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October 23 An Enterprising PC ModHey, if you can find a way to make a buck...well, sometimes you should think twice. Like certain 17-year old junior enterpriser and PC modder from Poland, who not only modded his PC, he also turned it into miniature pot farm. As in cannabis. It was probably pretty cool to his geek friends: The PC still works fine, he just added a mini-greenhouse in the bottom.
Cool till the cops found it. Guess that show "Weeds" isn't all that popular in Poland.
(via Boing Boing) October 19 Almost the Weekend: DIY ProjectHome theater is still an add-on for most homes in the US--hasn't been homogeonized into every TV or stereo receiver yet. And DVR functionality is certainly still in its infancy. Combine those two and it means that home theater is still a great geek DIY project. Fortunately, it's not as difficult as you might think and there's plenty of help online.
A great help guide just came out on Tom's Hardware Guide. A nice step-by-stepper on not only building a full-functional home theater PC, but making it energy efficient, too. October 05 Ultimate Weekend Project: DIY Jet EngineNow THIS is a weekend project that'll get you eternal geek-spect. Too many score points to count. Only thing is that it's probably not a weekend project, more like a several-weekends project. Even so, it's very cool. The folks at Instructables have posted this how to on building your own jet engine using an auto turbo charger as a base. Man, if I had even a smidgen of talent with machine tools, engines or physics or even some kind of impetus to get my butt off the couch on the weekends, I'd be all over this. Really.
(via Digg) September 25 How to Make a 100mpg CarEngineering hacker, Jory Squibb, got fed up with the rate at which car makers were becoming green. So he took two mopeds, $2000 and his little gray cells and made this car. He calls it a Moonbeam and it does 100mpg highway and 85mpg city. Okay, it looks llike a golf cart and has a top speed of 50mph, but this is still a prototype. What ticks him off is that it didn't take him that long to design and build, and car companies could make the thing for about $5000 in mass production.
I'm not sure I'd want to drive one, but there are definitely a few million people who would. So why aren't you talking to a VC, Jory? Instead he's taken the car open source, and posted a complete How to Build a Moonbeam guide. More than a weekend project, but the end result could be fun.
(via Gizmodo) June 01 BOGUS!: Take back 20% of Your Bandwidth from Windows********************************************************
I'm leaving the post up because otherwise Spaces will kill the comments thread, but after a number of reader jabs and jibes, as well as a call to the techie depths of Redmond, it turns out this tip is bogus. You can follow the steps and it'll work, but you won't see any appreciable performance gains. And if yo'ure using VoIP, you'll wind up putting it back in place anyway.
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The folks at RealTechNews found this tidbit that was being tossed around at the Google Community site. Seems someone dug deep into the guts of Windows XP and turned up some trivia: Seems that Windows reserves 20% of you network bandwidth for itself. For things like updates, security patches, updates to the security patches and security patches for the updates.
The post gives you a step-by-step on reconfigging the Windows wonder to hand that bandwidth back. Best if you do manual updates after that, but then that's my favorite way anyhow.
(via RealTechNews) May 22 How-To: Backing Up Your xBox 360 GamesNot many of us have managed to get our sweaty little grubbers on an xBox 360 yet, but for those lucky few who have (hip-hop stars, NBA professionals, guys who ride skateboards over lava, those kinds of people), you may be wondering how you can back up your xBox games to keep 'em safe from random harm (like left-over lava or maybe hipping left when you should have hopped right).
If you'd like to know how to do that, follow this step-by-stepper from Clevermod. Pretty clearly written--but then I don't have an xBox to test it out on. Microsoft? Miiiicrooosoooofft.
(via Engadget) May 03 Ultimate New Jersey Tpke Commuter VehicleI always thought VW Beetles were a mite boring. Been there, done that. Apparently, Ron Patrick agrees. Unlike me, however, he decided to do more than just sit on the couch and think about it.
He went out and strapped a 1350 horsepower GE Model T58-85 helicopter turboshaft engine engine to the back of his Beetle. The thing does 26,000rpm and has an after burner guaranteed to make tailgaters keep their distance. Supposedly, it's even street legal.
Now this would make the morning I-95 commute a hell of a lot more fun.
(via SciFi) April 21 How to Build a Tornado MachineFor the weather nerds among us, this is a cool find. A site called Weather Photography as a step-by-step article detailing how to build your own tornado machine. Follow the instructions and you'll build your own meter-high box that allows air to rotate and rise--visibly--thus creating a little death storm in your workshop. Very cool stuff and possible an excellent source of in-house photography--or even some real fun with your little sister's hamster. (Kidding! Jeez!)
(via Ubergizmo) April 11 Nerd Alert: Serving Up Domain Naming ServicesFrom Tech Novice straight to ultra-nerd; that's the fun of TechFilter. For Tech Novices, this won't mean much.
But for systems admins, Linux admins or other propeller heads interested in running their own networks, Howto Forge has just pubbed a nicely detailed tutorial on how the domain naming service is supposed to behave on a network and the types of functions you can enable if you do a little mental drilling. Geeks only.
(via Digg) Put an End to the FireFox Memory LeakFor all you FireFox users, you're undoubtedly tired of that recurring memory leak that sloooowly causes your system to crawl. If you're on this list of unfortunates, then check out this post from Alice Hill's RealTechNews, appropriately entitled How to Stop the Dreaded FireFox Memory Leak. Definitely worth the read for Mozilla mavens.
(via RealTechNews) March 03 Quick Hard Disk Tool KitA bunch of hard disk utiltiies got updated in the last couple of days, so I figured I'd list my personal hard disk utility toolbox and where to download the newest versions:
December 14 Another Good Web Scanning FreebieI like Trend Micro's free online virus scan, called HouseCall. The virus sigs are a day or so old, reportedly, but that's to be expected if TM wants to maintain the superiority of the pay product. What I like is that if I think I've been compromised, I can run a Norton scan and then back it up with a Trend-Micro scan, effectively scanning the problem box with two virus engines without the need to keep two running. TM has also recently expanded its online scanning to include spyware. Or you can run a combined scan for both. Takes a while, tho.
Microsoft's online betas of its Client Protection suite are also free, but while they're decent I just can't fully trust security software that has a 'beta' logo on it.
I like scanning with multiple products, however, and there's another one in the spyware category that's worth a try: check out Webroot's SpySweeper. This thing has gotten awards because it's a well-managed business spyware platform--means you can deploy the client on all your biz desktops and then centrally manage and update them from a server. But they've got a home-user version that's also got the free online scan available.
Good in a pinch. September 23 Fighting Hamster DIY ProjectBad things happen when creative people have too much time on their hands. This just seems like a joke, until you realize that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle spin-offs made a billion dollars world wide.
I wish I could draw graphics like this.
September 15 What Does Your Password Sound Like?Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a method of identifying passwords just by listening to the user type them. It can even work by aiming parabolic antenna at a user typing in their password across ther street. You know, I bet the CIA cringes when theses things get made public. September 13 Not Everyone Likes the New Vista ReleaseMicrosoft released build 5219 today at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. These are going to be coming out every month or so until the big beta 2 release, probably around the end of the year.
So far, the reponse to the interface changes seems pretty positive, but not everyone is happy about it.
This guy clearly doesn't understand the software business. Teach Yourself LinuxBefore you run out and buy that Linux for Dummies book, check out the free courses offered here. The servers are pretty slow, but if you want to be a Linux geek it is worth bookmarking. September 08 Make Your Own Google HeadlineThis is a nice little site to play with if you are an egomaniac. You can do the same thing with Yahoo! too. August 31 Own an Old iPod? Apple Owes You $25Sure everyone may be talking about the iPod phone, but the clocking is ticking on Apple's iPod battery settlement as well. If you bought a first, second or third generation iPod and have battery failure, then you will qualify for a $50 Apple store credit. You can also get $25 in cash, but heck that is almost a free Shuffle. What is battery failure?
That includes, well, probably just about everyone. You have to file your claim by September 30th, 2005. You can download the form here.
August 25 Save the Money, Rip Your Own CDsPC World's Eric Dahl does the cost/benefit math on CD-Ripping services: You send them your CD collection and your credit card number, they send you back your CDs and a boatload of MP3 files. Is this even a question? Even at the bargin basement price of $1 a CD, that is a lot of money. And you have no control over the quality. (Personally, I like 192Kbps VBR MP3s.) Spend the time, don't spend the money. Besides it is a great way to find lost treasures. "The Hurting" was such a great album. August 24 Flash Demo on How Legos Are MadeThis is a pretty sweet Flash show that explains how Legos are made, good for kids of all ages. If you don't have Flash, don't bother.
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