Good round of motherboard upgrading tips on Extremetech – “…motherboard upgrades can be either difficult or straightforward. It all depends on how you approach it and how you prepare. We’ve upgraded motherboards quite often over the years, so we’ve learned a few lessons along the way. We’d like to share our knowledge, so that when you tackle this, you encounter minimal hassles. Our pain over the years is now your gain.” Thanks Star! Link.
A MAKE reader sent in Bruce Sterling’s year-end “State of the World 2006” discussion over at The Well with MAKE mention! – “so there’s a lot of renegade tech going on these days. seen any you think portends larger good for us? That depends what one means by “renegade” and “larger good.” I’m pretty cool about today’s tech hippies with solder-guns; I think MAKE magazine has got a lot going for it, it’s really brisk and unpredictable. The distributed-knowledge, web-autodidact thing is a happening scene. Alpha geeks can make a dent in the tech scene, and they don’t have to sell out to VCs and ask permission first. I don’t underestimate this development; I’ve got an eye on those guys. Discovery Channel has got almost a franchise on this wack tech stuff; mythbusters, weird people with filthy jobs, huge unlikely gizmo s… there’s a zillion home-repair shows all of a sudden. It’s some kind of popular groundswell.” Link. The whole thing is an excellent read.
Hannes writes in with a great product at Macworld for going paperless – “The Fujitsu ScanSnap Mac – It was announced at Apple Expo last September in Paris and I bought one instantly. Within a few afternoons I scanned a few thousand pages (and threw away more than 10000 pages of paper!) and now I have no more paper at home (only books!). All of these pages are now saved as PDF and alltogether use around 800MB, so they easily fit on a 1GB SDcard, that I can view on my MDApro.” Link.
Not a bad deal for $49. “MIDISpeak Module – Version 2, The Talking Toy MIDI RetrofitAdds a standard MIDI IN port to your Speak & Spell, Speak & Read, or Speak & Math. Non-English versions also supported. Trigger thousands of sounds–words, word fragments, garbled speech, percussion and bizarre sound effects.” Link. In MAKE 04 we also show you how to build music toys like this. Modify a Casio keyboard (or other electronic audio stuff) and start playing some of the strangest sounds you’ve ever heard.
This look really fun, and really scary, but it’s NERF, so it’s probably OK. “The FAR is a magazine fed spring powered rifle capable of firing Nerf darts in rapid succession. It uses a fast-action bolt system. This means that all that needs to be done to cycle the weapon is to rack the bolt back and release. The rifle is fed by a bottom feed detachable magazine that holds 5 rounds. The design of the FAR permits it to be fully disassembled and all components accessed for repair or replacement. Only a philips head screwdriver and a pair of hands are required for field stripping.” [via] Link.
Joel writes in with an awesome new LEGO blog…“Nextbrick, a just-started blog about construction toys with a heavy emphasis on Lego. There are just a handful of posts up at the moment, but enough that you should be able to get an idea of what we’re aiming for–short, fun blips from the world of Lego, two or three times a day.” Link. Also, if you have LEGO projects you want to post about, check out our forums – if there’s is enough interest we’ll provide a section for LEGO.
If you have natural gas at your house, consider using this detailed FAQ to convert your grill from propane.
