Here’s a fun little HOW TO on disabling the annoying beeps from a toy Microwave without disabling the rest of the electronics…It’s really simple, just a snip of a speaker wire, but I bet there are lots of parents who’d like to put some of the toys in useful-but-silent mode. Link. You could also start learning circuit bending and make it a musical instrument too.
MAKE pal Hans writes “I have always wanted to build my own weather computer but never had the time my own first plans were based on an Intel 8085. My friends use to joke that I was going to build the Hans 2000 Weather Computer. The Tim’s page is about the best I have found for building a Weather Computer”. Link.
Dave Matthews Band encouraging fans to bypass DRM restrictions on new album (and, funny enough, petitioning Apple to ignore DRM restrictions in iTunes). Their HOW TO suggests burning a CD, then importing it in to iTunes, that’s wrong. Just hold down the shift key and/or disable autorun (here’s how). [via] Link.
…free plug-in for Microsoft Word that works with Blogger. We call it Blogger for Word. Catchy? Maybe. Useful? You bet. With this little number, you can work in Word like you normally do and then save your document as a post to your Blogger blog. Once you install the plug-in and restart Word, some buttons will appear. These buttons allow you to publish, edit, and save as draft from within Word. Link. Last year I had proposed “blog printers” you just install a MT, LiveJournal, Word, etc plugin…and they show up as printers.
It’s never too early to start planning for Halloween – Fasten a large grotesque head to the end of a stick four or five feet long; around the neck gather a skirt of black material, long enough to reach the ground when the end of the stick is extended at arm’s length above the head of the operator inside... We also have a great Halloween project in MAKE volume 03. Link.
…build and operate a mechanical device to simulate, remarkably well, what happens when a robotic spacecraft takes advantage of a “gravity assist” on its interplanetary trajectory through the solar system. The device substitutes a strong, moving magnet for a massive orbiting planet, and a steel bearing ball (BB) for a spacecraft. The “magnetic assist” it provides to the BB is closely analogous to the “gravity assist” a spacecraft can receive from a planet moving in its solar orbit. Link.
Cool tool- need to try this out– Jon’s Phone Tool (JPT) uses a Bluetooth mobile phone, your Mac’s modem, or speakers to dial the phone. JPT can also make calls via Vonage, CallVantage, Skype, Ovolab Phlink, Parliant’s PhoneValet, an Asterisk PBX server, IP-based telephony devices, or SIP softphones by Xten Networks, Inc. for use with many VoIP services. Link.
