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Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks
Fullam takes the reader from the very basics of hardware hacking and quickly gets up to speed with some fun and interesting hacks. Projects start out easy and increase in complexity and cost as the book progresses. Hardware Hacking covers many popular hacks we've all seen before, such as the "Macquarium" (Mac Aquarium), a web-enabled coffee machine, and the Blinkenlights building-sized display.
The book is divided into two main parts, the first covering basic hacks, and the second covering more advanced hacks.
Part One:
Starting with the basics, Fullam takes the reader through a crash course in electronics, covering concepts like soldering, using a voltmeter, identifying various electronic components and reading schematics. This section of the book is by no means a replacement for a course in electrical engineering, but it is definitely a solid primer for those of us who weren't born with a soldering iron in our hands. If you've never played with electronics before and don't know the difference between a resistor and a capacitor, this section should get you up to speed fairly quickly.
After the brief basics lesson, the next chapter dives right in to the first project, which is a portable laptop power supply made with a pile of D-cell batteries, a battery holder and some wire. This project is very simple and requires no soldering at all, yet it gives the reader a quick and easy way to make something useful with very little investment in time or money.
Each of the projects is presented in a well-organized manner, starting out with a brief summary and some background information about where the hack originated. A list of necessary tools and materials is also given, followed by a project overview, outlining the major tasks required to get the project completed. Each project outline gives estimates for the cost range, time required and difficulty level for the hack.
After the introductory stuff is out of the way, step-by-step instructions are given on how to assemble, modify or hack the device in question. The instructions are easy to follow and are complete with images or illustrations where appropriate. Many pages contain sidebars that contain additional information related to the project, such as more photos, hints and tips, and links to relevant websites. These sidebars really help to fill in any gaps that may be present in the main text.
At the end of each chapter, Fullam has an "extensions" section, where he suggests ways the hacks can be hacked further, to improve upon the design or alter them to offer more or different functionality. This is one point where the book really shines, advocating the true spirit of hacking and encouraging creativity and experimentation whenever possible throughout the book.
At the end of each chapter is a "Bill of Materials" and schematics for the hack. The bill of materials outlines in great detail all tools and hardware required for the project, including approximate costs as well as sources where they can be purchased.
Some of the highlights in the first section of the book include the "Macquarium," a water-based PC cooling system, and the infamous Furby hack. The Macintosh mod teaches some valuable lessons on using a Dremel tool and working with Plexiglas, which are great skills any budding case modder would want to have. The water-based PC cooling project is one of the more useful hacks presented in the book, showing the reader how to create an inexpensive but effective means to cool down an overclocked CPU. And hacking the Furby to give it a new vocabulary is... well, definitely a great topic for conversation if nothing else. If you have to ask why someone would do such a thing, you wouldn't understand the answer.
Part Two:
Part Two of the book starts off with another more advanced lesson in electronics. It delves into more detail, describing different types of resistors, capacitors and connectors. It also introduces transistors, looking at integrated circuits and surface-mount components as well. One thing I found particularly useful was the section explaining how to read and interpret manufacturers' data sheets for integrated circuits.
The advanced hacks featured in Part Two of Hardware Hacking are a little more exciting than those featured in the first half of the book, but are definitely more involved. The section starts off with a chapter on building a PC-based PVR, using Mandrake Linux. Sample code is included to create shell scripts for a simple, text-based interface, although Fullam does briefly mention some of the more popular GUI-based PVR software available, such as Freevo and MythTV.
Another great hack featured in the advanced section is the "Building-Size Display" hack, reminiscent of Blinkenlights. The chapter starts off with instructions on how to build a display matrix on a much smaller scale, using a series of ultra bright LEDs, but later shows how the project can be expanded to create a 12-story display using an entire building.
Some other mentionable hacks in the advanced chapters include a cubicle intrusion-detection system, an Internet-enabled toaster and coffee maker, and a remote object tracker. These projects provide instructions on how to use more advanced components such as photodiodes, lasers, GPS receivers and microcontrollers (such as the BasicStamp2, in particular).
Two other noteworthy projects in Part Two include a MAME cabinet and a wearable computer.
Plans for the MAME cabinet are very well done, taking the reader through cutting MDF, building the cabinet, installing the software and interfacing the controls to his PC. This chapter goes into great detail, even covering things like creating a monitor bezel and a backlit marquee, and using T-molding for that authentic arcade machine look.
The wearable computer hack is very interesting, covering a wide range of concepts I would never have considered. Fullam gives ideas on what to use for a head-mounted display (HMD), what types of motherboards and CPUs work best, and looks at various power sources, including batteries, solar panels and different generators. The chapter also presents ideas for input devices, such as keyboards and mice, but also speech recognition systems, cameras and GPS receivers. At the end of the chapter, there is an extensive list of websites related to wearable computer projects, offering much more reading to the interested hacker.
The appendixes, while quite brief, do offer more information on topics like creating and editing schematics, using microcontrollers and using different power sources. There is also a list of resources for further reading and a short list of parts suppliers.
Hardware Hacking also has an accompanying website, where readers can download all of the images, illustrations and schematics from the book. The files are available in EPS, PDF and TIFF formats, although they are all gzipped, and are not readily viewable without downloading and extracting first. The website supposedly has code downloads as well, but the links are broken as of this writing, so you'll be stuck typing in code from the book until the site is fixed.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I was very impressed with this book. Fullam has given the geek community a valuable resource that will provide inspiration for aspiring and veteran hackers alike. It covers many projects that I have personally wanted to build or learn more about, and presents concepts that would be of interest to many fellow Slashdotters.
The only things preventing me from giving this book a 10 are the aforementioned issues with the accompanying website (which I'm sure will be fixed soon) and the quality of some of the photos. Most of the photographs in the book are crisp and clear, but some are rather grainy or pixelated, as if they were enlarged from a website image. Fullam does make mention of the image quality, stating that many photos actually were taken from the original Web sources, and "the clarity of the photograph suffers in print." It's a small point, but definitely noticeable in certain sections of the book. However, as mentioned, the images are available online, and often do look better on a monitor in full color, as opposed to the black and white images in the book.
I highly recommend Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks to anyone with an interest in those fun projects that only nerds can understand.
You can purchase Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Turning my CDR into a toaster?
If a book gives step by step instructions on the 'hack', can it really be considered a hack anymore?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
...was never designed to spark and fill the room with flames and magic smoke. The local fire company has asked that I refrain from future hacking efforts.
all you needed to start hacking was curiosity and desire?
It's funny how even the art of hacking has been commoditized these days.
My own advice, just do it.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I want a books that includes all the components to hack.Z ZZZZZZ.jpg">How to Play Air Guitar (it includes a free genuine air guitar) ;)
like this book: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1844110036.01.L
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
(We mentioned this book yesterday, too.)
Hey! i wanted myself to find out it's a dupe!
how about turning my mac into a pc??? or has that already been done.
serenity now!
If you want to complain about dupes, what about that "Have you Meta Moderated lately?" article that always seems to be on the main page?
...
I'm going to go ahead and point out my UPS modding thread from yesterday, complete now with additional instructions, a few pictures, and a hand-drawn diagram of how to do an APC SmartUPS.
4 299.
/. journal, and mabey make a decent little webpage with instructions and pics and stuff. Mabey I'll submit it to /..
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98025&cid=837
Pictures here:
elvis.netmar.com/~will/ups/
I'm going to write this up more formally, and at least put it in my
Anyway, this is a great geek hardware hacking project. If you have any questions on how to do it, let me know. I always read replies.
~Will
sig?
...start by hacking your spell checker:
rediculous is spelled ridiculous
All of this information can be collected for free (and in greater detail, I imagine) on the net. I mean, give me a day on google and a few hours to format it all into a nice pdf, and I could publish a cafepress book with the same info.
This reminds of those "Internet Yellowpages" they used to sell at Barnes & Noble when AOL took off. Why not just use Yahoo? (pre-google, mind you)
Hacker? Why would anyone want to be a hacker? I heard they're very bad people!!!
One of the simplest and coolest hardware hacks of all time is hooking up a carbon microphone (like old-style telephone handsets had), a miniature speaker, and a 9 volt battery. point the speaker at the carbon mike and move it closer, voila! Instant oscillator. Probably the world's simplest electrical oscillator. And it shows how remarkably powerful an amplifier the carbon microphone is. (I believe the carbon microphone was invented by Thomas Edison.)
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
Please #define HACK
Make a Tattoo Gun
,second one from the smallest. ( this is your needle)
Things you'll need:
* bic pen (this is your tube that houses the needle)
* 4 or 5" section of guitar string
* tooth brush ( this gets bent like a "7" and joins the pen to the motor)
* an eraser from a pencil (this joins the shaft of the motor to the needle/guitar string)
* small battery operated motor (from a "walkman" or a hand held fan)
* some tape (to join everything together)
Putting the pieces together:
1. Take the guitar string and bend a little bit of the end down or up.
2. Take out the ink tube of the pen, and cut it to about a 3 or 4" length, now file down the brass tip of the pen to get the ball out, make the hole big enough to allow passage of the needle.
3. Insert the needle into the pen.
4. Now take the tooth brush and cut off the bristles making it about 4" long. Heat it up in the middle with a lighter and bend it in to a "7" and hold in place untill stiff.
5. Join/tape the pen needle assembly to the tooth brush.
6. Now take the eraser from the pencil and shove it onto the shaft of the motor, try to get it as dead center as possible. Join the pen/needle/tooth brush to the motor/eraser assembly, tape the brush to the motor.
7. Take the bent part of the needle/guitar stirng and stick it into the eraser, IMPORTANT- the needle must be purposely OFF CENTER.
8. Now all that is left to do is find a power source, I used the plug-in adapter frrom a cd player. i guess you could hook up some batteries to a switch and then to the contacts of the motor.
Just try to explain that to the TSA people at the airport when you try to haul your "laptop battery" through security.
"No Officer, this pile of batteries with wires sticking out everywhere is just a spare battery for my laptop...wait - what are you doing with those handcuffs - heeeelp".
Have to start somewhere.
"they help build stupid peoples' egos..."A very elitist statement that clearly shows the size of your ego...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There's an easy way to get rid of that. Just click on the words 'Meta Moderate', go down the page and click 'Unfair' or 'Unfunny' after each comment, and hit 'Moderate' at the bottom. You only have to do it once a day, and eventually the link stops appearing at all!
Listen, I hate those so-called "software developers" just as much as you do. And for a long time, I've been trying to figure out where this kind of bitterness-driven reasoning ends. I mean, even most software developers don't really understand the science behind what they're doing. As far as I can tell, after thinking about this for 6 years: as long as the "P/NP" problem is undecided, no one can honestly say that they understand computers.
The problems are, for lack of a better word, attitude based. Hubris is all the more obvious when accompanied by ignorance (n.b. I didn't say stupidity). I am a pretty good programmer and am conversant in formal mathematics, though the idea of "software development" (in as many words) is abhorrent to me. So yeah, you're irked by people doing trivial "hacks" and bragging about it. I have similar irritations.
But these irritations are illusory. Get over it; I am.
But back to the point, Mr. (2, Troll) (*), I am considering getting this book as a simple introduction to some stuff which I was not fortunate enough to learn at such a young age, as to mistake it for "innate ability" or a symptom of some "superior intelligence"... I suspect many other people here are doing it for the same reason. Honestly, do you think Archimedes (or, for that matter, Enrico Fermi or even Einstein) would know how to do these "true hacks" without some education and/or training?
(*): I see you've now been upmodded to (4, insightful). Oy vey.
"for those of us who weren't born with a soldering iron in our hands."
Um.. Ouch? The poor mother..
I'm not really a "geek," nor do I play one on TV. But after looking through a book like this, I might just be motivated to try and become one. This book is one that appeals to the "mad scientist" in all of us, the one that is always looking for ways to build the better mouse trap or the perfect home "do it all device." While some of us less "handy types" would be better off not coming anywhere near this book, there are enough projects listed here that even someone with little or no hardware experience would find at least a handful of projects doable. Projects like the "Macintosh aquarium" or the laptop PC power supply. In fact the book is divided into Basic and Advanced Hacks and techniques, so if you've started off with a couple of the basic projects finished, you can move on to more advanced ones. Very cool.
And for each project, there is a graph for project cost, time and difficulty on the beginning page. For some projects, there's a list of what items you will need. There are also extensive step by step instructions for each "project," along with drawings, photos and diagrams. You'll love this book if you're one of those people who loves taking apart products and trying to "improve" upon their original design.
besides the moderation, the article is a DUPE!!!
For some of these d00dz every day is a new day.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
And whats up with this You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!?
;-)
Christ I just come here to troll, not to get harrased!
Quack, quack.
"Same word used to describe something with a rediculous range of skill levels... "
Like spelling?
I hope you are upset with the 'hacks' presented before us, and not hardware hacking as a whole. Some of us just don't like working with software - I'm one of them. I'm much more at home with a soldering iron and dremel then I am with a function array and boolean operators.
I consider the hacks I do as being as 'real' and meaningful as the software hackers - I just choose a diffrent medium to play on.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
It looks pretty easy to make, albeit rather narrow use? Very interesting. That whole site should be required reading for /.ers. ;)
I'm curious if anyone has some good websites for starting hardware/ software hacking. Let's save these guys som cash, people!
Let the karma whoring begin!
"Am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Or a bowling ball dreaming I am a plate of sashimi?"    
Looks like you've managed the all-to-common hack of splicing together your technical skills with your ego.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
You must have watched Rock & Rule (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086203/) one too many times...
Genre: Animation / Sci-Fi / Musical
Plot summary: Angel, a member of a punk rock band in the apocoliptic(sic) future, is kidnapped by Mok, a legendary superocker. Obsessed with a dark experiment, Mok plans to use Angel's voice to summon a demon from another dimension. The rest of the band follows Mok to Nuke York in an attempt to get her back.
(It certainly counts as a quick fix for a botch -- i should have popped it when it was still in the car).
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
And I love that word (douchebag) :D
Mmmmm... Phoebe Halliwell... *dreams*
Is it me or is the link to buy broken (bottom of review)?
When I opened up a tone dialer from radio shack, soldered in a 6.5 MHz crystal, and then programmed the right codes, I could make free pay phone calls. This is a red box, for anyone who has never heard of phreaking. Making a red box is a cool hack. Did I invent the technique? Obviously not, but its still a cool hack. Instructions for all sorts of "boxes" as well as hacks of all sorts have been available for years. This is just a dead tree version, and I bet the schematics are a lot better than the ASCII diagrams that are supposed to be circuits. You don't have to invent a hack to use it. Furthermore, the book uses well known examples to give people the information, experience, and most importantly courage, to try their own original hacks. IMHO denouncing a book like this is contrary to the hacker spirit of learning and sharing information.
P.S. Simple possesion of a red box is illegal, plus they stopped working about a year ago when ATT stopped accepting coins for out of state long distance. Sorry to get your hopes up.
You might do with just a touch, just a touch by the way... not too much, of humility. I mean even Newton (who was by all accounts not at all humble) wrote "if I've seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." If Newton can acknowledge that he relied heavily on the work of those that came before him (and didn't just spontaneously discover the sum total of all human knowledge gathered prior to the 17th century), perhaps you could acknowledge that someone starting small and growing from there does not immediately make them a complete ignoramus.
Not that I'm comparing you to Newton... no doubt you've contributed a lot more original thought to the body of human knowledge than he ever did. (that is in addition of course to recreate the entirety of the body of human knowledge without ever referencing a book... although I must admit it's passing curious why you seem so focused on electronics given the knowledge of everything you have within you.) On second thought forget my whole post... I think you must be right in your tacit assertion that you didn't learn anything from anyone...
I only hope that you'll have a chance to read my reply and attendant apology for thinking you lacking in humility. That thick condescension towards your coworker and others that exudes from your post surely means you maintain an extremely busy social calendar.
Best of luck to you and please forgive those of us who have to rely on the knowledge of others to learn things. We don't mean to make you bitter. (Although I'm sure your bitterness makes you a wiz with the ladies.)
I used to have a small ego but I hacked it by taking some of my extra id, painting it blue and duct-taping it to my ego to make a super ego.
For thousands of years man was just like the animals.. but then something changed.. man learnt to speak...
"there is silence inside me...
why dont you talk to me?..."
it doesnt have to be this way...
there is this book on hacks.. read it, hack your voice box and learn to speak.
Build an electric motor from a few items that you probably have around the home or office. I think Beakman did it first but instructions can be found here as well.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
Scott Fullam's Hardware (Score:2)ing Projects for Geeks is an excellent book outlining all you need to know to get started in the wonderful world of hardware (Score:2)ing. With step-by-step guides to fifteen useful, amusing and off the wall projects, even a novice (Score:2)er can be up and running with some basic (Score:2)s in a few hours. The book demonstrates various ways consumer electronics can be modified to do things they were never intended to do, and shows you just how much fun voiding your warranty can be voided
I have hacked up an old phone and connected it to my PCs parallel port. This, in combination with a perl script and a couple other programs, results in a machine that waits for calls with "UNAVAILABLE" or "PRIVATE" Caller ID tags, answers only those calls, plays prerecorded wave files designed to emulate a conversation, uses silence detections to allow the telemarketer to speak and think he's talking to a real human, and records the entire conversation. I have example WAV files of these conversations and a How-to page at http://www.pagerealm.com/tc2k. The example WAVs are VERY entertaining!
> I'm mostly bitter because this is almost the
> same as when people claim to be software
> developers when all they do is html... Same
> word used to describe something with a
> rediculous range of skill levels...
Ask yourself why you care if someone is erronously placed in your league upon cursory examination of your matching titles.
Do you place yourself in the same league as, say, Linus Torvalds or Dennis Ritchie? They are (or have been) software developers. Perhaps YOU need a different title, or perhaps they should be deified.
I think that books like these help to get a lot more people into hacking things...we live in a world where 100% of people buy their PC's, TV's and "snap things together (for PCs anyway)"...it's good to see the true hardware hacking culture promoted...after all, the PC industry pluse lots of other items would not be here as fast if it were not for the early hackers who modified and created new stuff....you can't expect things like Linux and open hardware/software to come from business/lawyer/CEO land.
Really simple, all I used was a soldering iron, solder, blue LED. You can pick everything up at the local Radio Shack. The Radio Shack I visited had 3000mcd super bright blue LEDs. I eventually bought a 9000mcd super bright blue LEDs but I found out later that it's super bright coz the manufacturers tighten the angle of projection meaning brighter center spot thus higher mcd. 3000mcd still works well. My first concern was whether the LED was brighter than the normal red LEDs since they are on different ends of the wavelength and red is easier to pick up. Didn't really matter if you have a good enough pattern or surface, like a mouse pad made for optical mice.
I modded my blue Logitech Optical Mouse (USD$20 the last time I checked). Removed the regular red LED and replaced with the blue LED. Now my mouse glows blue. Looked kinda weird previously coz the mouse was blue, with semi-transparent blue plastic but glowed red underneath.
Easy modding... takes less than 15 minutes, unless you lose a spring or something.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and your elitist technological priesthood attitude.
I welcome anybody who has a sense of curiousity and a desire to start from somewhere.
Part of the "hacker" ethos is sharing knowledge, which is what this book aims to do. There is nothing wrong with using someone else's "trivial" hacks to learn more about doing your own. Honestly, I don't think anyone on this site can claim that they could have learned everything they know in absence of others knowledge.
When I started in my career, I was tormented endlessly by guys just like you, so I know just how it feels to be targeted by messages like this. It can hurt, very badly. So next time, before you start parading your cred around and slagging others who just want to learn, think about the beginners you may be hurting. Stuff like this cuts deep when you're just starting out, and our profession and passion suffers when there is no new talent.
So remember, everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone is born with asbestos underwear. And those HTML guys who profess to be software engineers? They get theirs, but you don't need to make it worse by discouraging them from learning.
Be nice.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
... if you can have LaserMAME. Playing it building size is also no problem; much more fun then Blinkenlights :-).
-- www.linux-laser.org - Open Source Laser Show Software for Linux
All of this information can be collected for free (and in greater detail, I imagine) on the net. I mean, give me a day on google and a few hours to format it all into a nice pdf, and I could publish a cafepress book with the same info.
;)
You know what I would give to have a whole day to research some of this stuff? Some of us have (more than) full-time jobs, families, kids, etc. I don't always have time to put in a lot of research before I tinker around with something. The book sounded interesting to me just based on the introduction to circuits and soldering, something I've never really done much with in the past.
I say go ahead and try to publish a book on the same subject. Better yet, post some links to some of this information. Spend a day if you have to. I'll check back tommorow
(I'll get you started: ArcadeControls.com for the MAME cabinet)
software "engineers?" Software developers, sure. But engineers? I say, stick to programming, and leave the engineering to the civil, mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers
Stupid keyboard jockeys with their C.S. degrees! Pretty soon, janitors will want to be sanitation engineers! Oh, wait...
Actually, if you check the facts, you'll see that Newton made that statement as an insult.
Another scientist, of decidedly short stature, was claiming credit for some of Newton's work.
"Standing on the shoulders of giants" was what we in the biz call 'sarcasm'.
if I've seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants
Apparently this quote of Isaacs was in reality a thinly veiled
insult to Robert Hooke who was by all accounts a little on the
short side.
Perhaps the parent poster *is* the reincarnation of Newton?
The pomposity and self gratification seem to indicate that
this is the case. I wonder if he or she will autograph my
copy of Principia.:)
siggy played guitar
Yeah. But this book is not for the real hardware hackers. It's for those, who want to become ones. Learn from examples, then design your own.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You find those in /etc/rc.d/
There's an easy way to get rid of that. Just click on the words 'Meta Moderate', go down the page and click 'Unfair' or 'Unfunny' after each comment, and hit 'Moderate' at the bottom. You only have to do it once a day, and eventually the link stops appearing at all!
I just selectively meta-mod liberal crap. The rest of it,I give thumbs up to, and I seem to get to moderate more than ever! I think my process makes me look objective and it looks like I care.
Ha!
Fun finding out just *what* that unknown IC does.
Just out of curiosity where do you find info on those older or off-brand chips?
I've run into several chips I couldn't identify over the years despite, at the time, having IC Master and such available to me.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
From reading the blurb, it sounds like it missed the main point. To hack hardware one needs to know how to access the board eeproms and convert the result back into VHDL. From here on in you can realy modify the way things work, Today there is no real big difference between digital electronics implemented in some FPGA and software.
Very useful, and entertaining hack!
I plan on incorporating this into my home automation project work!
I got a copy of this book hot off the presses, and while overall it's good, the first printing has some quality-control issues. The centerpiece of the first real chapter, the "basic electronics" chapter, is a big schematic diagram with various points labelled "A", "B", "C", etc. up to "K" or so. Unfortunately, the text spends several pages referring to these as points "1", "2", and "3" -- either the text or the diagram must've been changed at the last minute, and they don't correspond!
I bet this will be fixed soon, but still, it's kind of disconcerting.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
If your interested in Linux based PVR Hardware, check out the PVR Hardware database ( http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/ )
XBOXs are great for learning to Hack.
a few hours of twidling around and an xbox can do *
It's all good.
Provided it then be used to create Melba toast.
FATMOUSE loves Melba toast.
-
FATMOUSE MUST FEED.
I'd rather consider that as common sense rather than "hack", something that works with 12V (dc) supplied by a car battery can be fed with any 12V (dc) source. even a no-brainer can figure out how to shrtcut the ground with a screwdriver and pop the cd out.Hell, most in-car cd players when they are connected for the first time pop the cd tray/mechanism out to take out the protective piece of carton they have for shipment protection. Duh !
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
So remember, everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone is born with asbestos underwear. And those HTML guys who profess to be software engineers? They get theirs, but you don't need to make it worse by discouraging them from learning.
But surely HTMLers ought to know enough about the software world to know they aren't software engineers? If not, perhaps they need to find out? I know all programming I can do is html and I'm pretty crap at it. I do not profess to be a software engineer/developer/whatever because I know I've barely seen the tip of the iceberg on the horizon. I know enough, as a crap HTMLer, to know what I'm not. I know enough to know how much I don't know. Shouldn't all misguided HTMLers out there find out that there is much much more to software?
...how to make a Labat beer dispenser from a book case like the do on the commercial. I figure all you'd need is a hammer, some nails, a recliner, labat blue, and a guy in a bear suit...
But surely HTMLers ought to know enough about the software world to know they aren't software engineers?
They should, and if they are gently corrected, that should be enough. If not, leave it be, and market forces will take care of them. There is no need to make them miserable while they circle the drain and simultaneously paint yourself as a jerk.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Seriously... I need a 3.5 mm PJ to 9 pin serial adapter... googled without luck... anyone have anyideas where I can get a pinout?
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
real hackers do not fear joe average and they do not try to "forbid" anyone to do what they like.
/.'s forum).
reading the comments for this review of this (really cool) book i noticed: many people claim to be the "real ones" who do not read such "uncool" stuff, because this stuff would enable joe average to become a hacker if she likes. damn, i hate this attitude: this is just protecting the territory you think it's yours. like apes do. you do not, you are an ape like apes do. (otherwise your keeper would instantly receive a nobel price because you would be the first ape who made it's way into
lmao :) number 5 was funny as hell :)
It's for those, who want to become ones
:)
Sounds like a merit badge ladder
How about merging two things into one?
Achtung: it's in german
and I just HAD to add this...
Torvalds and Ritchie? Amateurs! When's the last time either one of them wrote a good 100+ slide power-point presentation on good software design methodologies, as all aspiring software developers should be required to do?
Note: I do not use powerpoint. I do not make presentations. I am not a software developer. I am a coder and I like mucking with code. Not html. Not because html isn't code, but for the same reason I don't like mucking with gui's. Nasty business, best leave that to the professionals.
All real development is done is lisp.
That's classic. Sort of an automated version of my usual routine:
1. "Hello? Yes, it is... OK... Uh huh..." (Just a few words of encouragement and they're in high gear.)
2. Put down phone, and go about business. (But don't hangup.)
I figure the only way to really penalize them for wasting my time is to waste THEIR time, and the best possible way to do that is to make them work for nothing. The determined ones will actually last for upwards of 10 minutes before they realize they've been scammed!
I was contacted by the author of this book last year and gave him permission to use my plans for building a Macquarium. So, I am chapter 2 of the "Hardware Hacking Projects For Geeks" book.
Woo Hoo!
Anyway, my aquariums are Here.
The plans Scott used for his book are here. The plans are kind of old and busted (there's no link to them any more on my site) and I think the author did a great job.
The one thing in the book I'd like to build now is the MAMA game cabinet. I've got an old arcade Ms Pac-Man and it gets lots of use but I'd love to have a bunch of the old games in one stand-up cabinet.
And you sound like a curry fried sand nigger!
(my first ./ post)
Wire thickness is what gives it the rating on how many amps it can carry. The insulation on the wire gives it the rating the number of volts it can carry.
(I appolgize, I might have my #6 and #8 mixed up in my head, so I might have it wrong, and I'm going to error on the safe side)
Most wire you buy can take up to 600v, so this isn't a problem for this mod.
When you're dealing with a 400w power supply on a computer, 400w/120v ~= 4 amps. 4amps can be carried very easily on 16 gage wire (thiner then a "old fashoned" pencil led") but between the Inverter and the battery, you have 400w/12v ~= 40amps. To safely carry 40 amps, you need #6 wire, which is about as thick as a printer cable, but it's usually stiffer.
this is why UPS'es usually use 48volt layouts, because they can transfer more power with the same cost in cables.
The numbers I used are the conservitive numbers recomended by the national electric code, and that thick of wire you could run indefinatly. #6 wire is what electric house heaters run on. (but they run at 240v, or up to ~16,000W)
Kunnis
.... said it was a supercomputer
nuf said