Hasta La Gadget!

As a lover of all things mechanical, I’m in awe of Chris Fenton’s Entabulator. Using an old book about mechanical loom-making, a 3D printer and some serious patience, he engineered a computer that can read a program off of punch cards and, in this case, calculate the Fibonacci sequence. The machine runs using a hand crank (Fenton notes you can overclock it by cranking faster), and it is quite finicky but also quite beautiful in its own way.

Obviously the world doesn’t need this Entabulator. It is so wildly impractical that it’s almost ludicrous, and the usability is limited (at least in this iteration). But isn’t it great that it exists? I’ve been messing around with 3D printers for most of this year and I’ve found a great deal of joy in wresting the means of production from Big Plastic by mass producing little parts and trinkets (this is my new business card) but I’ve also come to understand the real value of 3D printing.

In short, these things allow us to create what we can imagine. Whereas a few years ago, building something like this out of wood and metal required a different set of skills and tools, now you can build most of it online and “build” it in a few hours. It allows for hacking in a very real sense — the consequences of failure are almost nil when you use these tools as compared to situations where a builder has to work in less forgiving materials.

The Entabulator, while beautiful, is more important as an artifact of a post digital age when machines can beget machines. It’s actually quite thrilling.

You can download the project here and build one yourself. Because it’s programmable, you can entabulate all sorts of stuff — a dubious but exciting prospect, to be sure.

The Raspberry Pi has seen a lot of different uses, and it’s one of the most popular DIY toys for electronic hobbyists. In a Reddit thread where users post about all of their different uses for the credit card-sized circuit board, one user in particular has an interesting use: circumventing China’s internet firewall to get censor-less WiFi.

Essentially, he connects his Raspberry Pi board to a WiFi dongle and connects that to his own VPN server running OpenVPN. Once he plugs the Raspberry Pi module into ethernet and into a USB port, he instantly has censor-free WiFi internet access. And the best part is, he doesn’t need to configure anything on his devices, as built-in VPN offerings on iOS and Android are quite poor.

Of course, though, VPNs are common in China, as they give users access to blocked websites in the country, but if you’re not at home, you always need to install and open a VPN client eveytime you use a new device, which isn’t a huge problem, but it’s inconvenient. This Redditor, however, made things quite simple.

However, he says that connecting to his VPN server that’s located in France takes a while, but once it’s up and running, it can remain stable for a long time, getting speeds up to 4Mbps, although he says it’s generally a lot slower than that most of the time, but we wouldn’t be complaining if that meant we could access blocked websites.

The Redditor says that it’s a “fight against censorship everyday,” and the government is always finding new ways to crack down on VPNs, including shutting down UDP connections and throttling TCP connections. Plus, he says that China purposely slows down websites that use any kind of Google product such as Adwords or Analytics.

VIA: The Register

SOURCE: Reddit

Raspberry Pi used to circumvent China’s internet firewall is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’d probably say something like, “I always thought it would be cool to build a giant fire breathing piranha plant,” and then promptly forget about following through. Also, hey, that sounds dangerous! Hack-a-day‘s Caleb Kraft, however, doesn’t allow silly things like fear of seared human flesh get between him and his dreams. (This is the same man who created an incredible Portal gun, in case you forgot the name.)

Kraft created a six-foot tall, fire-breathing “piranha plant” — also known as “that bastard plant hiding in Super Mario World‘s pipes” — using PVC pipe, butane and a whole mess of other materials. The results are — well, we can think of a variety of adjectives that’d fit perfectly well here, but you’ll likely come up with a few of your own after watching the video of it in action below the break.

Filed under: Misc, Gaming, Science, Alt, Nintendo

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Source: Hack-a-day

Everyone’s favorite electronics hobby shop, Adafruit has posted instructions for building your own HAL 9000 replica out of a big red button, an Arduino board, and some cleverly cut plastic. Best of all? With the press of a button you can make HAL tell you what to do – until you kill it.

HAL is mostly made of laser cut plastic parts and a few nice decals. His brains are an Arduino Uno R3 with speakers attached and his jolly red button is a $10 arcade button. Best of all, the buttons come in white, blue, and green so you can make your own weird version of HAL that lives in an alternate 2001 universe.

To be clear, this is not an exact replica. However, it’s cool enough to, say, act as a cubicle charm or workspace novelty that will allow you, the human, to triumph over the encroaching hellfire of technological domination.

Is there anything more infuriating than watching your favorite team lose while you’ve spent the past two hours shouting fantastic coaching advice at the screen? Taking your frustration out on your TV’s remote can help, particularly if it’s able to shrug off the abuse like this impressive heavy duty alternative you can build yourself. More »