Hardware Beyond the Hype
We’ve talked on Street Tech before about how you can turn a decent-sized Flash drive (USB drive, thumb drive, jumpdrive, whatever we’re supposed to be calling it these days) into a pocketable alternative to a laptop for carrying apps and data between computers, on the road, etc. This-here d00d has a nice master list of Windows-friendly, mostly free, apps and utilities.
Atmel’s AVR microcontrollers, both the tinyAVR and megaAVR classes, are growing in popularity among hobbyists, roboticists, gamers, and others using embedded computer control. Our pals at Solarbotics use the ATmega8L AVR in their BrainBoard Sumbot add-on kits. Lady Ada has also just released a cheap (US$18) kit for building a USB-powered programmer for AVR MCUs. With the Adafruit kit, all that’s missing is a board to house the chip so that you can plug the programmer in and send your code to it (one of the cool features of Ada’s kit is that it powers the chip over USB). That’s where a target board comes in, and that’s what this Evil Mad Scientist Labs how-to is all about: showing you how to build a quick n’ dirty target board for a couple of bucks. Nifty.
EMS Labs also has a review of the Adafruit USBtinyISP AVR Programmer kit here.
[Shown above is the Adafruit AVR Programmer and an EMS Labs target board.]
Alex CF, who did the amazing “Lovecraftian Specimen Jars” in my Wired Steampunk piece, has a new piece up for auction on eBay UK. It’s a seriously cool Werewolf Research Kit, complete with an albino lycanthrope foetus in a jar, handwritten notes and drawings, other forensic samples, and some silver bullets to have on hand, just in case.
Here’s a link to the eBay listing. And one to Alex CF’s website.
Lifehacker has a link to a passle of Getting Things Done tools. They say:
“This enormous list of GTD Tools will surely keep you from getting anything done.”
True dat.
I have an article, called “Steam-Driven Dreams: The Wondrously Whimsical World of Steampunk,” up on Wired News. It’s a brief tour of the art, tech, and media of the growing steampunk movement, as told through pictures (and my pulchritudinous prattlings).
Here’s a snip:
Steampunk Magazine
Every movement needs its house organ, its broadsheet for posting manifestos. In just two issues, Steampunk Magazine: A Journal of Misapplied Technology has established itself as a worthy mouthpiece. True to form, it’s available both in a treemeat version, for $3 plus postage, and a free PDF.
So, how does the magazine define steampunk? It’s inaugural issue says: “Steampunk lives in the reincarnated collective past of shadows and ignored alleys. It is a historical wunderkabinet, which promises, like Dr. Caligari’s, to wake the somnambulist of the present to the dream-reality of the future. We are archaeologists of the present, reanimating a hallucinatory history.”
I have no idea what that means but I’m just going to shut-up and drink the Kool-Aid.
[Shown here are a pair of one-of-a-kind brass goggles, created by UK artist Atomefabrik, and Datamancer’s Steampunk Laptop.]
Street Tech pal and steam robot guru I-Wei Huang has thoughtfully documented the steps to his latest build, a steam-powered, radio-controlled turbine tank, and created an Instructable.
If you weren’t tempted to hack some steam-tech before, you likely will be after checking this out. That little Jensen turbine is sweet!
Thanks, I-Wei!
If you looked at the amazing line of collectible retro rayguns from Weta Originals and couldn’t help but start thinking about the security vulnerabilities of banks in your neighborhood, or what day of the month the old lady next door gets her social security checks: Save these risky money-making opportunities for something more important, like next week’s iPhone launch. Weta has taken pity on us pixel slaves and released the Mini ManMelter, a much smaller (1/4-size), all metal, edition of their full-size ManMelter Raygun.The Mini will be limited to 500 pieces and cost US$30.
The only drawback is that the Mini ManMelter is an exclusive for next month’s San Diego ComicCon. Crap, so I have to fly to California to pick up my little collector raygun? Hmmm. When DOES that neighbor lady get her checks?…
More info here.
When well-known biologist and scientific humanist E.O. Wilso accepted his TED Award recently, he made a plea to those listening, to roll up their sleeves and to help him create an encyclopedia of all living things on the planet, called the Encyclopedia of Life. It would be a sort of biological wikipedia where every species of organism would get its own webpage. It’s a bold initiative, which will be amazing if it happens. There’s already a web site with some test pages and a video intro. I especially like the slider which allows you to dial the extent of your interest (from amateur to expert) and the content morphs to the level you dial. The species geo-location tech is nifty, too.
In case you missed it last night, Make, the Maker Faire, and Mark Frauenfelder were on Jimmy Kimmel last night. Makezine has a link to the clip (50 MB MP4). Really sweet. So cool to see Mark getting the much deserved recognition. And that’s his daughter Sarina on the cover too.
There seems to be no end to what sorts of weird and wonderful subjects get rendered in plastic and vinyl these days as action figures. Long ago, we jumped track from superheroes, soldiers, sci-fi and fantasy characters. Now we have action figures of scientists, authors, rock stars, characters from other fictional universes, the list goes on.
So, maybe it shouldn’t be too surprising to add Hieronymus Bosch figures to the list. Hey, I’d buy ’em. But I’ll probably save my pocket change for when somebody gets around to creating William Blake action figures. If you ever spot such a thing, email me, stat. Urizen in his mind-forged manacles, Los toling at his forge of creation, Michael binding Satan, Enitharmon giving birth to Orc. While figures of Freud or Shakespeare might be fun, they’re not very action-packed. Blake’s epic and conflict-ridden universe of fragmented, warring psyches is perfect for rendering in super-heroic plastic.
[Via AttentionScan]