“The ideal time to install a home network is while your home is being built. It is so much easier to run all the cabling throughout your home before the walls are finished. This web page will describe the network that I installed in my new home as it was being built with a focus on the ‘How To’ aspect.” [via] Link.
Good how to on surface mounting with hand-soldering tools. “Integrated-circuit (IC) manufacturers produce fewer new designs in dual in-line package (DIP), shrink dual in-line package (SDIP), or other through-hole forms. These are the classic looking chips that have legs that extend through the circuit board and are soldered on the other side. They’re easy to put into sockets and easy to use on solderless breadboards. Most of the new families appear only in surface-mount technology (SMT), surface mount device (Philips SMD), or surface mount component (SMC) packaging such as small outline integrated circuit (SOIC), small outline J-leaded (SOJ), small outline transistor (SOT), plastic leaded chip carrier (PLCC), quad flat pack (QFP), or thin small outline package (TSOP). Without special adapter (carrier) boards, surface-mounted components make breadboarding and hobbyist experimentation difficult.” Thanks Greg! Link.
“Gold, silver or copper can be a great looking accent, but not all mod parts come in these colors. Having parts dipped and plated, like chroming, can be very pricey. So what do you do? A technique called Leafing, which is a process of applying a real metal onto wood, metal, or plastic.” Here’s how to metal leaf computer parts… Link.
Excellent write up of a Maker who created a beautiful line of low power LED lighting for your home, and now they’re for sale – “The light I built for my dining room has three 1W LEDs encased in clear rod, surrounded by transparent blue plastic. This means that the light shines downward with white light but glows out the side in a very nice blue. I built it for our dining room and so I call it the dining room light, Eurolite has come up with their own names for the lights and this one is the Borealis Linear.”… Link.
A fun instructable from talbotron22 “Here I show how you can very simply modify a megaphone to accept 1/8” line input from an iPod, and mount the megaphone on top of a motorcycle helmet. The resulting “Mega Helmet” delivers the maximal aural stupidity allowed by law…Go play softball wearing the helmet. It is very good for antagonizing the pitcher, and trash-talking in general. The helmet allows both for amplification of your voice, and playback of mp3s from the iPod.” Link.
Diy.sometemple writes “This is an extensive collection of automated and programmable musical instruments designed by the logos foundation. There are lots of photos and wiring schematics and the like. You can get lost on this site for hours.” Link.
Rbils writes “Release 7.0 of ColdFusion added several different IM Event Gateways that make creating IM based bots extremely simple. The developer version of ColdFusion is free and can be downloaded from macromedia.com. The ColdFusion community has already released several bots, including one for use in looking up ColdFusion documentation (try cflivedocs in Yahoo Messenger for example).” See our previous post about a MAKEbot…Has anyone made one of these? Let us know… Link.
