Author: John

Antique Mac Web Servers

SE/30

I own a Color Classic as well an a much abused SE/30 (I added an Apple logo shaped window to it’s side) and I’ve been wanting to get some more use out of them before they fail totally. In the past I’ve tried to use the SE/30 as a web cam server, it kind of worked but it was slow and almost impossable to configure because the Quickcam software is too large for the screen. The Classic has an AAUI card in it but after a rather impressive blue smoke event with a weird media adapter I have pretty much written the card off.
I decided to do a bit of searching and see if anyone had tried building a useful Internet machine out of these antiques and was quite happy to discover that a few had. One of particular note is the Classic web server. Its online and even has a small downloads section that is running off it’s FDHD. You might think, “big deal, there are millions of web servers out there”. Well that might be true but look at the specs of this one:

Specifications:
CPU – 8MHz Motorola 68000
RAM – Maxed out at 4mb
Hard Drive – 40mb
Floppy Drive – 1.44mb 3.5″
Monitor – Built in 9″ black and white
Ethernet Connection – Asante EN/SC 10T SCSI to Ethernet Adapter
Operating System – Macintosh System 7.5
Server Software – MacHTTP
Web Browser – MacWeb 2.0
Screensaver – Basic Black

Yeah, not what you would call a powerhouse!
From there I noticed the link to the ‘68K Macintosh Web Server Directory‘. That is like pure gold! Gobs of ‘old world’ macs serving up pages fo rthe world to see. The SE/30 Webcam Server. Now he cheats a bit, his webcam is Firewire’d into an iMac and the SE/30 just serves the images up. The page you see is coming from the SE/30 though.
The one I want to build will have the computer do everything. Take the picture and serve it up to you. I might have to settle with just FTP’ing the image to this page and serving it up from there, my ISP has this thing about servers.

cool, antique, server, Macintosh, Apple

Pinholegraphy

Pinhography

This is agreat site devoted to a love of pinhole photography. I discovered Xiao Shan’s home page when I was looking at his Flickr photostream. As you can see by the image I’m using for this story, Shan likes to improvise and create unique cameras out of whatever is around, I like the zebra cameras myself but the coffee cameraas are a very close second. Its a great place to kick start your brain if your looking for a photo project and you get to see some beautiful photos too.

PINHOLEGRAPHY

photo, pinhole, camera, Japan, DIY

OfficeGuns – Slayer of Cans

Can killer

This is cooler than the Mini Claymore by far!
I built one of these at home last night and got some pretty good results. The pencils could have used something to stabilize them in flight, fins or maybe something to give it a bit of spin. Other than that I was able to shoot them across the room with ease. This might be the perfect thing to deter the pigeons from eating the cat food…

OfficeGuns – Guns Advanced – Super Maul

clever, improvised, office, guns,

Medical Scans Can Trip Airport Radiation Detectors

Radiation

Up until now I used to worry about if I had been around anything with gun powder in it when I was going to board a flight, I have read reports of people tripping the security devices by having powder residue on themselves because of things like target practice, hunting or reloading shells. Now you have to be careful that your last medical procedure doesn’t come back to give you a hard time.

Certain medical scans can render people radioactive enough to trigger false security alarms at airports for up to a month, a Lancet article warns…
The Lancet piece highlights the case of a 55-year-old commercial pilot referred for cardiac investigation. Doctors carried out a scan using a radioisotope of the element thallium. Two days after the scan the patient travelled to Moscow as a crew member.
While passing through customs, the radiation detector alarms were triggered, and the patient was detained for questioning. After extensive interrogation, he was released, but experienced the same problem at the same airport four days later.
Eventually the airport security officials gave him a card to carry while travelling that explained his scan was to blame.

Medical Scans Can Trip Airport Radiation Detectors

medical, security, radioactive,

USB Carbonite Key

USB Han Solo

Perfect! Now this is worth getting, your very own Han Solo in Carbonite USB key. This is in addition to the C3PO, Darth Vader, and R2-D2 keys that IO Data came out with a few months ago. They also have a very attractive new Darth Vader inspired key that features the head of the Sith lord infront of some flames. I’d stick with the Han Solo key, it has a much higher geek factor to it.

I-O Data Device Ltd. adds “Darth Vader 2” of the new design and “Han Soroincarbonait” to USB flash memory “STAR WARS USB memory collection” that gives the design of science fiction film “STAR WARS”, and puts it on the market in the middle of August. The price is 5,355 yen. OS is Windows 2000/XP.

The second bounce of eye Or and “STAR WARS” USB memory
(Story in the raw Japanese)

storage, memory, Japan, USB, cool, Star Wars

Ben Franklin and the Bifocal

glasses

Good old Ben, without him we could never had had the wonderful invention of the bifocal when we did. I’m hoping to have my eyes zapped with that LASIK or photorefractive keratectomy thing that they do now days but I suspect that when I get older I’ll lose the ability to focus on close up objects. I’ve noticed it starting already, just means I’m getting old and that bites. Anyway, when I get my first pair of bifocals I’ll have Ben Franklin to thank for them. And my insurance company too, lets not forget them.

Bifocals, the combination of both concave and convex lenses for both types of vision correction, a top lens for distant viewing and a lower lens for reading, were developed around 1760 by the American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin.

Ben Franklin and the Bifocal

history, optics, Ben Franklin, glasses