The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
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.
Steve writes “While I love my Playstation Portable as a both a game machine and portable media device, one of the biggest limiations is the fact you’re limited to the storage on the memory stick. Even with a 1GB stick, after you drop on a movie or two, you’re really limited in what you can store on it compared to an iPod.” This how-to shows how to use custom firmware on the WL-HDD 802.11g drive enclosure to add a built in webserver. By using RSS feeds, you can stream content directly from the drive to the PSP. Link.
This is a pretty fun “first:” here’s a how-to on Instructables on applying multiple textures to a single object in the virtual world of Second Life. The process is very simple and can greatly enhance the appearance of objects you build. There are lots of how-tos and in-world help for building things, but I think Instructables works for both atom- and electron-based Makers particularly well. Link.
Derek writes “The gumbrix came about because so many of my robot projects required the kind of rapid prototyping that Lego really excels at, yet required more in the way of control electronics than Lego was capable of. With a maximum of 3 motors and 3 sensors, the Mindstorms kit was not really capable of the more complicated control strategies that I was interested in.” [via] Link.
Fanjita writes – “Just a small thing, really, but I’ve ported my Tetris game to the GTA exploit, and have it running on a v2.50 PSP. There’s a small technical glitch that means it doesn’t run yet on v2.60, I hope to sort that out ASAP, before I release a version that will run on any firmware that can run GTA. So – no release yet, but it’s imminent. As well as being the first homebrew game for v2.5 and v2.6, it will also be a good test of the improved GTA loader that will be used to launch the EBOOT loader. Sadly at the moment this is still for US and EU versions of GTA only, my attempts so far with the German version haven’t worked correctly, but I hope to change that soon.” [via] Link.
Amazing video of an RCX robot using vision command (or a derrivative) to play pong on a real screen. Jmarco writes: “I have designed a Mindstorm Robot who plays Pong game. It have a Webcam, and it’s controled through Infrared with the laptop computer. There is not trick. It truely plays itself!” [via] Link.
The BBC has an excellent video (I could only get the Real Player version to work however) of virtual worlds, what people are making and how they’re making -real- money – “When it comes down to it, avatars – online characters – project your ideals and fantasies before you’ve had time to think of them. Which is what’s making online virtual worlds one of the hottest business propositions of dotcom boom Mark II.” Link.
