Bicycle-powered blueberry winnower
Excellent tale from the “Make” – If the field wasn’t so remote, Waldo County residents would have been treated to an unusual sight in September: Blueberry rakers merrily pedaling old bicycles that powered even-older machines used to clean the fruit. Like many good ideas, Shana Hanson’s bicycle-powered blueberry winnowers had their roots in calamity… Hanson borrowed two bicycles that were already mounted on homemade wooden frames. She removed the tires from the back wheels, and covered the inside of the rims with duct tape. Then she attached drive belts that linked the wheels to pulleys on the winnowers. It was an instant success. Link.
Interesting, the latest update for the PSP may lead to some new loopholes – PSPUpdates writes “We are guessing that the 2.01 update was a “hotfix” to clear the exploitable toc2rta libtiff exploit in the PSP’s photo viewer. Expect this 2.50 fix to be a more stable wall against letting hackers run homebrew applications and games on their PSPs in many ways. On the other hand, it’s easy to speculate that 2.50 could be easier to hack than 2.01 now that copyright video can be played on a memory stick, and the location free player has been added. Those two programs could open up potentially exploitable loopholes.” 
Here’s a 3D version of one of the pixel ducks from Duck Hunt someone made – The Maker designed in 3D Studio Max and then contructed it out of a ton of wood blocks: Blocks used in 3D model: 1785, Blocks used in build: 1240, Approximate Weight: 17-20 ilbs, Length: 24″, Width: 17.25″, Height: 21″ Approximate Number of Hours to Create: 35-40. [
Coding Duck writes “MANGA is a series of the network products of PePLink. I am now working as an software engineer in this company. Someday I realized that I have a lot of spared MANGAs under my table. Some of they are manufacturing phototypes, engineering samples or units with outlook defects. Therefore, I desired to get some (as much as) funs from our MANGAs. MANGA system is originally designed for networking, but we think it can be more. Lets record our ideas of “how to abuse your own products” 
Sydney small business owner Eddy Stevens has won a four-year legal battle against Sony, with the High Court ruling that modding of PlayStation consoles is legal. The decision has far-reaching implications for consumers and the manufacturers of computer games. Mod chips allow gamers to ignore manufacturers’ regional coding systems and run cheaper games – made for markets outside Australia – on their consoles. 
Xbox modification has come a long way in the past couple years. With the introduction of the TSOP mod, potential modders no longer had to shell out money for a modchip; rather just bridge two points on the Xbox motherboard. Now one doesn’t even have to open up his Xbox. Welcome to the world of soft modding. Using code exploits in certain games, a user is able to load a phony gamesave that will boot into a Linux based operating system and allow a user to mod his Xbox… in under ten minutes. 
The Atari brand has traded hands in the years since Pong hit the scene, but the new owners are still milking some mileage out of this game and 39 others with Atari Flashback 2. This $30 device offers a fun and affordable glimpse into the gaming’s past — one that, for better and worse, looks nothing like the present. 
