The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
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.
Danny O’Brien wrote a wonderful Greasemonkey script, as mentioned in our Issue #02 column. It pings you every few minutes to see if you still really need to be surfing the web, and it’s wonderful.The idea, of course, is not to make you insane and interrupt your real work, but to ensure that you’re always aware of the task that brought you where you are—that you not allow a legitimate work search to turn into a 4-hour wikipedia party. Link.
I need to dust off my Pocket PC and try this out (blog companies could sell refurb’ed PDAs just for blogging)- Pocket Blog extends your weblog to any Pocket PC device. Weblog entries are maintained offline. When Internet connectivity becomes available, such as when your Pocket PC is placed in it’s docking cradle or a WiFi card is inserted, changes are automatically posted to your weblog. Pocket Blog also downloads recent weblog entries, enabling you to edit entries that were originally posted from your desktop. [via] Link.
Great for emulation projects- There is no DOS in Windows XP! What is called the “command prompt” is not really DOS … it can be thought of as more of a simulation of DOS. Windows XP (and Windows 2000), unlike Windows 95, 98, and ME, are NOT built on an MSDOS foundation. So, while this makes for better speed and stability, it also makes for sometimes lousy backwards compatibility. Link.
Dangerous, but cool looking- perhaps adding a bug zapper would be the killer finale…This article over on twisted mods shows you how to cut a hole in a monitor, add a window and glowing light. Windowing a monitor reduces the effectiveness of the ventilation system and therefore can reduce the life of your monitor due to overheating. If you do this mod, it is suggested that you add fans to either side, or to your window, as will be shown in Part II of this guide.Link.
Wow, scary. As the article asks- how can the MPAA tell if people are selling their own used DVDs or other things? The Motion Picture Association of America said Tuesday that it will fund the installation of 10 new surveillance cameras in downtown Los Angeles–ostensibly to help catch ne’er-do-wells who are selling counterfeit DVDs on the streets. [via] Link.
