BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » October 23, 2009

Hack A Day (6 unread)

Halloween props: Skeleton springs from coffin

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Tony's] trying to scare the kids again this Halloween. This year’s creation is a skeleton that springs up from a coffin. His creepy coffin is built from plywood and in the classic style it gets narrower at each end. Inside, there’s a full-sized rubber skeleton affixed to a 2×4. Pneumatic rams are used to lift [...]
SparkFun gets a cease and Desist

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 1:30pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Nate] over at SparkFun Electronics has posted a cease and desist letter he received from SPARC industries. Apparently their legal department feels that his name is close enough to theirs to ignite a legal battle. They are demanding that he transfer his domain to them immediately to extinguish the flames. This all seems a bit [...]
Poddwatt: Tube amp with mp3 in mind

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 1:08pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Bruce] has designed a push-pull tube amp that has enough gain to connect to a portable audio player. The design is closely related to his OddWatt offering from a few years ago. The new amp has many redesigned circuits and the new hardware choices drop the price tag of the parts by about $50. This little [...]
Make your own SNES games with developer cartridge

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 9:34am MDT by Mike Szczys

Have you always wished that you could develop games for the Super Nintendo but couldn’t because you were only 4 years old when it was released in 1990? Here’s a second chance. [Max] and his team have created a SNES developer’s cartridge that allows you to load your own code, run it on the SNES, [...]
Hot air pencil for under $20

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 8:08am MDT by Caleb Kraft

Here’s a project from back in 2001 that might be of interest to some of you. It is a guide on how to build your own hot air pencil for SMD soldering. He is using a super cheap 45W soldering iron from “the shack” combined with a pump type desoldering tool and an aquarium pump. [...]
Psystar taunts Apple a second time

Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 7:05am MDT by Phil Burgess

As if bankruptcy shenanigans and an unresolved exchange of lawsuits with Apple weren’t enough, Mac clone maker Psystar is really swatting the beehive now with the release of Rebel EFI, a $50 software package that promises a straightforward installation of Mac OS X on a variety of commodity x86 systems. Setting up one’s own “Hackintosh” system has traditionally [...]