The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for the kitchen, garage and backyard from food to furniture to fun & games for your family.
The annual Ig Nobels were awarded last week, and amongst then, some very funny winners a familiar one won! Economics — Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides (featured in MAKE volume 03). Link.
Nice HOW TO for making a Mac mini into a sweet TV recorder “No, this isn’t the first Mac mini – PVR tutorial, but new products hand software have made this more interesting than ever before. And, with the best options available, this will be the last Mac PVR tutorial you’ll need to read”. The best part is the encoding happens off the mini in this example. [via] Link.
Gary writes “This site has project information for amateur boat builders. This sounds particularly fun–The infinite modular sharpie: “TIMS (The Infinite Modular Sharpie) is an idea that has been around for a couple of years: Basically the idea is someone builds a bow and stern unit, then at a messabout, a number of people bring “middle” sections, and the whole thing is strung into a single boat.” I Googled “messabout,” and it’s “A Messabout is a gathering of amateur boat builders and lovers where YOU get to see and usually try out many different amateur built boats.” Link.
Coding Duck writes “MANGA is a series of the network products of PePLink. I am now working as an software engineer in this company. Someday I realized that I have a lot of spared MANGAs under my table. Some of they are manufacturing phototypes, engineering samples or units with outlook defects. Therefore, I desired to get some (as much as) funs from our MANGAs. MANGA system is originally designed for networking, but we think it can be more. Lets record our ideas of “how to abuse your own products” Link.
Sydney small business owner Eddy Stevens has won a four-year legal battle against Sony, with the High Court ruling that modding of PlayStation consoles is legal. The decision has far-reaching implications for consumers and the manufacturers of computer games. Mod chips allow gamers to ignore manufacturers’ regional coding systems and run cheaper games – made for markets outside Australia – on their consoles. Link.
Xbox modification has come a long way in the past couple years. With the introduction of the TSOP mod, potential modders no longer had to shell out money for a modchip; rather just bridge two points on the Xbox motherboard. Now one doesn’t even have to open up his Xbox. Welcome to the world of soft modding. Using code exploits in certain games, a user is able to load a phony gamesave that will boot into a Linux based operating system and allow a user to mod his Xbox… in under ten minutes. Link.
Two German students have invented a beer mat, or coaster, that uses sensor chips to determine when the beer glass it supports is empty and then radios the bartender for a refill. One of the students interviewed for the story suggested that lifting mugs from sensing mats could double as a voting system during karaoke competitions. [via] Link.
