The time is right for a true people’s hybrid vehicle. The web is peppered with how-to sites for converting your old car into an electric vehicle, but why not develop SourceForge-style documentation for an open source hybrid?
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We have a short article about live steaming in Make 01, written by Xeni Jardin. Live steaming is the hobby of making small, ride-able trains. Yesterday, my wife and kids and I went to the Los Angeles Live Steamers meeting in Griffith Park. They have a great setup there, with lots of track laid out and several trains running. They offer free rides to the public every Sunday.
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Some social bookmarking, cosmos and photo goodness– The first is a Flickr group pool. Anyone can join and add photos of projects or cool things they’re up to. I’ll be posting lots of photos from articles I’m working on, events and device glamor shots. Here’s a neat slideshow of it all so far. Next up, the Make del.icio.us bookmarks. These are our bookmarks you can check out as we check stuff out. And finally, the Technorati Cosmos results for Make Magazine. Check out what Dan Bricklin had to say! “This is a dream publication for an engineer or an engineer at heart.”
I’ve been banging away at a huge article on GameBoy projects. So far– store dozens of games on one cartridge, using freeware / home brew and public domain games, emulators (Sinclair, NES, SNES, GB/C), running Unix, photos, videos, music and some other goodies. The picture in this post is the slideshow application with the Make logo. Anything else I should include? Email, AIM/iChat or Skype me.
NewScientist has a pretty interesting article about a fellow who has replaced the ink in printer cartridges and used edible versions to print pictures he finds on the internet as tasty treats. Instead of the hassle of baking a cake, just print one out on edible paper with the proper cake flavored inks. The article goes on to describe his plans for a hand laser cooked steak and laser baked bread with the crust inside. Okay, we’re totally going to look in to doing a Make issue you can eat. For now, I’m skimming eBay for a cheap printer to try this out.
Anyone out there have an OnStar? In our 3rd issue we’re going to have a lot car projects and GM’s OnStar system seems to have a ton of things you could do. This project looks really promising– “Interfacing into OnStar’s GPS”. After some modifications (adding a series interface) plug in a PC and grab the GPS coordinates. Might be cool to tie that in to a war driving app or a slurping up some google map data with a high speed connection. Perhaps I can rent a car with OnStar and tinker. Any way, email, AIM/iChat or Skype me if you have one.
Basic Stamp is a hobbyists microcontoller that uses the BASIC programming language. Here’s a primer on how to use it. After meeting Joe Grand, I became really interested in the Basic Stamp , made by Parallax. It’s a microcontroller that you can program using BASIC. The robotics applications for it look fantastic (check out this Toddler Robot.) I’d love to hear from anyone who has been using Basic Stamp and would like to write a story about it for MAKE.
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