brainwagon

Oooh. Via has released a dual-processor mini-ITX board. It’s got two 1ghz Eden-N processors, serial ATA, and gigabit ethernet. And it draws a mere 15 watts of power. I think I like it!

Josh Bancroft recorded his TinyPodcast at a McDonald’s using his Dell Axim x50v and a $20 audio recording application. It sounds pretty darned good, much better than I imagined. I turned around and tried to use mine to do the same, but found that the background noise in my office was audible, in fact, distracting. […]

I like maps. Maps are cool. Google Maps are therefore really cool. What’s also cool is all the hacking that people are doing, such as Google Maps Live, a gadget which allows you to control the map display via a telnet connection, and this page of goodies or this one. Geocachers, are you listening?

Inspired by GeekBlog.org, here is myself rendered as a Southpark character. You can create one of your own by clicking here.

The Robosapien Dance Machine promises to be an open source program that allows you to program your Robosapien to boogie-down. Check out the screenshots here. I’ll have to check it out soon. My little Sapien needs to strut his funky stuff. Update: The software requires a $50 USB/IR interface. Ouch. Kinda spendy.

I bought Grand Tourismo 4 the other day for my son (hey, it’s cheaper than buying him a real car) and I must admit, it’s awfully pretty looking. One of the cuter features is a Photo Travel Mode, where you can take your car (a charcoal gray Honda Civic in this case, don’t laugh) and […]

What do you do when you have the flu? Well, I sit down and try to debug a computer system which has become unreliable. In particular, the little gem is the gadget pictured on the right, my old SV24 with an 850Mhz Celeron Processor in it. I’ve thought about turning it into a MythTV box, […]

I’m not sure who would buy this thing, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to know them.

Those crazy guys at CMU have invented a cool gadget: the BowGo. It’s basically a regular pogostick gone high tech: instead of using a heavy but relatively inefficient steel spring, it uses a fiber-reinforced composite spring that rides on low friction rollers. The net result is high bouncing. Check out their pictures and video.

It’s just too cool.

As I have mentioned previously, I’m the owner of the Motorola MPX220 SmartPhone. Overall I’ve had generally mixed feelings about it, but two things which bugged me were: the camera would take garbled pictures when Bluetooth was enabled The volume wasn’t really very good: it was hard to listen to in even moderately noisy environments […]

After my posting the other day about Hollerbot, I ran accross the Open Automaton Project, a similar robotics project which actually is quite a bit further along. This VIA processor boards are really popular in amateur robotics.

Want a simple (but not too simple) robot project, using easily available, off the shelf components? Try checking out Overview – HollerBot: Open Internet Robot. The idea is to spend under $500, and get a robot with motion, vision, gps and all sorts of other goodies. Seems like a good way to go. Addendum: I […]

Yesterday morning while I was stuck at home sick, I decided to try to accomplish something novel. Well, perhaps not novel, but cool. Well, maybe not cool, but useful. Well, not actually useful, but… I accomplished something anyway. Recently Tivo has updated their service with the so-called TivoToGo feature, which allows you to copy programs […]

Where your host wakes up early and knocks out another podcast, even while suffering through an at-times painful head cold. Hope the sound of nasal drip didn’t offend. Links from the show: My new PDA is a Dell Axim x50v. 802.11, Bluetooth, VGA resolution screen, both SD and CompactFlash slots, lots to love! Got a […]