The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Airship reminds us that overheated new gaming systems, like the Xbox 360s aren’t really that new, take a trip down console gaming past…“Early Commomdore 64s had a similar problem with overheating brick power supplies. Commodore ended up beefing up the power supply dramatically. In the meantime, a healthy 3rd party market sprang up for replacement power supplies. Maybe Microsoft is just trying to stimulate the growth of 3rd party support for the Xbox?” Link.
Sony has a new release of the PSP firmware, this one is 2.60 and it actually has some interesting features. This latest update’s main features include WMA support, DRM capabilities, and a RSS Reader. The RSS reader makes the PSP one of the few MP3 players that can get and play podcasts via Wi-Fi without a computer. Review here and the update will hit your PSP via network update or here. On a side note, what is up with this PSP graffiti?
“Early users of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are coming up with innovative ways to fix some of the first reported glitches plaguing the new videogame console. One of the fixes involves dangling the unit’s power supply in midair with string…Other 360 owners joined in, saying that once they cooled down overheated power units — by using fans or in one case, a half-filled bottle of frozen water — their consoles stopped crashing.” [via] Link.
Great bike hack on Instructables from Maxwell – “How to Build a Tall Bike, one that you can stop safely, and could be construed as street legal in most places. With this method, you’ll be able to stand over the bike, allowing you to hop down easily, have two brakes, a full complement of gears, And have a better riding position than two bikes stacked on top of eachother. You’ll only destroy one bike, The top portion is bolted to the bottom bike, so if it breaks, or you get tired of it, the bottom bike can be reverted to normal. All in all I think this makes for a suprisingly sane tall bike. Not that you’ll look any less the madman riding it through traffic.” Link.
Using an Xbox (1st generation) headset and a PSP headphone remote you can make your own headset for SOCOM PSP. You can likely use just about any type of headset, like the ones that come with cell phones too. Link.
Fun project for the kiddos “Geodesic domes are made of interlocking geometric shapes–often triangles. Because loads are spread over many triangles, these domes are especially strong. Often made of aluminum bars and plexiglass, they’re also light compared to ordinary domes. Geodesic domes were popularized by an American inventor named Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). Look for the distinctive Bucky-ball shape in museums, greenhouses, alternative housing, and science centres. Vancouver’s Science World is a 47-metre tall geodesic dome made of 766 triangles.” Here’s how to make a geodesic club house… Link.
Here’s one of many resources for finding DOS games. If you have an old PC laying around, or looking to do something with one, these old games could make a great little gamer machine and will bring back a lot of memories.[