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I work in an Orthopaedic surgery research laboratory and we have a lot of macs. We have three MDD Powermacs, one B&W 350 mHz Powermac, a Wallstreet PB, a 1 Ghz Ti PB, and a couple other miscellaneous old school macs. Before I even started at the lab the Ti Powerbook was having quite a few problems with the display. It seemed that every time the Powerbook got even slightly hot (I’m talking turned on for maybe 10 minutes with just web surfing), the display would become so garbled that it would be illegible and completely non-functional. The only way to fix the garbled mess was to raise the Powerbook on some metal blocks that we had and put a fan to the side of it to keep it cooled. Here’s how they fixed it! Link.

Wow, did anyone have any idea that the OnStar system could be turned on remotely to listen to what people are saying in their cars? I guess it’s like tapping a phone, but this phone is usually off. Check this out- Houston defense attorney Douglas McNabb and other defense attorneys interviewed Tuesday said they knew of no other cases in which law enforcement had used an onboard system to intercept conversations of people who were lawfully occupying a vehicle. I’d love to figure this one out! [via] Link.

If you haven’t already, you will at some point in your design career be forced to composite hair or fur into a project. The specific reason isn’t important. But how are you going to do it? Use a plugin? Not any of the ones I’ve seen. Copy and paste hair from another image? Too much of a pain, what with the complex masking and color matching. So what will you do, paint the hair follicle by follicle? Absolutely. But it isn’t anywhere near as time-consuming as it sounds. With the tools available in the Photoshop 7 Paint Engine, you can generate hair and fur with as much detail as you like in almost no time at all. Link.

Kirk von Rohr, the Art Director of MAKE Magazine took some pictures of the press check for volume 03 in Wisconsin. I really like the machine that cuts, folds and stacks the magazines at the end of the line. Be sure to subscribe to MAKE to get volume 3, we’re also announcing our digital version soon too! Link.

Months before the Xbox 360 will ship there’s already a community of fans designing Xbox 360 faceplates. Awhile back we heard there’s a Chia version. This Flickr photo poll has over 125 to check out. These seem to be part of a contest, the winner will be announced soon! Link.

“The Most Beautiful Machine” is an idea of Claude E. Shannon, who died in 2001. His “Mathematical Theory of Communication” is the fundament of the digital machine. It’s a communication based on the functions ON and OFF. In this special case the observers are supposed to push the ON button. After a while the lid of the trunk opens, a hand comes out and turns off the machine. The trunk closes – that’s it!. [via] Link.

Awesome. In January of this year, I was pulled over by a traffic officer for “disobeying a steady red”, a.k.a. running a red light. I pleaded “Not Guilty” to the charge, and today – nearly six months later – I went to court to find out the fate of my ticket violation. Check out how Google Maps saved me some serious cash – and points on my license! Link.