Modifications to a Williams Star Trek Next Generation pinball. Added lasers to the cannons, custom-etched flipper bats and added animatronic tribble for replays.

But other places are not and never will be.

This is where "shutup.css" comes in. I just installed it and I love it. It just removes the comments on many sites so you can enjoy the content and not the poop-fest.

I'm not going to pick on any specific site out there, but I think it's fair for me to say that I think the comments on some electronics-y related sites are pushing people away from sharing their projects lately. There are tons of great projects that make it to many of these sites, the editors do a great job with the sites and content, but there's just too many people who are determined to make the comments an awful place. shutup.css is now installed, I visit these site more now, even in the few short hours I've been using it - they get the page views and I don't need to accidentally glance at something awful. Eventually I think every site will work towards setting productive tones, it takes time and resources -- not everyone has a community manager for their site(s) - until it gets better on some of the sites I frequent, I think I'll use this comment blocker. shutup.css didn't come with every site I visit in the list so I needed to edit it. The sites it includes are digg, slashdot, youtube, etc... For youtube, I was using the Feynman quote-comment-replacer, that worked well - but I like this "clean" web without comments even better.

Micah Dowty is at it again, only this time he is hacking a digital bathroom scale rather than a sewing machine. Rather than taking the 'easy' route of just using the original electronics, and decoding what it output to the LCD display, he took the time to reverse engineer the analog components of the scale so that they could be interfaced directly. Nice project, and a fun read if you are interested in the process of reverse engineering things.

If you thought running Android on a N900 was a nifty hack, you should check out this video of OS X 10.3 running in emulation on the N900. It's dog-slow, but it does boot and goes to show that you'll want a better interface when you start using smaller screens.

If you redesign or remake gadgets for your own use, Sunyoung Kim and Eric Paulos want to hear from you.

Do you have any obsolete electronics that you remade or redesigned for difference purpose of use than originally designed? We want to hear about your experience of DIY remaking or redesigning of an obsolete electronics. Please share it with us for us to further research on sustainable design by completing the survey located at the website below:

http://www.wonderment.org/ewaste/ewaste.php

We are researchers at Carnegie Mellon University studying creative reuse of domestic e-waste for sustainability. This study is intended to explore the experience of green activists of how they reuse, redesign, and remanufacture their obsolete electronics for purposes than originally designed.

Pleo photo by Jeff Keyzer

More:

• Arduino-bot toy hacking
• Toy hacking workshop
• Children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips
• HOW TO - Reverse engineer a missile launcher toy's interface
• Uber bent toy volcano bleeps, causes inter-dimensional rift

Griffin I'Net has a nice story with pictures about hacking a Kindle DX to add Bluetooth support! [via RuutAckses]

From the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user rtadlock made this stylish panning timelapse camera using an old kitchen timer, and it came out beautifully!

If you need inspiration on how to make your own, check out the Time-lapse panning article in MAKE, Volume 15, page 159. Happy snapping!

We've seen plenty of human-powered fair attractions, however most of them make use of pedals, levers or perhaps re-purposed bicycles as their interface for locomotion. This one is a bit simpler than that, as the operator just grabs onto the guard rail and pulls, kind of like a vertical roundabout. Scary, but totally fun looking. I'd love to see these in playgrounds! [via boingboing]

More:

• Pedal powered ferris wheel
• Kid powered ferris wheel
• Maker Profile - Bicycle Rodeo

Posted by YouTuber Adalipu, whose channel contains a number of videos of these "Display2000" modules. This video only shows two modules scrolling a single letter, but a total of ten modules were constructed. There's more info over on Hack a Day.

Interested in playing with the open-source Beagleboard, but don't have a DVI-capable monitor to use it with? Well, Linus Åkesson has a decidedly low-tech hack to add a VGA output to the beagleboard, which consists of only a few resistor ladder DACs, a couple level shifting transistors, and some carefully coded timing values to make the LCD header output VGA-compatible signals. Great work!

The latest crop of high-end DSLR cameras are capable of shooting beautiful video, however they can be difficult to use because they cannot autofocus while in movie mode. It turns out that film movie cameras work the same way, and the solution is to have really accurate manual controls that you can use to make sure that the camera is always focused to the correct position. Of course, really accurate manual controls also means expensive, so it's nice to see this hack by Mac user slerman, a follow and rack focus rig. He used the gears from an old hand drill to make a focus lever for his Canon camera, which allows him to change camera focus by turning an easy-to-use crank. [via Gizmodo]

What gives with multi-touch on the Android OS? It would seem both the hardware and software support multi-touch, but you won't see it implemented in any of the built-in applications. That's OK because folks like cyanogen go out of their way to explore the possibilities.

Though, the easiest way to get multi-touch features on an Android 2.0+ phone is to download the Dolphin browser.

Mobile hacker Brandon Roberts has managed to shoehorn Android onto his N900 along with the Maemo 5 OS for a dual boot setup. [via livbit]

awk is a fun and powerful language available in the command-line of Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows (with a little help from Cygwin). In fact, our own Dale Dougherty co-authored one of the classic books on awk (and sed, another great Unix power tool) back in 1990 (the second edition was released in 1997), sed & awk.

At The Geek Stuff, Bill Duncan has posted a fun awk program that can solve Sudoku puzzles:

The application I chose to use as an example is "yet another sudoku puzzle solver". I must confess at the outset that I have never sat down to solve one of these puzzles myself, but sketched this out over a few days while commuting on a train and watching other people work on them. It was far more fun I think than actually doing any of the puzzles..

[...]

This program uses a very simple depth-first recursive backtracking algorithm with up-front and ongoing elimination of invalid entries. Awk may not have the expressive power for representing complex data that perl or other languages have, but with care, many moderate sized problems and data sets can be used. This algorithm may not be the best one around, but it is certainly fast enough for most problems and is easy to implement.

When you strip out blank lines and comments it's only 67 lines! Keeping in the awk spirit, that would be:

awk '!/^[ \t]*#/ && !/^$/' solve.awk | wc -l

Yet Another Sudoku Puzzle Solver Using AWK

If you need to generate some puzzles to throw at it, try this Sudoku Generator written in Python.

The release of the TI Chronos development kit is exciting not only because it is a cool piece of hardware, but I expect to see many great projects that cleverly exploit the resources of the Chronos. This nifty hack wirelessly unlocks a door using the built-in accelerometer to detect coded taps on the watch.

[via Hack a Day]

More:

• Alt.CES: Ti eZ430 - Chronos Development kit unboxing

It's beyond me why anyone would want to start a car before they got into it, but if you're looking for an interesting aftermarket mod for the next car show, this prepaid wireless remote car starter is just the thing. [via engadget]

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Micah Dowty was frustrated with how poorly his sewing machine performed at slow speed, so he decided a sewing machine retrofit was in order. After adding a speed sensor, modding the foot pedal, and adding a beefier DC motor, he finally has the tool that he needed to produce cool projects, such as soft circuit RFID tags. He has a full explanation up on his blog, and more photos in a flickr set.

Tim modified some kid-sized jeeps with laser tag weaponry + game controllers to create a live action game in the spirit of Halo's warthog vehicles. In the above interview he explains the sizable list of gear used to make it all happen. I'm guessing a simpler take on the idea could be built using RC vehicles with infrared sensors and emitters. A full rundown of the build can be found over at Microsoft's Coding4Fun blog.

Australian maker Mark Stead recently got some chickens and found out the hard way that they're early risers. In order to accommodate his new avian friends sleeping habits (and reduce the impact to his) he decided to build an automatic door opener using an inexpensive battery operated alarm clock. [Thanks, Frank!]

MAKE contributor Michael Una shares his experience hacking the Bliptronic 5000 melody sequencer -

First, I replaced the internal crystal with a Getlofi Precision Oscillator kit.  That was easy, and it’s very responsive.  […] I also found a spot on the audio IC that creates a rich harmonic drone.  I should note here that this bend should be done through resistance- I used a 500k pot and found that the audio would distort and cut out when resistance approaches zero.

Follow along with Android hacker Taylor Wimberly as he roots a Nexus One "Superphone". Amaze your friends (and perhaps cause seizures) by strobing the LED flash. Overclock the CPU for a modern twist on the classic parlour game Hot Potato. Remember folks, if you can't open it, you don't pwn it. [via Android and Me]

Spotted in the Make: Forums:

Need to do some heavy lifting of the physical kind, but only have some wimpy servo motors on hand? Why not follow Antonb's directions to Hack your Servo, and turn it into a powerful linear actuator. The instructions are a little tricky to follow, however the basic idea is to use the servo motor as a high-torque gearbox, which is then used to turn a screw to raise or lower your load. Using this method, he claims to be able to lift a 10kg load, which is pretty impressive!

GetLoFi posted this demo of a hacked Korg Kaossilator with a variable clock, resulting in some sweet time/pitch stretches -

Sometimes newer devices get overlooked for purposes of circuit bending.  Two main reasons are price and abundant use of SMT components almost too  small to work on. The Kaosillator is one such device. However once the novelty of the factory sounds wears off it is necessary to explore other possibilities and Kaosillator is no exception.

The first modification is an addition of the LTC precision module in order to control the pitch. Wiring is very simple with only Ground, Positive, and the Output connection. Nothing needs to be cut or removed. The Output from the LTC module can be patched directly to the Crystal leg that controls the Kaossilator CPU.

Earlier this week I was exiting an event in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood when I bumped into PizzaHacker and his amazing Franken-Webber portable wood burning pizza oven.

Drive-by guerilla street food is some of the best food out there. Just glancing at the prep table I noticed the choicest ingredients. Fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, smoked salt? Further investigation finds that PizzaHacker uses sauce made exclusively from organic heirloom tomatoes and hand kneads his naturally leavened sourdough for what some say rivals the most trendy pizza establishments in the area.

Part of what makes this open air culinary spectacle work is the heavily modded Webber 22.5" grill that's been outfitted with fireproof blocks and a domed top comprised of refactory cement and perlite that's been molded in the original Webber top. Using chunks of wood and charcoal, the Franken-Webber quickly reaches 1000F (the ideal temperature for cooking authentic Neopolitan-style pizza).

Here's a video from PizzaHacker's site:

More:

• How-To: Build a temporary wood-fired pizza oven
• DIY NY Pizza
• Make a pizza box solar oven

This morning's post about remote controls prompted Austrian maker Markus Hirsch to send a link to a project he's working on: a GameBoy Advance remote control.

The project, which is still in development, calls for adding an ATMEL AVR tiny44 microcontroller, an IR diode and an IR receiver to a GameBoy. Basically, the tiny44 and IR diode/receiver would be soldered to a card and the card is inserted into the unit's game port.

The ATtiny44 converts the received IR data into serial data that can be read by the GameBoy Advance. And vice versa the GameBoy can send data to the module. The data is converted into pulses and modulated to the carrier frequency of 37KHz. This is compatible with all 38 and 36 KHz devices.

More:

• The TV remote control
• Loss-proof remote control
• TV Remote control decoder kit

Here's an interesting, if possibly questionable idea. The folks over at Flowering Elbow converted a sewing machine into a scroll saw. If you've got an old sewing machine, it could be just what you need for cutting thin pieces of wood!

More:

• Pedal-powered Scroll Saw
• Sewing machine jigsaw The Tico-tico Singer
• Pedal-powered hacksaw

The Solar Dog prototype charger from Erik Schiegg is a solar panel attached to a dog sweater. I'm not sure how efficient it is, but I could see this being handy. [via recombu]

My Android phone is charged in no time... The dog feels good and I'm feeling good and planet mud is turned a little bit more into planet earth. But this idea would be interesting for farmers around the world, letting their animals collect electricity, too.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to get up to go do something, but didn't want to leave a game for fear your system would go to sleep while you were away and you couldn't use a software hack to nudge the system? Maker Todd Harrison had a similar issue and decided to build a device that closes a circuit every 25 seconds inside a Wiimote shaped candy tin.

It's just a simple timing circuit made of discreet elements that engages a reed relay ever 25 sec. This relay in turn closes a circuit in my keyboard for the left arrow key. Being this external circuit is self powered I can simply turn it on when I want a game or application to think I'm at my computer when I'm not. I know there are software hacks that can do this and I did try a lot of them but this particular on line game I play had a way to block such software hacks. I had to go old school, which is not hard for an old guy, and do it with hardware.

Tor is an open-source project that is dear to me for many reasons. For those who are unfamiliar with it, in a nutshell, Tor can enhance your anonymity on the internet: it obscures who you are, and what sites you are visiting. This is important, especially for people who live and work in oppressive regimes where direct access to on-line social networking is restricted, and where your opinions can put your life at risk. Protecting free speech is important to me.

Recently, Jacob Appelbaum pinged me and asked if it would be possible to make a Tor Bridge Relay client for the chumby One. Bridge relays are needed because policy-making entities can “filter” Tor by querying the list of public Tor exit and entrance nodes, and consequently direct the country’s internet authorities to block all Tor nodes. In other words, once you enter Tor, you have enhanced anonymity, but Tor itself has a clear and public footprint on the internet. Because of its well-defined footprint, someone with sufficient authority can “cut it out” by simply ripping out all of its connections to the rest of the world.