Last weekend, I fought off my head cold and drug my body off to the Maker Faire to get inspired by the projects. I saw some good stuff this year, but didn’t really have a lot of time to talk to people and get in any deep discussions. One of the neater projects was courtesy of Jeff, Tony and Kylie at the mightyOhm blog. They built a very stylish looking Wifi Radio, using an Asus WL-520UG router as its core. I surfed over to their blog, and they have a really excellent 10 part series on how they did it. Awesome.

mightyOhm » Blog Archive » We rocked the Maker Faire!.

I’ve goofed around quite a bit with the Linksys WRT54GL and related routers, using alternative firmware, and I highly recommend them. The nifty thing about the WL-520UG that they used is that it has a USB port, which can be used to add all sorts of peripherals, like sound cards (for their projects) but also webcams and the like. Looking on newegg’s website, I see them available for $44.99, but also with a $10.00 mail in rebate. Verah nice.

Addendum: Jeff has a nice little writeup with lots of pictures on why and how you might want to hack one of these routers. Nifty.

I was trying to hunt down Gordon Bell’s description of the PDP-8 architecture (don’t ask) which I heard was available in his 1971 book, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples. A bit of googling found that this book is available from his website at Microsoft, along with many other interesting papers and books. Bookmarked for future reading material.

Gordon Bell: Computers, Projects, Patents, Books, and Papers

K450 PVC Rocket Engine Design & Construction

In just a few hours, anyone can build a powerful K450 engine that will send a rocket soaring over 5000 feet! Easy to follow step by step instructions and 137 color illustrations demonstrate the exceptionally simple construction process. Best of all, only common materials are used and no special tools are required.

I’d order your copy before the DHS gets wind of this publication.

Addendum: I wish I still had my copy of this book. I had one years ago, but seem to have misplaced it in the various moves since then. The zinc/sulfur formulation that it recommends has fallen from favor in recent years, but it was still an awesome book to have on the shelf.

A friend of mine from the Chabot Space and Science Center, Don Saito, was recently laid off from his IT job in Berkeley, and decided to celebrate by embarking on a circumnavigation of these continental United States on a recumbent tricycle. He’s got a blog called Cycle America, and seems to be equipped with all the gadgets that will make following his trek fascinating. Good luck, Don! Stay safe!

Today I found out that Don Mitchell has a blog. While I’ve only briefly met Don a couple of times, I’ve been aware of his computer graphics work for quite some time, so it was good to see his writing on other interesting topics. I wish my blogroll had more crazy smart people writing about whatever they are interested and passionate about.

He’s on my daily blogroll now.

Don Mitchell’s Blog

Not real bunnies. Just chocolate bunnies. Happy Easter.

Recently it may be hard to believe that I’ve read anything except for ham radio crap. I still read other stuff, I just haven’t been paying too much attention lately. While my random surfing today, I was reminded of Dan Piponi’s awesome blog and webpages about some of the really cool projects he’s done. Dan presented a really neat idea at this years Renderman User’s Group meeting during SIGGRAPH this year: namely compiling expressions into Renderman implicit surfaces. Don’t know what that is? Check out some of the other cool projects on his page. Robots. Detecting cosmic rays. Automatic differentiation. It’s enough to make bush league hackers like myself feel, well, bush league.

Great stuff.

Well, I am still on vacation, but took time out this morning to skim the problem description for the 2007 ICFP programming contest. It involves finding modifications to the DNA of a crashlanded alien named Endo, who will surely perish without our help. Wish I had brought my laptop: looks like fun, and I need a break from buffets. I will undoubtably play with it when I get back.

Via archive.org, you can download a Divx copy of George Meiles Le voyage dans la lune. This classic 1902 silent film may qualify as he earliest science fiction movie.   The image to the right is probably the most famous from the film.  Cool stuff!

[tags]Le Voyage Dans La Lune,Silent Movie,Archive.org[/tags]