Excellent guide on replacing capacitors in old radios “Second only to power cords, capacitors are the most failure-prone components in old radios. In a professional overhaul, it is common to replace all of a radio’s large electrolytic capacitors and small paper capacitors. This article explains how to do just that. In many cases, this “recapping” is all that the radio needs to be restored to health.” Link.
Here’s the first test of a 3D RSS reader “idea” I’m working on – I shot this last week before I left for Macworld so it doesn’t really show what’s possible, or how it works now, but I think it’s easy to get the idea – in the current version you point it toward a real geographic location and using a “lens” (a tablet pc with x,y,z axis tracking) as you point it at something you get the feeds, so let’s say you point it towards Redmond, WA you’d get news about Microsoft or something. For now I need to manually let it know where it is, but I think there’s a way to feed in more real world data. Ok, here’s the video – Link (MOV) and photos. I’ll have a new video and some more about this later.
Paul from Dotmatrixsynth makes musical instruments out of printers, here writes – “I’ve got an ongoing project, reprogramming the firmware in these 1985 Epson LQ-500 printers to turn them into musical instruments. I originally just wanted to make a sort of homemade mellotron, but it’s evolved into a much deeper project. These printers (like all printers) have a computer inside that operates all the motors and handles the parallel port, etc. The software that drives that computer is all on an EPROM (a reprogrammable ROM chip.) I remove the EPROM, erase it, and reprogram it with my own software that I’ve developed by reverse engineering the printer and its computer.” Link.
Tomi writes – “This is a simple microphone preamplifier circuit which you can use between your microphone and stereo amplifier. This circuit amplifier microphone suitable for use with normal home stereo amplifier line/CD/aux/tape inputs. This microphone preamplifier can take both dynamic and electret microphone inputs (preamplifier provides power foe electret microphone elements). The idea of this circuit is to keep the design as simple as possible to be easy to build. That was my goal when I needed a simple external microphone preamplifier for my mixer. The performance of the circuit is nothing superior but can be used with many not so serious projects.” Link.
Check out this “Instant Claymation machine” on WMMNA – “Animaatiokone (Animation Machine) is an installation that turns you into a master clay animator. It’s built of a potato peeling machine, a laptop PC and pinball machine buttons. First you sculpt clay actors. When you’re happy with your cast, you locate the characters inside the mini-studio (inside the Animaatiokone machine), move the actors and capture frames. An overhead display allows you to check the shooting, you can also delete or add frames on the touch of a button. When you’re finish, you can add a soundtrack.” [via] Link.
Mr Joshua writes “Here’s a video Tutorial from PYRO1234321 on how to make home made lock picks.” This is a great in-depth guide running 25 minutes. Also check out other lock-picking related videos submitted by woofcat (lock picks, competitions and pick guns).” Wow, these videos are pretty comprehensive, the beginning sections on the tools and (cheap) materials are really interesting. [via] Link.
Earlier we posted about some of the cool Mac hacks and mods at Macworld, but you need to check out Macmod, they’re the folks who put all Macmods together for the show! – “MacMod was at this years Macworld…and we have pictures to prove it! We are pleased to offer more than 120 pictures, including the Necronomicon PowerMac, MacMod Server, iTablet, Wallstreet Road Warrrior, Evangelion Mac mini, and the Mod of the year Real Wood iPod. There are a lot of great new product pictures (Mac mini clone anyone?) as well. Stop by our new gallery to view the pictures.” Link and gallery.
