Once again we bring you news of great bargains, this time from the newly-opened South Portland location. Exhibit A is a Belkin N150 wireless b/g router, sans wall wart.
Most reviews I've found so far question the usefulness of this router's existence, but for $4 I can't complain too much. I'll just set it to access point mode and leave the heavy lifting to my Netgear brick.
I love the maker movement. The wide spread community of people who love building and modifying things for fun & profit, practical and just-because, resonates with my natural inclinations. If it breaks, fix it. If you need something, build it. Modify stuff until it works for you and makes your life better in some way.
This is the great thing about the internet – we can now all share the myriad of things we've built, hacked, or dreamed of, and be inspired to create things of usefulness & beauty. The only bugger is that I get so busy being inspired that I don't get anything done. I could (and have, may times) spent hours reading hackaday or Instructables or the Make: blog. It's awesome. And colossally time-sucking. In which lies the rub; for in my quest of the cool and useful inspiration I find myself with increasingly little time to actually build the things already on my list.
The principle holds for most of the internet, really. It's an incredible resource, a wealth of knowledge on almost any subject imaginable and then some that aren't. The magnitude of information at the fingertips is both exciting and mind-boggling, because I love information. I love knowing and learning about things, I love being able to search the world for opinion, experience, and data at a moments notice.
At the same time, I have trouble managing large amounts information. If I'm not careful, the ever-branching search for whatever bit I was looking for (or just happened across) inflates exponentially. That is when I find myself, two hours later, with thirty more browser tabs and enough reading material for another week of evenings – and still with my list of projects I'd like to actually, physically do. Never mind the stack of books and last month's Popular Mechanics waiting patiently on the end table.
Ah, dichotomy. A Maker doesn't just consume, a maker creates, taking ideas and raw stuff and turning it into something better, something useful. How can I create when my I leave no space for it? All the thinking, reading and book-larnin' doesn't cause completed things to magically appear. I have to actually get out and do something. So if you see less of me around the internet, it's because I'm living more in real life. And building stuff, too.
I've been haggling with the somewhat common "Could not initialize GStreamer: Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal" errors after upgrading Ubuntu to 9.10 (Karmic) a couple months ago. A lot of things broke, notably xfce4-mixer, the XFCE volume control panel applet, and Brasero.
I had tried reinstalling packages a while ago, but that was either ineffective or I didn't get the right one. So far XFCE's mixer-related issues are resolved and Brasero is running again, so I'm happy.
Now onward to Google, thou post, and be useful to others!
It's been a bit windy around here the last few days, which led us, over supper last night, to ponder the age-old question: could the wind be harnessed not just for the pleasant tinklings of windchimes, but also to produce the mellifluous hoot of the glass bottle? Blowing across the bottle undoubtedly works for mere humans, so it seems it could also be possible to use nature's breath to do the same thing, there being a lot more of it.
What airspeed is required to produce sound?
Is it necessary to funnel/control the airflow in order to produce sound?
Can we sound up to a three-note chord, with each note denoting a higher windspeed?
And, most importantly, will it keep Mom awake at night?
We may or may not have too much time on our hands this summer… so the prototype may or may not get built.
The University of Southern Maine employs the use of a large number of Dell Optiplex GX280 computers in labs and classrooms. They are modern computers, pretty fast, quiet, not real pretty, and the power button of these computers looks pretty much like any other typical power button on the planet: it's round, it has that funky little circle-with-a-line-symbol-of-power-thingy, and it glows green. However, one unfortunate design flaw has caused lost time and headaches.
How, you ask, can the design of a power button result in confusion and lost work? Visual feedback.
Fact: The button glows green when the computer is on.
Fact: People expect something on the computer to glow green when the computer is on.
However: In order to tell that the button is glowing, one must look almost straight at it from the front. If you are a little to the side – which is the normal arrangement for the Labs – you can't see the light.
Result: If the computer is positioned anywhere but in front of the user, the little green glow is invisible unless one leans over and peers at the button.
One would not think this to be a terrible problem, a dinky little light doesn't make that much difference. After all, you can also tell if the computer is on by looking at the monitor.
That logic is conveniently defeated by two different circumstances.
1) Some classroom computers are attached solely to a projector – if the projector isn't on (or is blanked), there is no feedback from the screen.
2) In the John Mitchell Center CAD lab, all the monitors are on a separate power circuit and can be turned off at the professor's whim.
We are back to using the power button glow as the sole indicator of computer status. This is a dangerous prospect to entertain if the glow cannot be easily seen – and did I mention that pushing the power button when the computer is on immediately shuts it down?
You push the button. Nothing seems to happen for a couple seconds. You push the power button again. The computer you just turned on shuts off again. You wait longer this time, and are confused. You push the power button again, firmly, and wait longer and something finally shows up on the screen. You can now do useful work before class starts.
Then, the monitors are shut off during lecture and you forget the computer is on – and there are no visible glowy lights to tell you either way. The lecture is over and you push the power button to start the machine up. It shuts off. And, since the computers have DeepFreeze (or equivalent) installed, anything that you saved to the internal drive is wiped clean at boot.
It sounds ridiculous, but I've seen people lose valuable work because of that. Extra frustration, problems, and lost work – all because the power button doesn't provide a good (i.e., visible!) visual cue.
Have you ever gotten a ridiculous sense of excitement and/or satisfaction from watching some mechanical gadget work? Do you know the exquisite feeling of childish glee when exploring some technological wonder?
Why do I feel like a total geek right now?