I’ve always wondered how well it would work to use a video camera and an LCD monitor to simulate a gaping hole in one’s belly but I’ve never got around to trying it out. Apparently it works pretty well as this fellow shows us:
Update: Here’s a video and some pictures of a 2-way version of this concept in a “Death Becomes Her” costume.
I was poking around at a garage sale over the weekend and I came across some rare synth parts. At least I assume they’re rare because I can’t find any information about them on the Intertubes. First I found some Nord logs.
That lady didn’t have any clue what she had. I was able to buy the whole box for a quarter! I asked if she had any more parts and she said she had some Nord linears earlier that morning but some old guy bought them all up. I guess I need to get out of bed earlier if I’m going to outfox old people at garage sales. Anyway I’ll probably keep a couple for myself (just in case) and sell the rest on eBay. I don’t know what’s so special that makes them “fire” logs, but they sound way more extreme than the regular ones.
Next I found some part for a Moog chassis.
The box doesn’t have any part numbers on it so I’m having trouble figuring out which Moog it will fit. If anybody has any information about this part let me know. I think it may be the part you install when your Voyager sits a little wobbly on the table, but I can’t be sure. I don’t think I’m going to bother selling it since one of the parts is missing and the box is all smudged. If you do want it shoot me an email and maybe we can trade something.
So you’re clicking along on your PC and everything is working great. Suddenly USB devices that have previously given you no grief are no longer recognized by Windows. You try all the usual stuff and continue to get a “USB Device Not Recognized” error:
Of course none of these methods work and you start to fear that perhaps a massive power surge wiped out all your USB devices at once.
Fear not, for there is a simple solution to your problem: Unplug your computer. That’s right, completely unplug the power supply.
New-fangled computers don’t turn completely off when you shut them down. Sure, they’re dark and quiet, but some of the circuitry remains powered up. This can include the USB chips, presumably so features like “wake on space bar” will work. Sometimes they get a little confused and need to be reset, but just shutting the machine down doesn’t do it. If you completely remove power from the system for several seconds then fire everything back up it should fix your problem.
It’s not quite a hidden Mickey, but it’s still a fun example of engineers hiding fun things in their designs. I bought a cobalt/black Nintendo DS Lite the other day and took it apart (in the name of science of course). The first thing I noticed was that the contacts for the D-Pad now looked like peace symbols instead of their usual split-circle design.
The new board has “C/USG-CPU-10” screened on it, where the old one had “C/USG-CPU-01”.
I’m sure there’s some very sound technical reason for the change (more separate contact areas or something) but it’s still good to see the folks at the big “N” having fun with their stuff. Now I guess I need to look at the new board even closer to see if there are any more fun surprises.
There’s a new how-to over at Automat3d showing you how to hack a Gemmy skull so that it can be controlled via MIDI. This would let you sync the skull with whatever soundtrack you wanted rather than relying on its built-in sounds.
After checking out a x0xb0x at the Pacific Northwest Synth Gathering/Meeting/Extravaganza I’ve decided that I need to build one for myself.
Yard-light motion sensors are a great source of cheap haunt automation. The problem with them is that out of the box they can only control things that run on 120VAC. Automat3d has an article that tells you how to mod these sensors so that they have a switched (dry contact) output so you can use them to control low voltage things, MP3 players, props that have a “Try Me” button, etc. Pretty much anything that can be controlled with a switch or button can be controlled with a hacked motion sensor.
Laser toast seems to be all the rage lately, so I figured I’d give it a go. After all, the laser ham I made a few months ago worked out pretty well.
The touch screens in phones are pretty tough these days, but when they break the phone is pretty much toast. Or is it? It turns out the LCD screen in the T-Mobile Wing is actually pretty easy to replace, and I’ll show you how.
A couple years ago I bought an Epson StylusColor R200. My last Epson printer clogged all the time and I had to spend a bunch of time cleaning the nozzles every time I wanted to print, so I wasn’t going to buy another one, but the R200 made really pretty pictures, had six separately replaceable cartridges and even printed on CDs. For $99 I figured I couldn’t go wrong. I’d just buy a new printer if this one started sucking.
