John writes in with a handy link from his bookmarks- this site shows you how to create a LED display to show all sorts of information about your PC like CPU utilization, memory utilization, network bandwidth, hard drive usage, OS information, program information to monitor CPU, memory, and other resources used by individual threads or processes. I have an old PC with a parallel port and extra drive bay that this would look very sci-fi prop-ish blinking away.
Use commercial blueprint paper for photographic fun. Blueprint paper is inexpensive, easy to process at home, and does not require a darkroom or any special equipment. While almost anyone can make a blueprint image, the real challenge lies in composing an image that takes advantage of blueprint paper’s unique qualities and characteristics. Main site here and the gallery is stunning.
MAKE will be on Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour on Wednesday, April 13th at 5:40pm PDT on KDVS (90.3 FM) in Davis and Sacramento, California, and everywhere else via the web. We’ll be talking about our favorite topics, mashing up technology and hacking up things along with some sneak previews of what what’s in the next issue of MAKE (Sorry about the late post with this).
Chicago guitarist and blogger Kevin Skomsvold built himself a guitar effects pedal board for $27 in parts, saving himself a couple hundred dollars! Here’s how. I really like how this project started out…“Last week I built a board that would allow me to access my guitar effects easily along with some other enhancements. I Googled my face off looking for some schematics to go by but found nothing”. If it’s not on Google, it’s time to build it!
“Wasting Precious Time” gives you give you a set of pictures to work with, you arrange them anyway you please, and write a story with them. When you’re done, just save and publish it, and the whole world can see it. All the pictures come from collections on archive.org. I like this one about insects that capture and carry restaurant guests away.
I’m waiting a few month to pick up a cheap Mac Mini off eBay for some projects- Peter Seebach on IBM’s Developer Works site outlines the latest on getting Linux or BSD on the Mini. This article looks at the current state of Linux and NetBSD support on the Mini. If you need all the hardware and options fully supported, these open source options won’t do it for you … yet. But, if all you need is a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, the code is high-quality and the price is unbeatable.
There’s a new Flickr group called FlickrHacks which looks like it’s off to a good start cataloging all the neat Flickr projects and tricks out there. Did you know there was a mobile version of the Flickr? I really like Color Fields Experimental Colr Pickr from Jim Bumgardner, you pick a color and it’ll return photos from Flickr of the same value or close to it.
