More retro controllers made into USB controllers…how to make a Saturn pad, widely regarded as the best pad ever made ever (ever!), work with your PC, Mac or PS2 via the USB port. I’ve taken an off-the-shelf Elecom USB pad, removed the USB encoder chip and supporting components (two resistors, two capacitors and a crystal) and shoved them into a Saturn pad Link.
Derek Sajbel was on G4’s Attack of the show with a lot of circuit bending gear- what is circuit bending? It’s an electronic art that short circuits, bends, tweaks and mashes up the sound outputs of toys or just about anything that produces sound. Derek’s site has video, galleries and information about the circuit bending documentary. [via] Link.
Kenneth writes in how he solved the current unbookmarkable problem with MP3 podcasts….First tried using a digital player and then a MP3 CD player. I found neither device podcast friendly. What they lack is a way to book mark a podcast. My solution is to use the ordinary (non MP3) CD player installed in my car. Most CD writing software will make a standard (CDA audio) CD directly from MP3 file input. Now when I turn off my car or switch to the radio the CD podcast stays just where I left it. Anyone else have solutions?
A special commemorative FM broadcast Saturday, June 11, at noon (EDT) will mark the 70th anniversary of Edwin H. Armstrong’s first public demonstration of wideband frequency modulation (FM). The transmission, from Experimental Station WA2XMN (remiscent of Armstrong’s W2XMN call sign) will be on Armstrong’s original 42.8 MHz frequency and will emanate from his landmark 400-foot Alpine Tower in NJ. I wonder if someone will podcast it. [via] Link.
One of the best “mods” of all time for me certainly could be how the Apollo 13 mission was saved by a lot of smarts, improvisation and ingenuity. This is the 35th anniversary of the mission and if you happen to be in the Seattle area many of the astronauts and crew (including Apollo 13 flight director Gene “failure is not an option” Kranz) will be at the flight museum on Sunday. It’s been decades since we’ve been to the moon- I hope we go back. Link.
Here’s a how-to on a creating a working version of Zooland’s tiny cellphone from the movie. So how do you get a tiny cellphone without being really, really, ridiculously good looking? Simple, we hack apart a bluetooth headset! Now, since we don’t have Zooland’s ridiculously amount of cash we are gonna have to shop cheap! Link.
A project that describes how you can make a gadget to measure your car’s acceleration and braking performance. The DE-ACCM’s buffered outputs are ideal for connection to a microcontroller’s analog input pins. In this project I used this functionality to make a simple G meter suitable for mounting into a car. It displayed the amount of acceleration in units of g whenever the car was accelerating or braking. Thanks ilovecats! Link.
