Author: John

How To Convert Christmas Lights to Run on Batteries

Battery Christmas Lights: How to convert Xmas lights to run on batteries/DC 

Just as Christmas rounds the corner the notion of LED Christmas lights shows up on the shelves of popular stores. Those things are juts too inviting not to hack up, eh? I mean you get like 70 LEDS or various colors in pre-wired sockets. How cool is that? The obvious hack is to ween them off from AC power and let them suck on batteries. The hack listed below is pretty much for the always on non-flashing LED or old fashioned incandescent bulb strings but I’m betting that the ones with the cycle controllers can also be hacked. I’ll be doing this in a few days, I’ll let you know how it works out. Try the hack out and have fun bending them to you will. Muhahaha!

Battery Christmas Lights: How to convert Xmas lights to run on batteries/DC (regular or LED)

Skyacht

SkyachtWhen I was a youngster I remember a children’s book called something like the great balloon race. I don’t remember the exact plot of the story (it should be self evident from it’s title) but the flying contraptions were just fascinating to me. All sorts of balloons with weird cars under them. Very inspirational to a seven year old. So, with this hot air balloon I could recapture the dreams of my youth! Or I could putter around a park at 12 MPH. Still, this would be darn fun. Plus, it looks like a prop from the movie, ‘The Great Race‘. How cool is that?

[via ektopia]

SKYACHT

Blu-Ray Laser Pointer

Blu-Ray pointerI got an email from the boys over at Hacked Gadgets this morning about some horrendous things being done over at Wicked lasers. The laser guys have decided to do a little modding of a brand spanking new Blu-Ray equipped DVD player. They ripped out the laser diode assembly and placed it in an easy to abuse aluminum housing, just the right size to take to parties, shopping, and trade shows, etc. The purple beam (405nM at 23 mW) is bound to make lasting impressions with whomever you blind, er, I mean show it to…

Hacked Gadgets – Making the Sonar Blu-ray wicked laser

Laser safety 

Autostitch Panorama Program

Autostitch Brooklyn bridgeI decided to give the UBC AutoStitch program a try today. I had taken over 70 images at very close range on the Brooklyn bridge on my last visit there with thought of making a panogram out of them but the distortions proved to be too great. I remembered reading about how there was a fully automatic panoramic program that worked wonders in cases like this. The image isn’t perfect but I’m quite pleased with the outcome. So if your looking for a free alternative to the pano maker in Photoshop or Panotools you should give this a try.

DIY Cintiq LED Drawing Pad

DIY Cintiq LED Drawing Pad

Yeah, so why should you buy high tech toys when you can build your own? This is a very sweet project I hope to see other people try this as well.

"This is hybrid screen/graphics tablet which makes me drool. The price however makes me weep, £2000ish for the 20" version. They also do a thing called the PL at 17" for a more reasonable £500ish. Occasionally they appear on the site in their bargain basement ex-demo section. Still hard for me to justify though.

Then I had one of those "spang" moments. None of the tech involved is new and all is readily available second hand, it’s just a matter of putting it together. My Wacom at work will happily operate with the stylus off the surface, after that it’s just an LCD screen, right? Anyhow where’s the fun in just buying something?

Experiment – what depth does a tablet work to? Stack of paper says 9mm before accuracy starts to suffer noticeably. An LCD with an EL film backlight has to be thinner than that.

So here’s the challenge, What is the least amount of money I can build a Cintiq style device for?

[via MAKE] 

DIY Cintiq

North Dakota is Famous for Something Very Tall

KVLY tower

 

 

 

 

 

This brings back memories… I grew up in Fargo and I remember driving past this massive tower a number of times. All the photos you see of it just don’t do this structure justice. When I was a kid the TV station was called KTHI-11 but the name was changed a few years back to KVLY-11. The tower is still just as impressive as it once was and is once again the worlds tallest supported structure. It was pushed to second tallest by a transmitter tower in Poland in 1974 but that tower collapsed in 1991. At a height of 2,062 feet it serves the North Dakota and Minnesota area with a footprint of over 190 miles in diameter.

[via digg]

The KVLY-11 TV Tower – Tallest in the world

Wikipedia – KVLY-11 Tower