Category: Cool

The Official WiNGs Website v2.0

Wings 2

You just can’t put the Commodore 64 down. years out of date, massively under powered, and has not seen a retail store shelf in decades, you can now get an OS that has features that rival most modern operating systems.

WiNGs is a modern Operating System for the Commodore 64 and 128 Computers… The OS includes an optional Graphical User Interface, multiple shell consoles, and integration with the internet via TCP/IP over PPP.

Now, before you call up your mom back home in South Dakota begging her to crawl into the attic and send your old C-64 to you be warned – you can’t run this on you standard stock Commie.

You will need a C64 or C128 Computer with a SuperCPU and at least one Megabyte of SuperRam. An REU or Ramlink can not be substituted in place of SuperRam. You will also need a DiskDrive of some moderate size. A 1581 is the smallest comfortable size recommended, though a limited distribution could be made to run on a 1571 or even a 1541. A CMD HD or Ramlink is preferred over a disk drive. And finally an IDE64 will give you the best (Astounding) results. If you want to use the Graphical User Interface, a 1351 compatible mouse is required. If you want to use the internet, either a Turbo232, Swiftlink or IDE64 Duart is required to interface to a modem.

Your going to be haunting eBay for a while to collect all these things. So before you do that have a look at a few screenshots.
Pretty neat, eh? Your mission, if you choose to accecpt, is to super charge you old Commodore 64 (or better yet, the new C64DTV) with new parts, install WiNGs and hack it into your car. First person that does that and send me some darn good proof I’ll send them an 8×10 of any photo from my gallery or my Flickr account.

The Official WiNGs Website v2.0

blivit, cool, OS, C64, Commodore

Argus C3

C3

This is a little brute of a camera but if you ever have a chance to pick one up you should. For a while this was one of the most popular cameras of it’s time. How I don’t know, the outside gears are like something out of a Jules Vern story. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. If you want a camera that isn’t going to cost you much that you want to tear down and hack on it this could be the one. It’s so simple that you can add different lenses to it, make it into a pinhole camera, convert it to half frames, etc… It’s also the perfect camera for a beginning student. Sure, its not and SLR but a rangefinder is perfectly acceptable for most everyone. Being fully manual it also makes the kids learn a thing or two about exposure.
I bought mine on eBay for around $15US and I’m quite happy with it. I do need to fix the close focus on it but there is enough info on the ‘Net that it should be easy.

Argus Collectors Group
The Argus C3

Argus, camera, antique

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is On The Way

MRO

On Friday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter lifted off on a seven month journey to the red planet on a mission to see if there is any evidence of water.
Once in place the orbiter will not only conduct sub surface mapping and weather surveys, but will also be acting as a communications and navigations link for future missions.
The cameras on board will be able to detect a dinner plate sized object on the surface in order to assist in future landing site selection. It will also be the first link in the ‘Interplanetary Internet’ system that will link other space missions in a more efficient manner.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

space, science, NASA, JPL,
Mars

Custom Car Emblems

Custom car emblems

I saw this on the MAKE Blog today, you too can have a professional grade custom car emblem. Each letter is between $1US ( a dot) and $3.99 (things like ‘@’ and a heart). A pretty good deal if your looking for that special something for your car. I guess you could use them on a plane – but the glue might not be rated for speeds over 80 knots.

Custom Car Emblems

cool, custom

A Reader For My PDA That Works!

reader

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

cool, windowsce, pocketpc, reader, PDA