The venerable Commodore 64 is set to rise again in 2010, or the Commodore USA website would lead you to believe. Apparently it will support various OS, Windows, Ubuntu, Apple (unofficially only), Chrome, Aros, Comodo (whatever those last two are) packs a quad core Intel CPU, 4 GB memory, DVD drive… However, I call shenanigans on the whole thing. Aside from looking like a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica, the critter looks exactly like the Zero Footprint PC offered by Cybernetman. Yeah, I think this is the case of someone wanting to cash in on the classic Commodore name (but where is the ‘C64’ logo we all know and love, eh?). Still, an all in one keyboard/PC would be useful in a small office or a students desk.
Marx Generators
Ah, the Marx generator. I have fond and not so fond memories of building my first one. It worked very well, I knew this because of the sort of out of body feeling I had when I got zapped by it. Anyway, it works by charging up a bank of capacitors in parallel and then are discharged in series. It will turn a few wimpy volts into something that will quite literally take your breath away. This site has a nice semi tutorial on how one is built. Go have a read and start scrounging in your junk box for some parts (mind you, keep a hand in your pocket to avoid making a dead short across your chest and through your heart. It’s not a sure thing but it helps)
Marx generators at madlabs.info
More info over at Wikipedia
Cube.ly 3D Printer
I went to the bi-monthly hackerspace meeting last night. They had a guy there giving a talk about an open source 3D printer that he and his company is working on. I posted photos of it on Flickr. The thing is called ‘Cube.ly‘ and will, once finished, print 10cc of volume per hour, cost under $1000, takes a weekend to build, and is made of off the shelf parts. The frame is made of this stuff called ‘80/20′, think adult sized Erector set and the other bits like motors are available from McMaster-Carr or the guys that build the Makerbot (electronics).
The Sandpit
The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
Such a wonderful mix of tilt-lens camera work and time lapse technique.
“It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card. The boats had slower frame rates, and the night shots used exposures up to two seconds each. The camera actually has an automatic cut off after 130 shots, so for longer shots I counted each click and quickly released and re-pressed the shutter release after 130 to keep shooting.”
For more info about the making of this short visit: “The Sandpit” – A short film by Aero Director, Sam O’Hare!
[via MAKE]
MONOCHRON – Monochome display clock kit
Another very cool clock kit to lust after. I swear, if I had my way my room would look like Doc Brown lived in it…
The second clock kit from ladyada & Adafruit Industries, we present MONOCHRON!
We wanted to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a seperate battery-backed RTC to desiging the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled
- 128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display
- ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too)
- Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic
- Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze
- Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years
- European/US 12 or 24 hour time display as well as date
- Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with
- Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in
- Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two
30 Best Practices for Writing HTML
Even if you are not a professional web developer and can only just cut and paste enough HTML to make a web page not totally suck these 30 tips are something that you should read. Lot’s of good practical advice, stuff like closing your tags and if you use inline styles an asteroid will strike you dead (not really but inline styles are still a bad idea). Read it and remember it the next time you are working on your magnum opus ‘Hello World’ page.