The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Electrist, from Red Binary Development (aka Patrick Griffin), is a $20 PalmOS app that helps anyone who’s building or modifying electronics. It plugs values into all the commonly-used formulas, as well as many obscure ones, and even shows resistor color codes. See a glowing review on page seven of the May issue of ESSN (Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter). Link.
On the BSD DevCenter Mikhail Zakharov has an article about installing NetBSD on an old Toshiba T2130CS- Intel 486DX4 75MHz notebook. The challenge was, with a lot of old hardware many of us have, is to install without the benefit of using a CD-ROM drive. With only the floppy drive and the LPT/COM ports, it’s usually tough to get anything on old machines. Link.
I was looking for something else, but then found this and figured it might come in handy for something- here’s how to control the parallel port with Perl using a module called Device:ParallelPort. Device::ParallelPort is a Perl API that allows low level access to the parallel port of most computers. It does this by using a number of drivers, which can be customized and added to, including Linux (direct and parport), Win32, Script, Dummy, and more. It also contains a number of direct access devices including an example printer and a relay controller card. Link.
Clever! I wonder if this would allowed on a plane. This is a tale of my new daily-use computer. It’s a full-function pc, running Windows XP Pro, with an amd athlon xp 3200+ cpu, 768 mb of ram, 3 monitor ports, plenty of usb ports, and a built in 10/100 switch. And it’s a suitcase. It has a handle. It has two latches. I take it to work with me every day, and take it home every night. All it doesn’t have is a CD Drive. Here is its story. Thanks Chris! Link.
Here’s a really cool way to make a list of movies and books that are most popular among the people who are connected to you at Google’s Orkut. The author describes how he used Perl to construct a list of movies and books that are cited most in the profiles of the people who are at a maximum distance of 2 from him on Orkut. Having such a tool handy offers an interesting way to discover popular movies and books. I wish all social networking sites had this and NetFlix queues. Link.
In the Make photo pool Adam Thornton posted a really cool how to on making a 20th century cocktail. Besides it being a useful step by step, Adam used the Comic Maker application “Comic Life” from