Flickr member Jonnay posted some photos documenting the building of an x0xb0x kit. (A DIY monophonic synthesizer that emulates the Roland TB-303). The x0xb0x is not just another MIDI-controlled TB-303 clone. x0xb0x is a full reproduction of the original Roland synthesizer, with fully functional sequencer. The x0xb0x is one of my favorite projects, it’s open source hardware at its best. Link.
Interesting interview with Jonah Peretti, Director of R&D at Eyebeam, last statement looks promising! “We recently finished construction and are in the process of outfitting the lab with electronics benches, a 3D printer, a laser cutter, and workstations for hackers, designers, and artists. The lab will be dedicated to public domain R&D — our code will be under GPL, our media will be under Creative Commons, and we will publish DIY instructions for hardware projects”. Link.
A long time after having lots of fun fun blowing stuff up with the high-energy capacitors from the Surge Generator, I came across a few more caps, which with the originals, makes up a total of 220uF at 5KV (some of the newer caps had a lower voltage rating than the original 6KV ones). I decided to build them into a box with a charging supply to make the setup slightly safer and easier to use. Link.
Good news on the iPod Linux front, it looks like full MP3 playback will hit the next builds, along with being even closer to play OGG on most iPods soon. Video playback with audio is expected soon as well. Here’s our video of a few generations of iPods on Linux. Thanks Michael! Link.
4 months, $300… case mod is a scale model of a Star Wars TIE Fighter, with a computer built right into the cockpit. And, it’s also a desk! The whole case is built from scratch. As a die-hard Star Wars fan, I knew my first mod would have to incorporate something from Star Wars, and I could think of nothing cooler than a TIE Fighter. I got the blueprints online and got to work. [via] Link.
Slax looks like a fun distro, I’m going to take it for a spin this weekend- Slax fits on a mini CDR so it’s easy to tote it around with you. You can take your operating system with all the familiar apps with you to any PC that has a CDRom drive and you can reboot. At your parent’s house with their computer full of AOL and bloat? Pop in your Slax and get some work done. Link.
Interesting electron based ideas for greener computing- With the average desktop power consumption cruising along at 120 watts, and laptops squeaking by with a lesser 30 watts, the global computer power load is enormous. On top of that, the shorter and shorter lifespan of computers, because of wear, and programs’ insatiable hunger for more processing power, are making tons and tons of obsolete computers into waste every year. Link.
