The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Bonlebon writes in about the arcade cabinet he built – “My Mame cabinet, the Procrastination Station. Time from deciding to do it until finished project: about 6 months. Money spent: way too much. It was a lot of fun though. I still have a few things to finish up, but it’s definately playable.” Nice work! Link.
Wow, great news – now I can keep track of the stuff I want to do in the virtual world – “Web-based event-management service Eventful has opened a public portal to the strange goings-on inside virtual world Second Life. The Second Life Event calendar, formerly hidden from non-residents, is now indexed regularly by Eventful, which listed over 1600 searchable virtual happenings last month alone and expects to index about 400 events daily. Virtual-world residents can travel directly to event locations via Eventful by clicking an embedded link in each entry containing exact coordinates. Event-listings, which are updated regularly, can be subscribed to in iCal and RSS format.” [via] Link.
Interesting game hack… apparently Counter-Strike removed the cross-hairs for the sniper rifle to make it a bit more realistic (that is, they remove the cross-hair when the scope is not in use). With this trick a sniper will be able to accurately shoot in short-distance battles, all using a Sharpie. Thanks Ghia! Link.
Big news for TiVo owners with iPods and PSPs – “You can setup the desktop to automatically transcode transfers to one of three formats – Windows Media Library, Sony PSP, or Apple iPod. At least in the first release you cannot transcode shows that have already been transferred. And you can only select one format for the desktop, so you can’t transcode transfers for both a PSP and an iPod, or put some shows into one format and other shows into another. But, again, I suspect most users will be OK with these restrictions, and TiVo says they may add these capabilities in subsequent releases. Advanced users still have other options.” [via] Link.
Cory Linden with some details on the Linux version of Second Life previewed at 22C3, the Chaos Communications Congress hosted by Germany’s Chaos Computer Club in Berlin. “What made this talk especially exciting was that it was the first public showing of the Second Life client on Linux. On a laptop that arrived the day before leaving. With a version of the client that Icculus’ finished while I was waiting to board my flight our of SFO. With an ATI card.” Link. One step closer to having an embedded /appliance like VR device. And lastly, don’t forget to visit our area in world and try out a 3D version of MAKE.
GoRobotics writes “LEGO is finally rehauling it’s Mindstorms kit. At the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January, LEGO Group announced LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, a new system that redefines the consumer robotics category which the company created in 1998. Robot Magazine has pictures and video. Press release here. My summary is here.“ Link to Robot magazine. Best feature? Download programs via Bluetooth! UPDATE: Wired has a preview of their cover story for next month about this [via] here.
Hunter is looking for some ideas for the discarded game gear he found, post up in the comments! – “My friend and I had an unusually lucky day and we got a lot of free electronics. Some of them working and some not. Here’s what we got: N64 – working, original playstation – working PS2 – works sometimes, Gameboy pocket – not working, gamecube – almost new condition and working and working we already have all of these so we were wondering if you would have any suggestions on how we could mod them or what we could make them into. it doesnt necessarily have to be all of them together. we were thinking about making the PS2 sphere but the PS2 doesnt work all the time and there isnt a step by step instruction on how to make the PS2 sphere.”
