s1axter posted on Tue. September 11th 2007 at 12:40 PM PST.
UPDATE: This was originally not posted on main but firewire thinks it should be, let me know
Geeksinside.com is all custom written code. It's been custom for five years and believe me, I feel like I've done 5 years of development on it. Recently I've thought about running GI using Wordpress. This would take a lot of the burden off developing a robust, flexible blog management system and leave more time for building stuff and posting cool things. While I kinda want to switch over to wordpress I kinda feel like it is selling out.
The pros are Wordpress has a TON more features than GI has right now. Like categories, multiple user management, CORRECT CSS, standards valid, optimized for search engines, mod_rewrite for permalinks, RSS and ATOM feeds, dynamic sitemaps, very little code needed, etc, etc. Also, I'm not a graphical guy and Wordpress has some cool/professional styles.
However I fear using a third-party app is going to lock me in and not allow me to do some of the cool stuff I would like to have on the site.
I'm not sure, kinda on the fence here. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
This el-cheap-o multi-tiouch interface was posted today on HackedGadgets. It uses a plastic bag, blue dye and a web cam. The web cam is used to differentiate between normal blue color and the bright spots created when the top of the bag is deflected. This deflection is translate that to an X-Y coordinate on the screen.
It looks like the setup has to be used in bright sun light so the pressure on the bag will create a bright spot. Some LEDs on the edge of the bag might work, give it a try!
Very cool and interesting way to get a multi-touch interface for a PC.
I checked Gismodo's live coverage of Apple's "The beat goes on" press conference a few times this morning. Looks like Apple now has a touchscreen iPod. I think this is more like an neutered iPhone since it looks and works like an iPhone minus the calling features. Now I don't have an iPod (I don't like iTunes) but this iPod is really cool since not only do you have music and video, but you can browse the web with the built in Wifi and Safari (just like the iPhone, lol). Not too bad, now if they only had an expansion slot and the ability to connect up to A2DP headphones (maybe in the future) I would REALLY want one.
The pic on the right is from the press conference taken by the guys at Gismodo.
Embedded.com ran an article yesterday on building an embedded PowerPC embedded system using a Xilinx Vertex-4 FPGA development board. Sven Andersson is an ASIC designer who has a website dedicated to developing this FPGA based system. There are currently 42 parts in the on going development all laid out as a tutorial. If you are interested in FPGA and embedded applications I would take a look.
I didn't believe this the first time I saw it! Posted on Make today it's a video of some cool effects you can do with an oscilloscope, sound card and some cool programing. The audio is not what makes the figures but some slick coding.
From the Make post:
The oscilloscope is connected to PC soundcard and is in X/Y-mode, with right channel connected to X and left to Y input. Download its waveform from here to see it on your oscilloscope!
What would yo do with hundreds of discarded CPUs? Why not make a nice looking desk top?
That's exactly what Matt Tovey did what a ton of Intel Itanium processors. The desk top has over 400 chips all polished up and placed under a layer of protective glass. Damn it would be cool to have this desk!
Matt's original site is down so check out the cache Dotcache.com URL
s1axter posted on Wed. August 22nd 2007 at 11:11 AM PST.
I've been playing with some assembly lately making some cool functions for a dev board I have. Not going to let the cat out of the bag too much but this is going towards a review of said dev board soon!
After I get the dev board review up I want to expand the site a little bit and open up registration and blogs it up to anyone who wants one. It's a bit of a gutsy move but I think people out there might want to post their stuff and show it off. It will take a while since a lot of the backend stuff is going to need to be updated to handle some new ideas I have.
I would like some feedback on who out there is interested in getting a blog here on GI or even just a personal page with some small file hosting (images and code mostly). Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
This is a fun little project using a PIC 16F877A and a SP0256-017 speech chip chip. It's a clock that speaks the time in binary as well as show it on the display pulled from a microwave. Good use of scrounged parts.
Tonight I booted up MPLAB and started messing around with some assembly for my collection of PICs. While looking for some interesting ways to deal with character arrays I found this site:
It has a bunch of PIC projects dealing with LCDs, RS232 comm and even AT keyboard interfaces. Lots of code to look at if you are just starting PIC programming.
After the pcb printer etch a few weeks ago I went looking for a good tutorial on PCB design. When you are working with a homebrew solution it's a little difficult to know how big a signal trace should be verses a power trace etc. I found some good resources around the net and realized i never posted them on GI!
UPDATE: This was originally not posted on main but firewire thinks it should be, let me know
This el-cheap-o multi-tiouch interface was posted today on 
I checked Gismodo's live coverage of Apple's "The beat goes on" press conference a few times this morning. Looks like Apple now has a touchscreen iPod. I think this is more like an neutered iPhone since it looks and works like an iPhone minus the calling features. Now I don't have an iPod (I don't like iTunes) but this iPod is really cool since not only do you have music and video, but you can browse the web with the built in Wifi and Safari (just like the iPhone, lol). Not too bad, now if they only had an expansion slot and the ability to connect up to A2DP headphones (maybe in the future) I would REALLY want one.
Embedded.com ran an article yesterday on building an embedded PowerPC embedded system using a Xilinx Vertex-4 FPGA development board. Sven Andersson is an ASIC designer who has a website dedicated to developing this FPGA based system. There are currently 42 parts in the on going development all laid out as a tutorial. If you are interested in FPGA and embedded applications I would take a look.
What would yo do with hundreds of discarded CPUs? Why not make a nice looking desk top?
I've been playing with some assembly lately making some cool functions for a dev board I have. Not going to let the cat out of the bag too much but this is going towards a review of said dev board soon!
Tonight I booted up MPLAB and started messing around with some assembly for my collection of PICs. While looking for some interesting ways to deal with character arrays I found this site:
After the pcb printer etch a few weeks ago I went looking for a good tutorial on PCB design. When you are working with a homebrew solution it's a little difficult to know how big a signal trace should be verses a power trace etc. I found some good resources around the net and realized i never posted them on GI!
