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The Amazing Leatherman Spoon Attachment

The Amazing Leatherman Spoon Attachment

spoon.jpgMatt writes in and says “Two bored physicists, a machine shop, a spoon, a leatherman, and a vision…”. Jen bought me a Leatherman tool adaptor for my Leatherman. It came with a few square attachments crytpically referred to as “Robertson,” and I had no idea what these were for. But, what I did need, desperately, was a spoon attachment for my Leatherman. Thinking quickly, I gathered the raw materials and headed to the machine shop with Greg Snyder, my trusty side-kick and budding photojournalist… Here’s what happened.

How to make a Coin Ring

How to make a Coin Ring

coin.jpgThis ring is made out of a quarter by flattening the edge with a spoon or machinist hammer, then after drilling a hole and polishing the center is dremmeled out. A sanding disc is used to smooth out the inside and sized it to fit. After it’s a complete you have a pretty neat looking ring. It would be cool to make ones from different countries you visited and give them to friends.

Unlocking the Treo 650 from Cingular

Unlocking the Treo 650 from Cingular

treo.jpgThis isn’t a new unlock code, but I wanted to post up -why- people unlock phones. “So I’m off to Thailand for 2 weeks tomorrow (more on this later). Here’s the code and a post from Rojo’s Kevin Burton. “I wanted to unlock my phone so that I could buy a prepaid GSM SIM chip to use my phone in Thailand for cheap. The only problem is that stupid Cingular locks the phone but you can just buy a new SIM chip”.

Installing a VSAT in Iraq

Installing a VSAT in Iraq

sat.jpgWe covered the cell phone hacking for GI’s- here’s more about installing at satelliteThis is how I spent my day today. It took around 6 hours round trip to drive to Sulimaniya, Iraq. This in Kurdistan where we did the install. I learned some stuff, it’s mostly simple labor but it raised some interesting questions in my mind about interception. This is an example of a installing a 1.2 meter dish for uplink with a given satellite using an ODU (OutDoor Unit) and an IDU (InDoor Unit) connected by two approximately 15 meter coax cables (one for TX and one for RX). Cnet has an article about the “geek” trip to Iraq too.

The future of games will make themselves…

The future of games will make themselves…

spore.jpgGameSpy has a great article about Spore and the new way to think about games. Will Wright, creator of SimCity and The Sims talks about his latest game where you become a cosmic creator. Here’s a great quote…“At the same time, what he calls the “value to gamers” levels off after a while. A game with 22,000 animations isn’t twice as good as a game with 11,000 animations. But fortunately, Wright learned another lesson from The Sims: People love to make their own content. They love to customize their experience…Putting two and two together, Wright concluded that there had to be some way where users could create content, instead of armies of developers, and a way to make a game craft itself around the user’s contribution”. I need this game.