Doing the dishes is really boring- but I think I have something to help pass the time. A Flickr photo frame to view photos from friends and family. It’s not too hard to find cheap old or broken Tablet PCs on eBay for under $300, and some have a swivel around screen that can be tucked up and away. For now I’m working on the best way to mount it and using VNC to set the slideshows. Also on the list- a full screen RSS viewer to read headlines.
I check the PEZ MP3 blog about once a week to see where the project is at. It’s a fascinating journal of a stay at home Dad who has a dream, the passion and persistence to bring a product to market he thought up. This week, Samsung bumps the inventor for someone bigger and some really big company seems to be courting the developer with a crazy amount of orders, but then it goes quiet. I hope Samsung comes around since their chip support OGG Vorbis.
Here’s my Flickr photo set from the April 23rd UW College of Engineering Open House. I think the most impressive project was the Self-Assembling Robots (Electrical Engineering Bldg. 359) — they demonstrated how a number of simple robots assemble themselves into larger structures. These robots were floating on an air hockey table and behave like biological organisms with a rule based system.
Simple solution for hard drive cooling, and looks like it works better than many of the commercial solutions. For over a year now I have been able to achieve a 10 – 15 degree Celsius temperature drop on my hard drives simply by using a 10 cent bracket from a local hardware store. Ingredients: 1/2″ bracket, 80mm fan, 3.5″ hard drive. More here via /.
It could be interesting to mod old payphones to make Skype / VOIP calls.. deposit $0.25 and call anywhere in the world for 20 minutes. Or just pound in your user name and password t9 style and use your Skype minutes…maybe you put in $0.25 and it gives you a wifi SSID for 30 minutes to use. The payphone is iconic, I love the way they look. It’s sad they’re going away in a lot of places, but maybe there are more uses for them. Here’s the start of the Skype payphone project! As I hack it up, I’ll post the details.
Kevin O says “Directions on how to make fire with just an old soda can and a chocolate bar.. Truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life. The short of it, chocolate is an abrasive, polishes convex bottom of can. The can acts a reflector, put tinder at focal point presto you have fire to roast hot dogs to. This trick is sure to amaze anyone when you’re out in the bush this summer”. More here. Quite handy!
The Vinyl Killer is a toy car that plays records by driving around in circles with a built in speaker, the Scratchophone adds bigger speakers, more power and just looks darn cool. Here’s a shot of how it was constructed if you want to make your own. Via BoingBoing.
