Hasta La Gadget!

Can it be Hanukkah time again already!? And here you are without your dreidel! But by now, the stores are probably picked dry of the best dreidels. What are you to do!?

Luckily, one patchwork artisan has the perfect stop-gap solution. All you need are four of those mini plastic key chain cards and a pen cap. You start by piercing the cards with the pen cap through the little holes in the corner. The cards should stay on by themselves. Spread them equally apart and you should have a balanced spinning device.

Now, what the original post doesn’t show is how to turn this spinner into a functioning dreidel. To do that, simply mark each card with one of the four Hebrew characters:  Nun, Gimel, Hei, and Shin (if you’re a little rusty on your Hebrew, check here). And now, the dreideling can commence and Hanukkah is saved! 

For those of you who need a refresher course on how to play dreidel, the simple rules can be found here. And for those of you who feel the need to turn everything into a drinking game, we’ve included some video instructions on that after the jump.

via instructables

Hello, multipurpose! Seagate’s Pogoplug-based FreeAgent DockStar — at least at a glance — isn’t much good to those who aren’t buying up DockStar HDDs. But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll realize that this minuscule adapter packs a 1.2GHz Marvell processor, 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM. There’s also a smattering of USB ports and an Ethernet socket; add that all up, and you’ve got a hacker’s playground. One Hunter Davis decided to see just how much he could squeeze out of this here peripheral, which can be widely found for as little as $25 nowadays. Thanks to a copy of Debian Linux, a good bit of programming know-how, a DisplayLink USB-to-VGA adapter and a USB sound adapter, he was able to concoct a homegrown emulation console that could handle nearly everything he threw at it. ‘Course, you’ll have to spring for those other parts if you don’t have a house full of random doodads, but once he figures out how to install a battery and make the entire setup portable… look out! Head on past the break for an in-action video.

Continue reading Dockstar FreeAgent hacked into inexpensive emulation masterpiece (video)

Dockstar FreeAgent hacked into inexpensive emulation masterpiece (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s that time of year again! The colorful lights go up, the snow comes down, and there’s a bit of that indescribable magic in the air. Like most people, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Christmas is, of course, Slayer. Yes, even that most evil of thrash bands can’t help but get into the season’s spirit of giving and brotherhood.

That’s why one enterprising lad has created this choreographed Christmas light extravaganza to the soundtrack of the classic holiday diddy “Raining Blood.”

This blast of yuletide fury was from 2009, and creator lacycute20 (who posted the video to his daughter’s YouTube account, so there’s lots of Justin Bieber and Ke$ha videos sharing space on the account) promises to have an all new choreography up for this year.

But for now, enjoy the Christmas wrath.

Are you a bicycling enthusiast? Do you own a special pair of specially-designed biking gloves? Do you hold a vehement hatred towards people who drive cars to destinations two blocks away, and also towards pedestrians who dare tread upon your clearly-demarcated bike lane? Do you feel a sense of accomplishment at having biked through a cold winter night even when public transportation could have cut your travel time in half?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then you my friend, are a biker. And we would like to put you and your protective gear to work saving the planet.

One green-minded biker has created a way to convert all that wind passing over his helmet into electricity. This mobile skull-adorned windmills utilize propellers in order to charge embedded batteries (it takes a two-hour ride to fully-charge). The batteries can then be connected to other devices by USB.

However, this isn’t meant to be just another green gadget, but rather [sic]:

We want to use it as a medium to sensibilise the public for environmental topics and to integrate sustainability topics into the lifestye of young people by creating a positive experience.

via vimeo