"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!"
GitHub launched with a simple pull request system on day one. You’ve used it to send 200 thousand pull requests in just over two years. Now we’re taking it to the next level with a re-imagined design and a slew of new tools that streamline the process of discussing, reviewing, and managing changes.
The Adafruit “midnight hacker” is a Leatherman Squirt ES4 and a very handy, unique key-chain size multi-tool. The E4 sets you up with 20GA, 18GA, 16GA, 14GA and 12GA wire strippers and electrical wire cutters to handle all kinds of precise jobs. The gripping edges on the ES4′s spring-action pliers help you get a firm grasp on fuses, small cables, and many hard-to-reach items.
Tools:
420HC Clip Point Knife
Spring-action Needlenose Pliers
Medium Screwdriver
Flat/Phillips Screwdriver
Wood/Metal File
Wire Cutters
Wire Strippers: 20GA, 18GA, 16GA, 14GA, and 12GA
Scissors
Bottle Opener
Features:
Etched with our laser, says “midnight hacker”
Stainless Steel with Anodized Aluminum Handle Scales
Stainless Steel Body
Outside-accessible Tools
Key Ring Attachment
Available color: Black, dark, cold – like our heart
A new bill Schumer introduced would subject fashion to copyright for the first time. The bill would protect only “unique” designs — those that are truly new and distinguishable. And only “substantially identical” copies would be illegal.
…But in the real world, the law will almost surely expand in a way that harms many designers and consumers. Expensive disputes will ensue over what is unique and who got there first. Lawyers (and those designers who could afford them) will be among the biggest beneficiaries. We like lawyers, but we don’t think this is good policy.
Which brings up an interesting question: why would Congress change intellectual property law in a way unlikely to help designers very much, but almost certain to hurt consumers? There are, after all, hundreds of millions of people who buy clothes, compared to a relative few who design them.
Fashion can’t be copyrighted, we’ll see how much longer it lasts… here’s what you can’t copyright now -
1. Ideas, Methods, or Systems
2. Commonly Known Information
3. Choreographic Works
4. Names, Titles, Short Phrases, or Expressions
5. Fashion
A neat video showing the location of asteroids as they are discovered, from 1980 – 2010. It’s really cool to see the newly discovered ‘roids follow the Earth around the sun.
AutoCAD® for Mac® software—it’s AutoCAD, for the Mac, bringing robust 3D free-form design tools and powerful drafting capabilities to your platform of choice. It takes full advantage of the Mac OS® X platform, with an intuitive, graphical user interface that makes it easy to bring your ideas to life. And because it’s AutoCAD, you’re working natively in DWG™ format, so you can easily share files with clients, suppliers, and partners around the world, regardless of platform.
As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in `computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. [...] The Cray-1 is one of those iconic machines that just makes you say “Now that’s a super computer!” Sure, your iPhone is 10X faster, and it’s completely useless to own one, but admit it . . you really want one, don’t you? [...]
When I started building this, I thought “Oh, I’ll just swing by the ol’ Internet and find some groovy 70’s-era software to run on it.” It turns out I was wrong. One of the sad things about pre-internet machines (especially ones that were primarily purchased by 3-letter Government agencies) is that practically no software exists for them.
After searching the internet exhaustively, I contacted the Computer History Museum and they didn’t have any either. They also informed me that apparently SGI destroyed Cray’s old software archives before spinning them off again in the late 90’s. I filed a couple of FOIA requests with scary government agencies that also came up dry.
chumby is now offering a “hacker” board, which is the guts of the chumby One, but modified to be more hacker-friendly: it comes with three high speed USB host ports, uses the power connector from the Sony PSP (instead of the weird, hard to find connector on the chumby One) and incorporates a variety of headers, such as Arduino-style shield headers and a 44-pin breakout header that gives you access to a lot of digital I/O and some analog inputs. There’s even a four-directional switch on board and some LEDs so you can do quick hacks that don’t require a video display for user feedback. Speaking of the display, while this board doesn’t come standard with an LCD, it does provide composite video output via a 4-wire 1/8″ jack so you can, by using an iPod video cable, plug the chumby hacker board into any TV that supports a composite video input…
The board is priced at around $89. The goal of the beta program is to collect feedback from users who purchase the board to fine-tune the design and to figure out what I/Os and accessories make sense to bundle with the board. Like the Arduino, we don’t integrate a lot of features onto the mainboard itself (keeps base cost low). Instead, we’d like to make sure that adequate I/O resources exist for developers to hack in the peripheral module they require to complete their project — or for more enterprising developers to build their own flavor of peripheral board and sell their own accessory.
There’s a few resources available to get people started on using the boards: a forum for general support and questions, and a wiki containing links to datasheets, schematics, and other more permanent documentation that people will find useful. Adafruit also has available a snazzy hackerboard page with tons of info, well-documented tutorials, and nice photos to boot.
One other point of note about the hacker board is that you can install a native gcc toolchain on it, so you don’t need to configure/install a cross-compiler on your host PC to develop for it. Heck, it’s got a 454 MHz CPU and plenty of disk space, so why not? Adafruit has a tutorial on how to install the compiler using a downloadable self-extracting script and a USB dongle. I’ve also heard rumors that an OpenEmbedded port is coming to the board soon, so stay tuned.
If you do end up purchasing a board and participating in the beta, please do contribute to the fora and wikis with your feedback. As always, happy hacking!
As someone who has actually made a working printer solution for the Arduino (one of the very few, from what I can tell), it’s still my opinion the solution below is optimum, as of this writing. The parallel to serial conversions and Arduino pin-count issues make the parallel approach a non-starter.
1) Acquire an RS232 serial shield. If from http://www.cutedigi.com, then these three Mods will be required:
MOD1: Bend shield pins 0 and 1 so they do not plug into the Arduino TTY dedicated digital IO pins. This allows the Arduino serial com to remain available to USB debugging.
MOD2: Add jumpers between whatever two ports you wish to use as printer IO pins and the RS232 shield pins 0 and 1 (remember – we bent the shield pins so they are no longer talking to the Arduino, but the RS232 shield is still expecting TTY-level serial data on its pins 0 and 1 anyway. The jumpers will “fool” the shield into believing data is from Arduino pins 0 and 1, when actually the signals are coming from whatever Arduino pins you jumper them to.)
MOD3: Add a reset button to the RESET and GND pins. Grrr. The shield completely covers the Arduino reset button. Who designs things this way?
2) Plug in your receipt printer to the DB9 pin of the shield and start churning out paper.
Believe it or not, it’s that simple. Why someone hasn’t make a decent printer shield is beyond me. I spoke with the support person for the RS232 shield about the issues, and he responded to me as if I were speaking Martian. It took me a year to find this solution. Enjoy.
We are very happy to announce a new product. I have always liked the Boarduino as a concept, but have been frustrated that you can’t easily use it for that semi permanent prototyping, and you can’t use it with Arduino shields. Both these problems are now solved with the Boarduino Shield. Available at the wickeddevice store. It uses long pin headers, so you can mount shields on the top and/or the bottom of the proto-shield. We think it’s pretty nifty.
Interesting! We are hoping Wicked Device makes it an open source hardware project too, like the Boarduino – Update: The makers say it’s open source hardware! (We couldn’t find the files, license, etc. Sorry for any confusion on our part).
Power supplies – How to power your Chumby Hacker board! Serial port – How to connect to the serial terminal port for shell access Compiler – Installing the Falconwing GCC toolchain Accessing i2c – Connecting to i2c chips including the on-board accelerometer!
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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