Hasta La Gadget!

On numerous occasions, I’ve thought about going on eBay and picking up an original Macintosh, just so I could have one in my office? But I always talk myself out of it because I don’t really have the desk space for what amounts to a museum piece. Now, one enterprising hacker has the solution – a miniature Macintosh.

Not only does this 1/3rd scale Macintosh look exactly like the original, it’s actually functional.

While it doesn’t have the brains of an actual Mac, it uses a Raspberry Pi miniature PC, along with Macintosh emulator to replicate the experience of using an original Macintosh – only smaller.

RetroMacCast host John Leake built this marvel of miniaturization by hand carving and bending PVC, and set the teensy Rasperry Pi circuit board, power supply and a 3.5″ LCD inside the case. Given the fact that John made the case by hand, it’s just that much more impressive.

Its display only runs at 320×200 resolution, less than the 512×342, 9″ screen found in the Macintosh 128K. Still, this mini Mac has an HDMI output for driving larger screens, as well as USB and Ethernet ports. Unlike the original Macintosh, this one boots off of an SD card, which should prove much faster and more reliable than 3.5″ diskettes.

Congrats on an amazing build, John! If you’d like to learn more about how he built his mini Mac, be sure to check out his blog. You need to start selling these now. I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

[via Mashable]

As someone who doesn’t know a lot about building electronics, I love learning about products that manage to teach the basics of the field. Bare Conductive’s Paint Pen is one such product. It’s a liquid wire that you can use to make simple circuits or electronic prototypes.

The ink also works as a solder or adhesive, meaning it can be used to repair circuit boards or attach parts to electronics. Adafruit Industries made a short video that provides a few applications of the pen:

You can buy the pen from ThinkGeek, Amazon, Adafruit Industries or from Bare Conductive itself. Price starts at $10 (USD). MIT also has a great article on conductive paint that also has links to instructions for making your own paint.

[via UniqueDaily]

New videogame systems all have one weakness: there are barely any games that come out at the same time as the hardware. The PS Vita and the Wii U are the most recent victims of this dilemma. Even though the Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display and not a console, it’s so different from other monitors that it’s going to have the same problem. But not if VorpX can help it.

The VorpX stereoscopic 3D driver converts Windows games that make use of DirectX 9, 10 and 11 so that they’ll be compatible with the Oculus Rift. It currently works with 90 games, including Bioshock Infinite, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge, all of which you’ll see in the demo below. You can read the full list of compatible games here.

Aside from converting games, the driver also has a number of features to make it easier to play today’s games with the next-generation display. Users can make a virtual keyboard pop up on the screen, which I assume they can then operate with a mouse, negating the need to see the keyboard that they’re using. Users can customize the virtual keyboard as they see fit. VorpX also has a feature called Edge Peek. Activated by pressing the mouse scroll wheel, Edge Peek lets you look at the edge of the screen.

Edge Peek may not be needed in future Oculus Rift-ready games, but it might be a requirement for games from the current generation or earlier. That’s because the headset crops what you’d normally see on a traditional display, which means anything that’s on the far edges of the screen won’t be visible. But many games place critical information like radar or items on the edges of the screen, hence the need for Edge Peek. It’s not an optimal solution, but it’s better than nothing. Another feature related to Edge Peek is the option to zoom out the view, which should come in handy for viewing cinematics.

VorpX also supports two 3D modes, one of which results in better graphics but is more resource-intensive than the other option.

The driver is currently in beta, but VorpX is already charging for it. If you want to take the plunge, head to Road to VR to order the software; $40 (USD) gets you two licenses. Check out Road to VR’s article to find out more about the driver.

[VorpX via Engadget]

In the future, we may not need to go to museums and other repositories of art in order to admire paintings and sculptures. We may be able to print inch-perfect replicas of artworks that, to the untrained eyes, look exactly the same as the original. Engineer Tim Zaman showed that it’s possible to make high quality and full color scans of paintings using off the shelf devices. But for now, it takes a rare and proprietary 3D printer to turn those scans into accurate replicas.

For his master thesis at the Delft University of Technology, Tim built a custom 3D scanner composed of two Nikon D800E cameras with 80mm PC-E lenses and a polarization filter and a picoprojector that also has a polarization filter. Tim said his rig enabled him to combine two 3D scanning techniques – stereoscopic scanning and fringe projection – allowing for scans with a resolution of 50 micrometers (μm) and a depth precision of 9.2 μm. Skip to around 1:52 in the video below to see Tim talk to the BBC about his project:

In his reply to a commenter on YouTube, Tim said that it takes him one day to scan a 1 sq.m. (approx. 11 sq.ft.) surface. Printing the resulting file can take up to a day as well. Not that you’d be able to do so with just any 3D printer. The miraculous machine in the video below and the 3D printing process it uses were developed by Océ, a printing company owned by Canon. The painting that was replicated here is Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.

That is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life. No doubt visual artists and art critics will have to come to terms with the off-putting consequences of this technology. What is the value of a painting if it can have infinite perfect replicas? Should one’s appreciation of a painting or sculpture be informed by the knowledge of its authenticity if you can’t tell the difference between an original work and its replica? But as Tim stated in his thesis, the fruits of his labor can also be applied to study, conserve and restore works of art. Head to Tim’s website or YouTube channel if you want to find out more about his research.

[via Tim Zaman, Delft University of Technology & Océ via Walyou]

David Wrobel designed a desk for gadget freaks, gamers and other heavy computer users. The Paradise Desk is filled with ports, power plugs and other convenient features that solve several annoyances associated with using computers or gadgets. It’s a desk, a USB hub, a power strip and more.

For starters, the Paradise Desk has seven USB 3.0 ports, three of which are in at the center of the desk. There are three more at the back and one on the upper left. On the upper right of the desk are four power outlets, while on the lower right are 3.5mm jacks for a microphone and two audio output devices.

There’s a switch on the desk for flipping between the audio outputs. You can plug in a pair of headphones and speakers at the same time, and switch between the two without unplugging one or the other.

The desk also has a DVI input and a platform for a computer tower. The cables for the various ports are hidden on swing drawers and come out of the leg near the platform. To top it all off, the surface of the desk is covered in carbon fiber vinyl and two LED light bars at the rear provide ambient light.

Pledge at least $349 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Paradise Desk as a reward. David has more features lined up as stretch goals for his fundraiser, including an HDMI port and a cup holder. I’m surprised he doesn’t have an option to order a desk with a computer inside. Or a desk with a built-in person. That one will really take a lot of work out of our hands.