Excellent site documenting a homemade pipe organ – Maker Raphi writes “The following website describes the process of how I designed and am currently building a 5 stop, 5 rank, all wood pipe organ for my house. I’m not an organist and I can barely play piano but I love music, organs and woodworking. Add to that that I’m a mechanical engineer and you have all the ingredients for a project like this.” Thanks Joel! Link.
Simple way of getting podcasts on the new Xbox 360 “How do you listen to your favorite podcasts on your Xbox 360? There is nothing better than slaughtering your pals online while you catch up with NPR’s Story of the Day. And kicking off the week with an episode of TWiT to accompany your Monday night XBL football league is a welcome replacement for repetitive announcers… let’s figure out how to get those podcasts on the Xbox 360.” [via] Link.
How to convert recorded television to play on a PSP automatically from MAKE pal Jake – “Despite the recent launch of Sony’s own Media Manager, PSPWare remains the best solution for syncing content to your PSP. Chris and I were lamenting the lack of an easy way to automatically convert DVR-MS files created by Windows Media Center to files ready for playback from PSP Memory Sticks. Here is the solution.” Link.
Attila writes “This is my first computer mod ever. I wanted to build a compact gaming PC using an old Mac SE case. For my case window mod I took the old built-in black and white monitor, cut it near the end using sand-blasting technology…I designed all my logos in Illustrator; I had vinyl stencils cut out. I used those stencils to spray-paint the logos on my case, PSU, after it dried I used clear-coat to finish the case off.” Link.
“The nitrogen laser will give 100kW pulses of light at 337.1nm (UVA light). The pulses are only 6ns long, so the energy per pulse is just 0.6mJ. It is a very simple laser, and it does not require mirrors or glass working at all! But using a mirror at one end of the laser will boost the output to over 250%. And if the nitrogen entering the laser (it is a flowing gas laser, but it can be made sealed) is cooled, it can go up to 120 pps. So if it is running at 120 pps, and has a mirror at one end, the average power output will be 180 mW. Although the beam is invisible it can be used to pump dye lasers to give beams with wavelengths ranging from infrared to ultraviolet.” Link.
Great article on making iSync phone plugins from The Tao of Mac “Given that there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about exactly how iSync detects and understands the capabilities of mobile phones and pretty much no written documentation about the whole process, I thought it was about time I published my notes on the matter.” Brian reminded me that you can use’screen’ to talk to serial ports (for example, ‘screen /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem’), so you don’t need ZTerm to do this…Link.
Sensory Impact “Joost van Bleiswick has designed jigsaw-esque furniture called “No Glue No Screw” that slots together without the need of glue or screws. His sideboard no1 and dresser no1 have a sculptured quality and beautify minimal lines and symmetry.” [