If this is boring you it is not my fault….Here are some more Goodies

• Abstractmachine is a very cool site owned by Douglas Stanley. Lots of Processing…YUMM
• Ladyada.net and the sister site Adafruit Industries are THE place to hang out if you enjoy hacking/creating things. Limor has some of the coolest interfaces and electronic gizmos on the net. For those of you who are lost and are having a deja vu moment….Yes she’s the creator of x0xb0x, MintyMP3 and MIDISense (among others).
• Scrapyard Challenge keeps track of the scrapyard challenge events that happen all year round, all around the world. That said, I think someone should do one in Toronto (I know they had one in Montreal).
• Face Recognition Homepage is a great place to find everything you ever wanted to know about Face Recognition. Lots Algorithms, Papers and Source Code.

More to come later….

Stumbled across this earlier today and did not get a chance to make a note of it. From the overview portion of the page:

“The Eyebeam OpenLab is a home for artists, engineers and hackers pioneering open source creativity. The first initiative of its kind, the lab is focused entirely on incubating experimental technologies and media that directly enrich the public domain.”

Sounds like my kinda place. Now you might be asking why it’s mentioned here…..well it’s N.E.R.D. content and since I’m working with a group of people at my Uni on a very similar Lab, atleast in concept, I thought it deserved a mention.

Their Facilities section describes the environment as:

“The OpenLab at Eyebeam includes a mezzanine with an extended whiteboard and projector for informal meetings; a Lab space for electronics production, software and hardware hacking and rapid prototyping with technologies such as a laser cutter and 3D printer; the Prototyping Gallery, a semi-public space adjacent to the lab allowing for ad-hoc installations and project demos where the public can view the latest developments and artists and engineers can receive feedback on prototypes; and raw studio space where artists in residence create projects and access all of the opportunities and expertise within the OpenLab, Production and Education Studios.”

Sounds like a very cool place to Hack/Create/Invent. BTW, some of their earlier projects include — for those who remember — Wifi Liberator and Laser Tag/Mobile Broadcast Unit.

The credit for the discovery of this one I guess goes to the anonymous poster who commented on our “Wii Controller Hacking” post.

Anyways, what the heck is a Guitar Heronoid, you ask? Well, It’s a “Guitar Hero Humanoid”, I guess. A neat project brought to you by GarageGeeks members Rafael Mizrahi and Tal Chalozin.

It’s actually quite easy to reset the admin account using the install CD, but what do you do if you don’t have the CD? Well there are two ways of doing it.

1. This is the simple way, but only works in 10.4.x+:
• Reboot
• Hold down Apple + s down when you hear the chime (this will boot into single user mode).
• You’ll get to the text prompt….don’t panic…2 more commands and you’re done.
• Type sh /etc/rc followed by Enter.
• Type passwd substitute_user_id_here to reset the password for that account. DONE, Reboot and Login with new password.
2. This is the hardway, but neat since it can potentially allow you to re-setup your mac as if the machine was brand new.
• Reboot
• Hold down Apple + s down when you hear the chime (this will boot into single user mode).
• Type mount -uw / at the command line.
• Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone on the command line.
• Reboot, you’ll have to setup a new admin account now. Make sure you choose a different name for this new account. Login and move the old files over to the new account (or use migration tool to do it) and delete the old account and it’s data.

told you it was simple….

Okay this is more for me since I keep having to digg this stuff up…..but if any of it is useful to you please help yourself:

• Tom Igoe’s Resource page has a lot of good links I won’t duplicate.
• Arduino, the current king of all prototyping platforms.
• Gumstix, these guys make some of the best embedded platforms out there. Runs linux and has a very active developer community.
• DSMI Nintendo DS Music Interface (Needs DS-Xtreme device).
• Acroname Robotics for all your Robotics needs.
• Parallax….you know the Basic Stamp….right?
• Sensor Wiki is the right place for all your sensor needs.
• Sparkfun Electronics has lots of neat boards and a great News page.
• CUI or CREATE USB Interface is perfect for Media Arts students/Artists.
• Makethings has the Make Controller Kit.
• MIDITron is a MIDI to real world interface.
• Arduino mini is ready for your prototyping board.
• Monome is a reconfigurable grid of 64 backlit buttons. Ultra cool MIDI/OSC controller.
• Peripheral MIDI Controller for Windows translates onscreen motion to MIDI.
• VVVV‘s Sensor howto page.
• PD….You know PD….
• Processing…the latest cool kid on the block….really nice and powerful.
• Eyesweb is a cool Visual Programming language for Windows.
• Quartz Composer comes with every copy of OSX but alot of people don’t know about it. Check out QuartzCompositions.com, Quartonian and fdiv.net.

Okay enough for now…..I will add more stuff as I come across them…

Well after watching this piece of art by Daito Manabe, I’m now convinced that the Wii controller can be used as a instrument. This guy is incredible and truly shows what’s possible if you get your creative juices running wild.

And to keep things interesting here are some links for you to explore:

• Some external objects for Max developed by Masayuki Akamatsu (includes one for Wii)
• Wii Loop Machine
• Wii Midi Control in Resolume with glovePIE
• Glove Programmable Input Emulator for Windows (glovePIE)
• WiiToMidi for OSX
• Wii-to-MIDI tutorial for Windows
• WiiDI: videos working with Wii and MIDI
• WiiLi.org has tons of hardware details
• OSCulator: OSC, MIDI and keystroke interface software
• Deckadance DJ mixing app now support Wii controllers natively
• Wii remote drum machine for Windows
• Coding4Fun: managed Library for Wiimote (good for MS programmers)
• WiiSaber for mac
• Wiinstrument for mac
• DarwinRemote for mac

If you still don’t belive me have a look at this….

A little while back I came across Daily Dose of Imagery site and have been following the postings since. Then today I came across the little people’s site. Totally amazing, simple and elegant. Hop over there and check out the images. Slinkachu does some amazing stuff on his site.

I’ve always liked the concept of Stop Motion Animation and with the recent surge of stop motion animation chatter at work, I’ve been looking into some of the software and sites that do this stuff. One of the community sites that I’ve come across that I think by far is the most creative is Brickfilms.com. These guys have married two of my favourite things together….Lego and Stop Motion Animation. Have a look at some of their staff picks, some of these guys are amazing. Another very cool site that has a stop motion section under it’s animation category is ifilm.com. Have a look at this example (maybe offensive to some, you’ve been warned).

So Iphone is all the rage now and if you don’t have one you’re not cool….right? Well, not exactly. You see there is this whole movement out there that believes your phone should be YOURS, not Apples, not MS’s, not anyone elses. I believe Nokia is getting there with the N800, but they are not quite there (ie: N800 is not really a phone). Well fear not, the people at Openmoko are taking that challenge on. A totally opensource GSM 2.5G world phone. You buy it and it’s yours to do with whatever you wish. It runs linux, but since even the processor is pretty much open, you can write your own OS for it (ok, so maybe that’s a bit far fetched). The standard phone and dev kit costs $300, or you can buy the hacker pack (includes a debug board, second battery, case) for $450. No contract, no limits, no locks. I just can’t figure out the Matrix reference (Neo) and it’s relation to 1973 (was that a good year?)…..

Came across this the other day. Reconstructor is the new cool tool that allows you to grab you favourite ubuntu distro (desktop, alternate or server). Now you can have your Ubuntu and eat it too . It’s free and runs on linux (yeah there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem here). Well, I’m off to build Mabuntu (aka Many’s Ubuntu)…..hehehe.

Wow, very cool page that contains basically every graphics chipset specs known to man. Definetly worth bookmarking and visiting when you just have to find that chipset detail you’re looking for. Nice work . If you browse to the top level you’ll find even more detailed tables of everything from processor charts to socket charts to chipset charts……

Okay, so by now you all know that I kinda hate the iPhone. I think it’s gonna be the big wake up call for Apple/Steve. We’ll see, but in the meantime Nokia has beefed up the N800 with a simple software upgrade. New features include Skype (yehaaa), Flash 9 (wohoo) and SDHC support (upto 8GB), so run and grab it here. This means that you can grab two 8GB SDHC card and have a fully functional linux Computer w/ 16GB of Disk in your pocket. Get some skype-out minutes and you can leave your iPhone at home. All this and battery life improvement as well. My advice to Apple, stick to what you know, make better Computers/OS’s and let the phone makers make the phones .

While in San Francisco during WWDC, I had a chance to drop by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Let me tell you, it is one of the best museums I’ve been to in a while. Not only is it free, but it will take you back through the entire history of computing and calculating devices. I took a lot of pictures while there, so you can take a peek at them in the following gallery.