Some coffee maker hacking…At work we got new coffee machines. The supplier is the Dutch company Douwe Etters. It immediately became apparent that the coffee was not up to spec compared with our former supplier. Complaints did not result in better coffee, so I decided to try to do something about the weak coffee with froth (foam) on top of it. After all, everybody knows that foam should be on top of beer, not on coffee! On the plus side, the coffee is free… Link.
Mods for better coffee roasting in popcorn poppers – A thermometer can help you establish a more consistent roasting routine. Adding a thermometer to your air popper measures the temperature of the forced air heat flow after it has passed through the beans. Therefore, it is neither an empirically accurate measurement of the bean temperature, nor of the roasting chamber. See previous. Link.
Here’s the latest NerdTV! NerdTV is a new weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks – a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. This week, its Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems Co-founder and the father of Berkeley UNIX, explains why he was fired from the International House of Pancakes… Link.
Great Wired article about our Squid pals! …This group came straight out of MIT, and its members don’t do guitar and vocals; they do patents and prototypes. They make up Squid Labs, self-billed as “a design firm that does differential equations,” and they’re already picking up the hits: solar panel driveways, swarming parachutes, a SourceForge for hardware and a comic book series for kid engineers. Link.
Raphael writes “I wanted to be able to control my music player, xmms, using a laser pointer and a wall. I drew the symbols for rewind, stop, play, forward on paper sheets using fluorescent ink so it looks cool with a blacklight and sticked them on the wall. I coded a simple tool that monitors the wall for the presence of a small spot using a webcam. When the spot appears somewhere, if it is inside a defined hotspot, the appropriate command is executed”. Link.
If Peter Wallace’s recent experience with hotel access cards is an indicator, leaving your electronic hotel room key behind when you check out could leave you open to identity theft... [via] Link. In MAKE volume 01 we showed how you can build your own card reader.
Very cute and clever project over on Instructables – Otis writes “Tired of buying high-priced toys for your furry friend to chew on? make your own with an empty paper towel roll and some peanut butter”. Link.
