Kayak Bytes Blog
My father recently started blogging. So far he’s blogged about the kayak he’s building and linked to a few cool books on Amazon.
Definitely give it a look if you’re interested in building a kayak.
http://tonyolsen.com/
Chapter 2: Electromagnetism
This looks like a great experiment for the kids.
A simple homemade Van de Graaff generator
In the previous two projects, we stole high voltage from a television set to power our high voltage motors. In this project we will build a device that can generate 12,000 volts from an empty soda can and a rubber band.
All about Linux: A Concise apt-get / dpkg primer for new Debian users
All about Linux: A Concise apt-get / dpkg primer for new Debian users
Just a reminder to look here later.
Debian is one of the earliest Linux distribution around. It caught the public’s fancy because of the ease of installing and uninstalling applications on it. When many other linux distributions were bogged down in dependency hell, Debian users were shielded from these problems owing to Debian’s superior package handling capablities using apt-get.
Link Right 2 » Wizards In Winter – My Version
Link Right 2 » Wizards In Winter – My Version
Cool video produced by a good friend.
I thought I would use some photos I planned to use to make a “clone” image as animating cells for my own little video.
J_K9 @ Linux » HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC
J_K9 @ Linux » HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC
Handy guide for those too poor to buy vmware.
VMware Workstation has always been (and still is) a commercial product, and you have to pay a fairly large sum to get your hands on it, but VMware have now released a free application dubbed “VMware Player”, which can run virtual machines produced by VMware and a few other companies. Yet, with some simple hacks, we can use VMware Player to run any x86 Operating System we like.
Lyrics Site.
Brandon and I have started work on a lyrics site.
It’s been my experience so far that most of them have an insane amount of crap and very few lyrics. The goal here is to provide a useful service and make a few bucks with ad revenue. I will not stoop to using pop-ups or misleading ads. We’ll keep it simple with some adsense and an amazon suggestions banner.
Have a look at: http://lyrics.lr2.com/ for a sneak peek. I have a bit of work to do with the template, and I want a better front page, but you can get an idea of how lean the end pages will be.
Fix for Firefox Sound problems on Ubuntu
If you’re using Ubuntu and gnome, then odds are that esd is starting and taking control of the soundcard.
If you have any apps talking to esd (like your mp3 player) then Firefox won’t be able to talk like it usually does to /dev/dsp.
To solve this, we just need to tell Firefox to use esd and it can share the audio nicely with other apps.
If you’re using BASH this should launch firefox with esd support.
#export FIREFOX_DSP=esd
#firefox
You can also put this near the top of /usr/bin/firefox like this:
#!/bin/sh
FIREFOX_DSP=esd
#
# ***** BEGIN LICENSE BLOCK *****
# Version: MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1
[...]
And another, and perhaps the best, way to do this is to add the export command to “/home/<username>/.bashrc”.
# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc)
# for examplesexport FIREFOX_DSP=esd
[...]
EPE
Good guide to soldering for anyone getting started.
This written guide will help beginners and novices to obtain effective results when soldering electronic components. If you have little or no experience of using a soldering iron, then EPE recommends that you practice your soldering technique on some fresh surplus components and clean stripboard (protoboard), before experimenting with a proper constructional project. This will help you to avoid the risk of disappointment when you start to assemble your first prototypes. If you’ve never soldered before, then read on!
1381 Solar Engine
Looks like a fun project to do with my son.
This is the most common [Solar engine] because it’s fairly easy to build and is fairly efficient.
SuperCap 9V battery – hack a day – www.hackaday.com _
SuperCap 9V battery – hack a day – www.hackaday.com _
Need to look at some more ultra caps. Might be a good lightweight alternative to batteries.
9V batteries are often found in devices that aren’t used very often. If you use a NiCd rechargeable battery you may find it completely discharged by the time you need it.