying a spool of Cat5 cable, the special Crimping Tool, the connectors and boots, plus the special silver lame’ jumpsuit, the goggles, and the propeller beanie (or maybe that’s just me).
This can all get expensive and… fussy. The easier and cheaper way to do this is to get a small spool (or bought per foot length) of Cat5 at your Home Despot, or similar, for the length you need for your run, and then just cut up a short Ethernet cable you already have, splicing the connectors to the two ends of your new cable. It’s not particularly pretty, but it works, and it’s cheap. My run would need to be about 35 feet (that’d cost me less than US$15 in per-foot Cat5 (and I have plenty of spare cables to sacrifice for connectors).
See this simple tutorial on Of Zen and Computing for more details.
Heads-Up Video for iPod
Heads-up displays are one of those technologies we know will eventually make sense, but seem persistently not ready for prime time. I roll my eyes every time I see a new set of video glasses coming to market. So apparently did this AP tech reporter when he saw MicroOptical’s new myvue goggles for the video iPod. He was especially skeptical of the company’s claim that you could actually walk around and do things while you’re watching. He started out testing the device on the couch, but before he knew it, he was happily watching The Apprentice while washing the dishes and ironing his shirts. Hmmm… starching the collars on your Oxfords while watching Herr Donald and The Apprentice? There’s gotta be a level of hell in here someplace.