BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » October 12, 2009

Hack A Day (8 unread)

iTunes LP: there’s a hack for that

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 3:00pm MDT by Phil Burgess

One of the most-hyped features of iTunes version 9 is the addition of “iTunes LP,” which aims to recreate the classic record album experience with artwork and photos, lyrics, and liner notes — provided, of course, that you can pony up the purported $10,000 for production and you’re not one of those filthy indie labels. Almost [...]
Take the python challenge

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

It’s hard to believe that we haven’t covered this one before. If you enjoyed out Barcode challenges from last week, perhaps now is the time for you to take the Python Challenge. We made it through the first 18 levels about a year back but with a total of 33 levels we’re not even close [...]
Easter Egg Challenge

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by James Munns

Often, hardware designers include nonfunctional additions into designs to make them feel more personal. Commonly known as easter eggs, these additions can often go unnoticed by the public for years. While taking apart an Atari San Francisco Rush: The Rock sound board, reader [Jason] noticed a hidden message on the PCB (see above). Other more [...]
Underwater laser, just add shark

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 12:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[iskor12] put together a blu-ray laser that is waterproof and packs quite a punch. At 182 mW there is enough power here to pop dark colored balloons (see the video after the break). To make this happen, he found an LED flashlight that has rubber o-rings for waterproofing. Although small, there is enough space in [...]
Emulator in NES cartridge – so clean it looks factory made

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 11:19am MDT by Mike Szczys

We extend our congratulations to [airz] over at the ben heck forums. He put together a mod that fits an emulator into an original NES cartridge and utilizes a butchered original NES controller; and he did an amazing job! He is using a cheap but full featured emulator board. It comes with 4 gigs of memory [...]
Halloween props: The honking pumpkin

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

We see a lot of Halloween projects attempt to scare people. Many of them work with the element of surprise, jumping or flashing lights when triggered. We’ve noticed though, people have come to expect those things. This project is a real sleeper. No one expects a couple car horns to blare in their face when [...]
Home made rollerbar mouse

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Judyofthewoods] has hacked together this rollerbar mouse. We’ve heard people talk about these in a positive way, going on about how comfortable they are. We haven’t really experimented with one much to verify. This one looks surprisingly nice considering it is made from scrap. The image above is showing it without the cover that hides [...]
Cheap and easy top-down camera quadpod

Posted: October 12th, 2009, 7:20am MDT by Mike Szczys

We keep waiting for evolution to give us that third arm but in the mean time, this may be the solution for holding the camera while you document your projects. [DHagen] has made a four legged tripod (quadpod) for his camera in order to use it as a digital copy machine. We’ve spent many a [...]