The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Peter writes “I bought a Dell monitor since they are so cheap, but personally find it ugly sitting next to my (Apple) G5. Is there any way you could find a hack or other DIY “brushed metal” case replacement for a Dell monitor? I would so love to see this and learn from it.” Any ideas for him? I think a lot of clear acrylic might be a way to go, but then again – I like the look of exposed electronics…
TreoCentral member Tem has a great step by step on making your own custom ROM for your Treo, this adds more memory and puts your own apps in ROM “I am a complete unskilled newbie but after days of reading information I was able to make a perfect ROM for my Sprint Treo 650. I gained 4 megs of RAM since I placed in ROM 4 megs of my 3rd party programs that would usually be in RAM. More importantly I got rid of the junk applications that wasted space and occasionally caused me problems, like versamail.” Link.
If you’re thinking of building a LCD picture frame from an old computer, here’s a great resource to get started “This site was inspired by a MacWorld article on turning an old mac laptop into a digital picture frame. I decided to try my hand at creating my own digital frame. While looking around for information to help me with my project, I soon realized that there are quite a number of people who have been building digital picture frames. This page is a resource for anyone who would like to create their own digital picture frames.” Link.
“A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It’s not a new idea. The screencaster’s tools–for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files–have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What’s new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast.” Link.
Attila writes “This is my first computer mod ever. I wanted to build a compact gaming PC using an old Mac SE case. For my case window mod I took the old built-in black and white monitor, cut it near the end using sand-blasting technology…I designed all my logos in Illustrator; I had vinyl stencils cut out. I used those stencils to spray-paint the logos on my case, PSU, after it dried I used clear-coat to finish the case off.” Link.
Great article on making iSync phone plugins from The Tao of Mac “Given that there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about exactly how iSync detects and understands the capabilities of mobile phones and pretty much no written documentation about the whole process, I thought it was about time I published my notes on the matter.” Brian reminded me that you can use’screen’ to talk to serial ports (for example, ‘screen /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem’), so you don’t need ZTerm to do this…Link.
“The original Minix was an educational operating system – that actually served as the inspiration for development of Linux. MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system designed to be highly reliable and secure. It is based somewhat on previous versions of MINIX, but is fundamentally different in many key ways. MINIX 1 and 2 were intended as teaching tools; MINIX 3 adds the new goal of being usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability.” One of the nice things about Minix 3.0 is that unlike previous versions of Minix – it installs and runs just fine inside of Virtual PC. Thanks Brian! Link.
