Geek-Fun
cn | 11 January, 2007 21:18
If you live in or around Toronto and you weren't at Wireless Toronto's inaugural Hacknight, you ain't livin'! Wireless Toronto...
...is a not-for-profit group dedicated to bringing no-fee wireless Internet access to Toronto. Our aim is to encourage the growth of wireless networking and to build community in interesting and innovative ways.
So Wireless Toronto goes around Toronto promoting and helps organize and set up free WiFi hotspots throughout the city and they decided to start a more outwardly geek-social branch of what they do (and their site has a list of free wifi in the city...). As reported by torontoist.com:
they're starting a series of group tech-project hacknight get-togethers. Beer, wires, routers, cordless drills...you get the idea.
Tuesday was the first part of a grander project to build a wifi backpack:
"We’re building a wifi backpack, which we’ve affectionately called the WiFi Roach Coach (long story). It’ll be a battery-powered WRT54GL and Rogers/Bell/Inukshuk pre-WiMax modem providing connectivity. (It’s a NextNet Expedience RSU-2510-AV.) This’ll allow us to set up an instant Wireless Toronto hotspot anyplace where we can get a (pre-)WiMax signal. It’ll be especially useful to provide wifi coverage at events."
Yup--a hotspot in a backpack!
These hacknights, which will be held at InterAccess from here on in, are open to any and all interested parties.
How cool is that? When I read the news I often begin to get lost in the horror of the mainstream media so when I run across news of people doing stuff like this, I love it! The more people that are out in the world getting together to do something creative, stimulating, and social, the better off we all are.
As a note, though it's called Hacknight, they're not doing anything illegal - simply hacking together a geek-cool techno-tool. I may just have to make a road trip to Toronto to sit in on a session!
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Cryptography - Keep Your Privacy One Way or Another
cn | 11 March, 2006 21:03
Over at Slashdot there's a review of a new book about the history of cryptography. Here's a clip:
Ever since the first codes and ciphers were developed, there has been a battle between those who want to keep their information secret, and those who want to read that information. It has been a purely intellectual war, but one that is often driven by motives from above that are far more violent. This book chronicles that battle, from it's inception, to the modern day, and outlines the techniques used to obfuscate information, and the fascinating history of the application of those techniques.
Remember - be responsible for protecting yourself, because those claiming to be your protector might just be spying on you.
Read the review here.
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Soybean-Powered Car Gets 50 mpg, Made by High School Kids
cn | 07 March, 2006 19:00
So on cbsnews.com the other day they ran a story about a handful of city high school kids who build a soybean-powered car that goes from 0-60 in 4 seconds, gets 50 miles per gallon, and maybe even saved their lives. From cbsnews.com:
The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car — one that combines performance and practicality under one hood.
...
A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No — just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School
The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year — rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop.
"We have a number of high school dropouts," he says. "We have a number that have been removed for disciplinary reasons and they end up with us."
One of the Fab Five, Kosi Harmon, was in a gang at his old school — and he was a terrible student. The car project has changed all that.
"I was just getting by with the skin of my teeth, C's and D's," he says. "I came here, and now I'm a straight-A student."
What's the best part of this whole situation? These kids know more about just making cool cars. Why wouldn't a big car maker jump on this? The kids have the answer:
"We made this work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it?"
Kosi thinks he knows why. The answer, he says, is the big oil companies.
"They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down — to low billions upon billions."
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Stuff to Hide? Be a 007 - Make Your Own Hollowed-Out Book
cn | 04 March, 2006 18:09
The How To Do Stuff Blog has a very cool post about how to make a hollowed out book to hide stuff in:
The first step into making the hollow book is to select a book. Make sure this is a book your own, and not one belonging to the library, or your family. I suggest rummaging through books at yard/garage sales.
Make sure it is a hardback; otherwise you will cut all the way through the other side when you are cutting out the insides.
You'll also need:
- Elmer's white glue
- a container to hold glue solution (I've chosen a film canister)
- X-acto knife, and/or box cutter. Both if you have them
- brush to apply glue solution
- pencil/pen
- ruler, or other rigid straight edge
Select a page that you want to be the first one cut out, and save that page to be cut out at the end. (I'll explain later) Even if you don't want to save any pages at the beginning of the book, you must set one aside for a later step.
Next step? A secret sliding bookshelf...
Full instructions and pictures on the blog here.
Originally found via Lifehacker.com here.
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Kill the TVs
cn | 02 March, 2006 10:54
So I at long last have a TV. No cable, not even a DVD player, though I do sometimes watch movies via the DVD player on my computer. We get 4.5 channels and still I find myself wandering down to work in front of it.
But if ever I'm somewhere and I'm tired of the incessant brain drain box and don't have the remote, I can now get a new weapon to kill the TVs - it's called TV-B-Gone and it's $20. Here's the description from the Cool Tools blog:
Switch off thousands of TVs using just one small remote!When you want some peace and quiet in that local bar of restaurant or office all you need to do is hit the TV-B-Gone button. I've used it in bars and clubs, and in the headquarters building of a large South African bank which had too many TV's on the walls and some of which needed to switched off. It really does work.
--Paul Parkinson
[When you press the button, TV-B-Gone takes slightly more than a minute to emit more than 200 popular shutdown codes, like trying every possible combination to open a safe. The instructions include a diatribe against television in general, as if using this product is not merely a prank, but a serious political act. CP]
I'm thinking of purchasing just for kicks...But it makes you think - if there's a consumer electronic device that through the click of a button can shut down so many machines, what's out there that we don't know about? Consider this: the power went out for the weekend in my area. Over one hundred thousand people lost power and it was the coldest few days of the winter thus far. It was mayhem. Stores were closed, hotels lost power after their generators ran out, gas stations couldn't pump gas, etc.
If we can shut down all the TVs in a room with the click of a button, what will someone be able to do tomorrow, or next week? What can the government do now?
But it's still a cool gizmo. The original Cool Tools post is here.
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READ THIS ARTICLE - Persistence, Inspiration, and a Cyborg
cn | 07 January, 2006 16:23
At Wired Magazine's website there's an amazing autobiographical article entitled "My Bionic Quest for Bolero" by Michael Chorost. It chronicles his journey to regain his ability to listen to Ravel's Bolero after completely losing his hearing in July of 2001.
He writes:
Helen Keller famously said that if she had to choose between being deaf and being blind, she'd be blind, because while blindness cut her off from things, deafness cut her off from people. For centuries, the best available hearing aid was a horn, or ear trumpet, which people held to their ears to funnel in sound. In 1952, the first electronic hearing aid was developed. It worked by blasting amplified sound into a damaged ear. However it (and the more advanced models that followed) could help only if the user had some residual hearing ability, just as glasses can help only those who still have some vision. Cochlear implants, on the other hand, bypass most of the ear's natural hearing mechanisms. The device's electrodes directly stimulate nerve endings in the ear, which transmit sound information to the brain. Since the surgery can eliminate any remaining hearing, implants are approved for use only in people who can't be helped by hearing aids. The first modern cochlear implants went on the market in Australia in 1982, and by 2004 approximately 82,500 people worldwide had been fitted with one.
The implant, however, did not restore his ability to listen to Bolero
in all its magnificence. But Michael, apparently, is not one to simply take what's given, and four years after losing his hearing completely, with the help of a number of engineers and doctors, he hacked the implant to...well...near perfection:
As it turns out, I couldn't have chosen a better piece of music for testing new implant software. Some biographers have suggested that Boléro's obsessive repetition is rooted in the neurological problems Ravel had started to exhibit in 1927, a year before he composed the piece. It's still up for debate whether he had early-onset Alzheimer's, a left-hemisphere brain lesion, or something else.
But Boléro's obsessiveness, whatever its cause, is just right for my deafness. Over and over the theme repeats, allowing me to listen for specific details in each cycle.
At 5:59, the soprano saxophones leap out bright and clear, arcing above the snare drum. I hold my breath.
At 6:39, I hear the piccolos. For me, the stretch between 6:39 and 7:22 is the most Boléro of Boléro, the part I wait for each time. I concentrate. It sounds … right.
Hold on. Don't jump to conclusions. I backtrack to 5:59 and switch to Hi-Res. That heart-stopping leap has become an asthmatic whine. I backtrack again and switch to the new software. And there it is again, that exultant ascent. I can hear Boléro's force, its intensity and passion. My chin starts to tremble.
I open my eyes, blinking back tears. "Congratulations," I say to Emadi. "You have done it." And I reach across the desk with absurd formality and shake his hand.
The article goes into great detail about human hearing, the technology involved in his implant, and the trials and tribulations he went through to reach this accomplishment. As Boing Boing Blog puts it:
[from the article] I spent two and a half days hooked up to the computer, listening to endless sequences of tones - none of it music - in a windowless cubicle. Which of two tones sounded lower? Which of two versions of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" was more recognizable? Did this string of notes sound like a march or a waltz? It was exacting, high-concentration work - like taking an eye exam that lasted for two days. My responses produced reams of data that they would spend hours analyzing.
boingboing post here.
Read the article here.
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