N3RD AL3RT_

NOTE that this is a test post for scribefire.

Taken from Hack-a-day and Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bluetooth-Handgun-Handset-for-your-iPhone-iGiveUp/

How to turn an airsoft handgun and a bluetooth headset into a fun,
fully functional handset for your iPhone. Pull the trigger to receive
calls and to, um, end them. Listen through the barrel, and talk into the grip.

I think everyone has made the thumb and forefinger gun-to-the-head sign
when someone unpleasant shows up on their caller ID. Eli and I thought
it would be fun to make an actual gun handset, and it turned out to be
surprisingly straightforward. No glue or powertools were required.

Even though it’s not very practical, there’s something so satisfying about ending a call with this handset. Pow.

Naturally, this handset works with any cell phone. You just feel like pulling the trigger more if you own an iPhone.

See more…plus videos
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I have been thinking of moving my blog to blogspot. I know, this seems to be the oposite of what I have always wanted but its mainly because of these reasons:

1. I love Wordpress, I love the flexibility and customizations! But it gets too much to keep up as I am into a lot of other things lately.

2.  As for blogspot, it has been improving albeit a little slowly. Mainly I can add videos, HTML code and Java apps, plus also Google Gadgets. This makes multi-media presentation a bit simpler. Information is more important now, fast information.

So keep an eye on this one for now. I will tell everything about upcoming projects and some more exciting things:

1. Going to buy a rotary tool set!

2. Started learning Python. Amazingly compact and thus a bit tougher to get through it, but its fun.

3. New projects on crazyengineers.com (as xheavenlyx).

4. Will be updating previous projects (since I will be having the rotary tools!)

Here are some interviews with Ben Heckendorn, these are just links and are not mine, but thought neccessary to share with all you readers.

He is a very active game console hacker/moder. Not in any way related to piracy! But he will strip your game console and remake them smaller, portable and much more fun! He has no formal training in electronics but is self thought.

The reason I am writing about him is that he is one of those people who take a boring subject and turn it into creative, artistic, lovable and fun subjects. Visit his website if you are curious: www.benheck.com

He has even written a book:

Hacking Video Game Consoles: Turn your old video game systems into awesome new portables (ExtremeTech)

Ok, so here are the interviews:

1. Hack A Day: Part 1 Podcast about 21 mins,

Part 2 Podcast about 21 mins.

2. Interview with Ben Heck - Console Hacker Extraordinaire From Racket Boy.

3. From Good Deal Games .com : http://www.gooddealgames.com/interviews/int_Ben_Heckendorn.html

Hello after a very long time. There is no particular reason I am late, but mostly laziness… usual.

Anyway, the project idea I had posted earlier is finished. Its a college project so bear with the technicality. Its a joystick in a glove form, has no base to keep it on a table, and you wear it, its a glove. Its official title is: “Design and Development of a Glove Based Joystick Input Device”. Actually, this version I made can only control 2 servo motors and is not for a PC. Future designs will be able to connect to your USB.

Here are a few images:

The Device:

The joysticks are a single pair of Analog controllers salvaged from the Playstation2. The microcontroller is Basic Stamp 2 from Parallax. This is the first version of a glove based device. The goal was to make this a Joystick that can be connected to a computer, however this model does not, its just a demo of the hardware and connects to 2 servomotors to show the flexibility of the joystick and the ADC. The remaining details can be found in the project report.

Future Ideas:

1. I can either take a commercial USB joystick and strip it, connect the inputs to my device and have a fully functional glove based joystick.

2. The more difficult method is to program a PIC32 with USB capabilities. USB- HID (Human Interface Device) protocol can be used.

Here is a ppt describing the protect:
For a full report and construction details email me: varun@crazyengineers.com

You must have, should have read about my visit to CNN in the previous post. Well, we finished off by exchanging cards, no wait, not exchanging, she gave hers. We exited the office in awe, thinking wow, that was damn easy So, while getting down the lift, we stopped on the 3rd floor randomly because of the colorful direction boards and company names. We came across many like Cybertronix, 7 Cube etc, but none were open, so we decided to visit Geo Channel. Half of the whole floor was theirs, nice.

We entered the office, no receptionist. We introduced ourselves to a guy next to the recep. and asked if someone could show us around. He looked puzzled which was understandable considering how many barge in like this - he asked us to talk to a guy sitting behind us. He was the broadcasting Station Head; Mr. Imran Meer. Well, Geo TV is Pakistan’s premiere news and entertainment channel like ARY and local PTV group. He gave a huge smile and said, “So, you guys are students? Want to have a look around?”. We were all wide faced smilie-lookin. He took us to the News station area where they receive feeds from all over the world from other stations and journalists or Routers, AFP, AP etc. The edit all that, translations, voiceovers, etc and give it to the area where its put in line with the anchor talking about all that stuff, the studio where the anchor sits (Hamid Mir). well, just for your information they all use apple Mac’s there, not a single Wondooz based PC for the technical work. Though some employees had 2 pcs, one Mac the other an Intel machine.

more…

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Last week a friend of mine, an old family friend, landed here in Dubai, Emirates. His name, Aamir Mansoor Trambu, a final year student of journalism, mumbai. We had our friendly exchange of life stories and usual recording of random video clips for our own music video (he wanted to showoff what he learned at the school of journalism and I wanted to showoff my Adobe After Effects skills). By the end of the day, suddenly, we decided to do something I had always wanted to for a long time. Visit random companies and pester them with a million questions about their work (and ofcourse learn at the same time, while keeping their irritation at a minimum). So we decided to head to CNN at Dubai Media City.

Now before I talk about the visit, I want to get something off my chest. Generally students, as far as I know in my college, think its not possible to get companies to show them around. This might be from the fact that our college professors never encourage us nor tell us how to go about requesting companies to do that and, sharing the blame, the students themselves are never interested. Very few students have tried it (successfully, but never shared their experience which I dont understand why not) and very few professors have told us to do so (these few professors are the reason I am still interested in engineering For sure, if you try it the right way, companies would love to show you around as long as you truthfully tell them why you are there.

Moving on; I called 119 (Information services) and asked for CNN’s number. They didn’t have CNN listed, weird. Anyway, I know every group here has a website, like Media City (News.TV.Publishing.Magazines.Events), Internet City (Software.CorporateSolutions.TelephoneOps.ISPs), Knowledge Village (Institutes.Training.Colleges.otherCompanies) and Academic city, Biodubai, Silicon Oasis and so on. We got CNN’s number and Aamir called them up. The operator directly transfered the call to a sweet lady, Miss Samia (Initially he got confused and asked if we wanted to drop in our CV, I wish!). Samia asked us to meet the next day (14th Nov) at 12 pm. Wow, we could not believe it. CNN is just a call away!

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I am on a new project these days. This one is under my final year. Its a

Glove Based Joystick Input Device (Wired and Wireless)

1. Progress? Well, I have salvaged 3 pairs of potentiometers from old Playstation 2 controllers.

2. Tested them with RC time technique to get Analog value into the Microcontroller.

3. Yesterday tested with ADC0832 2channe, 8-bit Analog to Digital Converter.

I had problems with the RC discharge time technique, Google the details if interested. too long and damn boring. Now the most important this is connecting it to a PC. I have thought of two methods. One, buying a ready module with USB-HID Protocol. Second, try to implement it myself in Basic Stamp2 (Which is pretty difficult).

I think the first method is my first choice and here is the module I am talking about.

://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/joystick/

http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=98831

Any updates will be posted soon.

Actually there might be a possibility of using Buetooth HID Protocol too

Here are two videos I made using windows movie mekah. Its not bad for basic picture to video presentation and amature video editing. The best features are easy text/titles/credits and splitting an imported video. The worst thing about this is the video can only be exported in .WMV format!!!

16 October 2006 v1.0

Elec: 3.5 Comp: 2 Mech: 0

Introduction

In this tutorial we will flash a LED (Light Emitting Diode) connected to your printer port socket. Reading the first part is recommended to get a general idea what you are upto.

Connections

To connect a LED to your port first you have to know what it looks like. Here are the two most common connectors that you can have.

D-Type 25 Pin connector

Pin Layout:

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The cocky exponential function e^x is strolling along the road insulting the functions he sees walking by. He scoffs at a wandering polynomial for the shortness of its Taylor series. He snickers at a passing smooth function of compact support and its glaring lack of a convergent power series about many of its points. He positively laughs as he passes |x| for being nondifferentiable at the origin. He smiles, thinking to himself, “Damn, it’s great to be e^x. I’m real analytic everywhere. I’m my own derivative. I blow up faster than anybody and shrink faster too. All the other functions suck.”Lost in his own egomania, he collides with the constant function 3, who is running in terror in the opposite direction.

“What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demands e^x. He then sees the fear in 3’s eyes and says “You look terrified!”

“I am!” says the panicky 3. “There’s a differential operator just around the corner. If he differentiates me, I’ll be reduced to nothing! I’ve got to get away!” With that, 3 continues to dash off.

“Stupid constant,” thinks e^x. “I’ve got nothing to fear from a differential operator. He can keep differentiating me as long as he wants, and I’ll still be there.”

So he scouts off to find the operator and gloat in his smooth glory. He rounds the corner and defiantly introduces himself to the operator. “Hi. I’m e^x.”

“Hi. I’m d / dy.”

Taken from http://komplexify.com/math/jokes/TheEToTheXJoke.html ! Thanks