The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the kitchen, garage and backyard from food to furniture to fun & games for your family.
The Lessig video-watching event in world (Second Life) has been set for tonight, Monday, January 16 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM PST. It will take place at Make Land in Tenera (tenera/84/196), Join Hamlet Linden for a screening of a Lawrence Lessig lecture on free culture, then stay for the discussion afterward. A perfect way to prepare for Professor Lessig’s appearance on Wednesday! More info on the event here and here.
Here’s a pretty simple how to for making your own project screen… “Home cinema is a great way to spend piles of money quickly. The projector costs a packet to buy and then more to run (about 10p an hour) and so you really don’t want to be shelling even more money out on a projection screen. A custom made projector screen will cost you around £200 at least. I hear you cry foul. Why get a custom made projector screen – can’t you just buy one off the shelf. Well yes and no. If you are going for a small image you can buy one off the shelf.” Link. Also, check out the Tyvek version on Instructables.
Here’s the first test of a 3D RSS reader “idea” I’m working on – I shot this last week before I left for Macworld so it doesn’t really show what’s possible, or how it works now, but I think it’s easy to get the idea – in the current version you point it toward a real geographic location and using a “lens” (a tablet pc with x,y,z axis tracking) as you point it at something you get the feeds, so let’s say you point it towards Redmond, WA you’d get news about Microsoft or something. For now I need to manually let it know where it is, but I think there’s a way to feed in more real world data. Ok, here’s the video – Link (MOV) and photos. I’ll have a new video and some more about this later.
The Goldfish Online has some really interesting LEGO logic gates – “…designed working NOT, OR, NOR, AND, and NAND gates. Using two NAND gates I have produced a NAND gate latch or Flip-FLop. The natural follow on from these is clocked logic, full-adders and ultimately a genuine “computer” device. At the moment all these gates essentially just demonstrators. They work, but because of the limitations that arise through gear slippage, the real practicable use is probably not that great.” The details of logic gates can be found here – Link.
Fanjita writes “Following on from Tetris for GTA, I’ve put together a small package of source and useful tools for developing homebrew to run with the GTA loader. This package will allow you to replace tetris.bin with your own binary, and makes it easy to deal with some of the issues in the GTA environment. I’m hoping that developers (especially v2.6 owners) will use this package to develop simple homebrew to keep v2.6 users entertained while they wait for their firmware to be fully exploited.” Link.
Wow, what a week for new books, here’s another I’m looking forward to (also from the folks who publish MAKE) “Only a Game takes readers on a fascinating exploration of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) based on the experience of gamers and authors Mark Wallace and Peter Ludlow. When Ludlow’s online persona — an investigative journalist named Urizenus Sklar — began reporting in his virtual newspaper on underage cyber-prostitutes, real-life crimes, strong-arm tactics and scams that had become rife in the popular MMOG “The Sims Online”, the game’s creators (Electronic Arts and Maxis Software) found an excuse to ban Ludlow from the game.” Link.
From the same peeps that publish MAKE. I’m really looking forward to this book – “What does it mean to grow up with videogames? Even though videogames and computer games play a large role in the daily lives of millions of people, little has been written about the impact this activity has had in shaping the lives of those who play them. In Transmissions from Imaginary Places, 20 people close to the gaming world offer entertaining and thought-provoking essays and anecdotes on games and gamers, and how this often-obsessive activity has changed the world.” [via] Link.
