Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
As I said in a previous post, I use Costco for my photo printing and they use this nifty Frontier printing system to process the digital images you give them. Dry Creek has on file a number of different profiles for digital printers at places like Costco, Ritz, Wallmart, etc. By using one of these you can proof your images and get better color accuracy when you send you images to them for printing.
This is a future project for me. After hearing about Van Eck phreaking in high school (I think it was that far back) I have wanted to give it a try. I don’t have a real reason to do it other than to say that I did. Good enough. I just want to be able to see what my PC is displaying. I’ll have to get Linux up a running on a box first but that shouldn’t be a problem. Oh wait, my work bench is no more, a move to a tiny apartment took care of that for me. Hey, I have an idea, just click on the ‘donate’ button and send the TeamDroid site $5. All of it will go towards a new research center (bigger apartment). Once I have that I’ll have a place to build and review all sorts of cool stuff.
But I bet your still wondering what the hell this ‘Van Eck Phreaking’ thing is aren’t you? Well, think of your computer as a series of radio transmitters. You can pretty much think of all electronic devices as transmitters and receivers in some way or another actually. What a Van Eck rig lets you do is tune into the radio station in your computer that is coming from your video card. I think your seeing the idea here. Once you have all the timing right you should be able to see what is one someone else’s computer screen. Cool, eh? Sounds like a dandy cloak-and-dagger sort of thing that would be happening all over the place don’t it? Well, as will most things, the truth is that it’s hard to get it to work and when it does the results are sometimes not all that good. Van Eck Phreaking is also known my another name, TEMPEST – that was an old code word for a general electronic surveillance project back in the ’50’s and the name stuck.
Things like this are pretty much the reign of the NSA and cyberpunk authors, but if you have the time and will you can play with it yourself and if I get a larger work bench I’ll do the same.
EckBox – an Open Source van Eck Phreaker
AllYouEverWantedToKnowAboutTempest
Tonight I was looking to add a copy of the latest Cory Doctorow novel to my PDA. Doctorow’s site has versions of his book in just about every format you could ever want, go take a look – it’s positively impressive.
I figured I’d have an easy time finding a format that would work on my PDA but I was sadly mistaken. At first I tried an HTML file, figuring the built in Internet Explorer would be able to load it but it barfed and locked up. Then I tried the Microsoft Reader, you know the LIT files that all the DRM junkies just love? Well it loaded it just fine and looked great but informed me that it could no longer display the book after page 14. Somehow, that makes sense in a Microsoft sort of way. Looks great but screws you on performance.
I didn’t even bother with the PalmOS PRC file, my Mobilpocket reader is a pain to use.
And a Pocket Word document is out of the question, the batteries will run out before it would ever load.
After almost giving up and forgetting the whole thing I spotted the Fictionbook 2 format one and a new reader called Haali Reader. What the heck, I’ll give it a try. So I downloaded the book and reader and ran it on the PDA and bingo, instant book. No problems with memory issues and it looks great! I throw a 2.2MB text file at it half expecting to need to reset it and to my amazement it works. I poke through the settings and discover that I can rotate the text for horizontal reading, auto scrolling, and bunches of other stuff.
Take a gander at the list of features:
* Loads plain text and XML files. (There were rumours that Haali Reader can open Microsoft LIT files. This is not the case. LIT format is not supported and will never be supported.)
* Cyrillic encodings support with autodetection.
* Last viewed position in file is saved on exit.
* ClearType support.
* Any font/size can be selected.
* Fullscreen and landscape mode.
* Colors can be adjusted.
* Text search.
* Dictionary support. Tapping a word opens a translation window.
* Automatic hyphenation (russian language only).
* Table of contents and bookmarks
* Multiple columns support (1-4)
* PRC/PDB files support (plain text and XML only, HTML is not supported).
* Builtin ZIP archives support.
* Autoscroll (controlled from keyboard/buttons only, settings are in Options->Buttons).
If you have a PocketPC go grab a copy of Haali reader, you won’t regret it.
Haali Reader – a book reader for Windows CE
I want a magazine sized sheet of this that will display PDF files, simple text files, and the Zino file format so I can read the electronic versions of magazines. Plus a compact flash slot and USB interface for easy loading of files. Could this be the beginning of on demand newspapers? Just get the ePaper and load it from newspaper sellers or off the Internet.
world’s first film substrate-based bendable color electronic paper with an image memory function. The new electronic paper features vivid color images that are unaffected even when the screen is bent, and features an image memory function that enables continuous display of the same image without the need for electricity. The thin and flexible electronic paper uses very low power to change screen images, thereby making it ideal for displaying information or advertisements in public areas as a type of new electronic media that can be handled as easily as paper.
Fujitsu Color ePaper Press Release
“This lipstick size device has an RCA Video Male Plug. Plug this Video Bulb to your Video Input and it will play endless animation of BITMAN on your TV screen. Another creative media art by Ryota Kuwakubo.”
I remember seeing this a long time ago somewhere but there has been an update in the form of an input device that will allow users to create their own 8×8 animations. Pretty cool.
Go see if you can build a… ‘thing’ that is faster than what the computer can come up with. Sometimes being able to add real fast gives you the upper hand. :/
Sodarace is the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to design robots that race over 2D terrains using the Sodaconstructor virtual construction kit.