Archive for the 'hardware' Category
Nintendo Wii Porn
Posted by: Owen on Monday, 18th Dec, 2006
Here’s your chance to watch someone take the covers off a brand new Nintendo Wii.
All the bits must come off, including the controllers. So, turn down the lights and
enjoy!
>>
Lasers are cool
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 17th Dec, 2006
Home made lasers are cool. They can light matches, pop balloons, cut electrical tape,
and do all sorts of cool things. And this
article explains how to rip one out of an old DVD player to make your own portable
laser. Cool stuff. If anyone tries this, drop me a line.
Just remember to play safe and protect your [...]
Improve WiFi Reception
Posted by: Owen on Sunday, 10th Dec, 2006
Came across a great article today outlining a number of methods to improve WiFi performance. Here’s some ideas to improve your reception:
Put large furniture along the walls of your rooms
Minimise mirrors
Put your router at some central point of your house
Keep antennas away from power cables
Read all about it, as well as [...]
Clearcube Blades
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 9th Nov, 2006
We’re looking into blade servers at the moment at work for our consolidated dev environment,
primarily because of the amount of computing power you can get in a small space (the
plan is then to run Virtual Servers on them), so I was just pottering around looking
at different vendors’ offerings
Clearcube have a really cool Blade
Server, check out [...]
Focus on Laptop Jacks
Posted by: Owen on Friday, 27th Oct, 2006
If you have problem with your laptop power jack, I found a website that specialises
in laptop power jacks. That’s all they
do! Well, they also offer installation services, as replacing your power jack involves
desoldering and soldering components to your laptop PCB; and you really don’t want
to mess that job up! They have a choice of over [...]
Surf and Sip
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 26th Oct, 2006
Just got to Gatwick airport and found a Wifi zone powered by Surf
and Sip which I decided to try out. The biggest problem is that I’m either out
of range (though my signal strength is “Fairly Good”), or they offer a lousy connection,
and I have so much packet loss it really makes doing anything unusable. I [...]
Skype Phone - mmmmmm
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 25th Oct, 2006
Ohhh .. this is what I want for Christmas! It’s a really stylish Wi-fi
phone for Skype, and it will be released here in the UK in just a few days. There’s
more information on Belkin’s website but
basically it comes preloaded with Skype and connects directly to a Wi-fi network without
needing a computer to connect to [...]
Laptopbits
Posted by: Owen on Thursday, 19th Oct, 2006
I was trawling Manxforums earlier and someone
mentioned a useful site that I wanted to put up here for posterity.
Laptopbits is a website that specialises
in component parts for, you guessed it, laptops. You can get replacement keyboards,
batteries, docking stations etc from them. So it’s worth keeping in mind next time
someone spills Coke all over your machine [...]
New gadget - StreetPilot i3
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 23rd Aug, 2006
I’ve
just got my hands on a really cute little GPS system
called the Garmin StreetPilot i3.
It’s tiny, around the size of a tennis ball, but does all you would expect from an
in-car navigation system. Give it a postcode and off you go. It works really well,
successfully navigating us around Wales last weekend, and even has maps [...]
USB Missile Launcher redux
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 11th Jul, 2006
Ohh
.. looks like the USB Missle Launcher I didn’t get last Xmas is now available from
I Want One Of Those. I remember when iWOOT launched a couple of years ago. It made
a big splash than sort of disappeared for a bit. Nice to see them pop back on my radar
again. Maybe next Christmas ….
USB Missile
Launcher [...]
Quake at 10240×3072
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 21st Mar, 2006
How cool is this? These guys have set up a display made from 24 monitors, driven by a 12 machine Linux cluster. There’s a video of Quake 3 Arena running on the display. Check it out here: plastk:net
FOn-tastic idea
Posted by: Owen on Tuesday, 7th Feb, 2006
Just got a great link from Andy’s blog, relating to a global shared WiFi community. Here’s the details:
FON is a Global Community of people who share WiFi. Share your WiFi broadband access at home/work and enjoy WiFi all over the world! FON: small cost, great benefit!
To become a Fonero, all you need to do is [...]
Wireless USB
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 14th Dec, 2005
Gizmondo has a post about an interesting gadget
that uses WiFi to allow any USB device to speak to the controlling PC. Not sure how
it handles devices that use power through USB (like my USB
snowman (actually it’s borrowed)), but should be cool for other devices .. like
by external USB hard disk. Check it out: Wireless
USB is [...]
USB powered Rocket Launcher
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 30th Nov, 2005
USB toys seem to be all the rage this time of year, I’ve seen a USB Santa and USB
Xmas tree pop up at the office over the last few days! But I was passing through Marks
and Spencer today and came across this really cool USB-controlled missile launcher
which really beats the pants off any other USB-controlled [...]
Wooden Laptop
Posted by: Owen on Wednesday, 9th Mar, 2005
*grin* .. Here’s something Ola should try
…
i’ve got an old dell laptop that’s having _lots_ of problems, so i’ve been waiting
for some real inspiration (inspironation?) to tear the thing apart.
as luck would have it, the other day i got a message from asbesto,
who told me about a wooden laptop that he made:
Here is my laptop: the [...]
