Author: John

The Mechanical Mustache

“A mustache party? By Jove I’ll be there!” I exclaimed as I dashed forth from my lab!

I few weeks ago I got wind of a party that the local hackerspace here in the greater Phoenix area was having. They decided to celebrate their one year anniversary by holding a mustache party. So I decided to live the hacker dream and build my own mustache (yes, I have a natural one but that was easy to make).
Take a look at the process that I went through to build my creation. I give you the  Mechanical Mustache Project!

Torrents In Space!


Yarr… The idea of placing a file server in orbit around Earth sounds cool but the practicality of it verges on the crazy insane. Anyway, a server that is on orbit my be exempt from international law but the ground stations that serve it are not. I suppose you could put a satellite up/down link on someplace like Sealand and worry about feeding data to and from that. It’s still not going to solve the problem of hosting data that countries don’t want being hosted.

This week, Pirate Parties worldwide started brainstorming about a similarly ambitious plan. Instead of founding their own nation, they want to shoot a torrent site into orbit.

Pirate Parties Plan to Shoot Torrent Site Into Orbit.

Hand Made SLR Camera

I see this and I feel that I’ve been seriously slacking off! ‘Denis MO’ have been thinking of building his own camera for many many years and finally decided to act on his dreams. His original camera design is loosely based on Russian cameras (Zenit, Zorki, etc) and can use common Russian lenses (Industar, Helios, Mir) and has a variable shutter that can be set to 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, and bulb. After about 500 hours of planning and machining he now has a fine camera that takes a pretty good picture.

[via Hack-a-Day]

Homemade SLR Camera by Denis MO in English!.

Optio NB1000 Now With Blocks!

In a collaboration with Nanoblocks (looks like a Japanese version of the popular Danish wonder block system LEGO) camera maker Pentax has a new 14 mega pixel camera that is covered in bumpy customization happiness. The camera has all the latest features that digital cameras need to have, face detection, HD video, 4x optical zoom, that’s nice and everything but it’s got places to attach Nanoblock bricks. I can see this being handy for adding filters to the flash or making a sports finder or I suppose you could add little cute critters and other cute creations to it. Not sure if it will ever get to the US but it would be fun to mess with.

[via NOTCOT]

Optio NB1000 ( Translated by Google )
Optio NB1000｜コンパクトデジタルカメラ｜PENTAX.

Mouse Acceleration in OS X

Mouse accelerationI have a second hand MacBook but I don’t use it much, main reason is that I hate the track pad and when I use a mouse with it it ‘feels’ wrong. Hard to describe just what it is but it’s like the cursor is just not moving the right way. I did find a little tool that has helped but I’m still a little put off by the whole feel of the mouse. Maybe this will help you if you are also suffering from ‘odd mouse’ syndrome.
Mouse Acceleration Preference Pane for Mac OS X.