Carview!

CARVIEW

MOTORHOMES

Select Language

HTTP/2 302 server: nginx date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:45:50 GMT content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 content-length: 0 x-archive-redirect-reason: found capture at 20081019201351 location: https://web.archive.org/web/20081019201351/https://hackszine.com/ server-timing: captures_list;dur=0.691030, exclusion.robots;dur=0.027107, exclusion.robots.policy;dur=0.012539, esindex;dur=0.015255, cdx.remote;dur=27.379008, LoadShardBlock;dur=383.732198, PetaboxLoader3.datanode;dur=111.338146, PetaboxLoader3.resolve;dur=86.098675 x-app-server: wwwb-app217 x-ts: 302 x-tr: 442 server-timing: TR;dur=0,Tw;dur=0,Tc;dur=0 set-cookie: wb-p-SERVER=wwwb-app217; path=/ x-location: All x-rl: 0 x-na: 0 x-page-cache: MISS server-timing: MISS x-nid: DigitalOcean referrer-policy: no-referrer-when-downgrade permissions-policy: interest-cohort=() HTTP/2 200 server: nginx date: Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:45:51 GMT content-type: text/html x-archive-orig-date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:13:51 GMT x-archive-orig-server: Apache x-archive-orig-last-modified: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:44:31 GMT x-archive-orig-etag: "237400a-1d9b3-48faad1f" x-archive-orig-accept-ranges: bytes x-archive-orig-content-length: 121267 x-archive-orig-connection: close x-archive-guessed-content-type: text/html x-archive-guessed-charset: ibm852 memento-datetime: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:13:51 GMT link: ; rel="original", ; rel="timemap"; type="application/link-format", ; rel="timegate", ; rel="first memento"; datetime="Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:49:11 GMT", ; rel="prev memento"; datetime="Sun, 12 Oct 2008 17:27:12 GMT", ; rel="memento"; datetime="Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:13:51 GMT", ; rel="next memento"; datetime="Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:47:59 GMT", ; rel="last memento"; datetime="Fri, 18 Jul 2025 21:49:11 GMT" content-security-policy: default-src 'self' 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline' data: blob: archive.org web.archive.org web-static.archive.org wayback-api.archive.org athena.archive.org analytics.archive.org pragma.archivelab.org wwwb-events.archive.org x-archive-src: 51_6_20081019114212_crawl104-c/51_6_20081019201230_crawl100.arc.gz server-timing: captures_list;dur=0.616809, exclusion.robots;dur=0.026703, exclusion.robots.policy;dur=0.011280, esindex;dur=0.011249, cdx.remote;dur=21.505268, LoadShardBlock;dur=296.361171, PetaboxLoader3.datanode;dur=273.028877, load_resource;dur=382.178145, PetaboxLoader3.resolve;dur=220.765790 x-app-server: wwwb-app217 x-ts: 200 x-tr: 868 server-timing: TR;dur=0,Tw;dur=0,Tc;dur=0 x-location: All x-rl: 0 x-na: 0 x-page-cache: MISS server-timing: MISS x-nid: DigitalOcean referrer-policy: no-referrer-when-downgrade permissions-policy: interest-cohort=() content-encoding: gzip Hackszine.com

Most recent posts: page 1 of 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Browse the complete archive by category or month.

October 18, 2008

Easy OS drive cloning for Blades with Compact Flash

If you've ever been tasked with setting up a server room full of machines, you can sympathize with the challenge of doing this with 90 boxes that use slow Compact Flash storage. Hackszine reader Left-O-Matic sent in the following story in which he describes a pretty efficient way to clone a ton of Windows-based Blade servers using Linux, a ton of USB CF adapters and GParted, the swiss army knife of filesystem tools that lets you grow, shrink, and duplicate most unix and windows partition formats.

Working in a high stressed R&D; environment, I find myself crunched for time, fighting new requests that almost always end with "...we needed this yesterday".
In the past 2 years I've worked out a system using Dell 1950s and SunFire X4600s onboard RAID controllers to effectively clone entire Node setups for deployment around the world, using RAID 10 for the Dells and Raid 1 for the Suns (Server 2003 with appropiate licences for all machines).

That all came to a crashing halt when someone higher up the food chain decided to consolidate this mess using Sun 6000 Series blades. The X6250 Blade did not pose a problem as we ordered them with Raid Expansion Modules (REM) to control the Hard drives.

The $h!t hit the fan when the X6450 Blades rolled through the door loaded with 4 Quad-Core Xeons no room for 2.5" SAS Drives... This leads to the problem. Loading Server 2003 on to 90+ Blades equipped with 48GB CF cards using a USB CD-ROM.

Now let me remind you that this needed to be done "yesterday".

With the time required to load Server 2003, set the system paramters, and harden the security for each blade, I'm looking at around 5 hours a piece. Lets do the math: 5x90=450 hours...YIKES! and lets just say that I can 2 or 3 at a time...that's still forever.

On top of that, almost any windows based program won't work correctly.

Solution:
Enter the greatest FREE Linux based solution.

GParted!

I found a crappy PC lying around the office that has a bunch of USB Ports on it. I then downloaded the LiveCD version, booted up the PC from CD, plugged in 10 CF card readers, and loaded them all with brand new CF cards fresh out of the blades along with one master CF card.

GParted allowed me to first create a NTFS partition on each card (leaving a 8MB slack space) and attach a boot flag to it.

Next I select the data from the Master CF card, clicked copy, then selected the destination partition and clicked paste.

The beauty of this program is that instead of do each step one at a time and waitng the 2 hours for each copy, it enabled me to line up 10 jobs that set it to copy the data from the master CF card to the destination's card, basically cloning 10 machines in 16 hours (Compact Flash transfer speeds are really, really, really slow). So after I had transfered the master copy to a internal HDD, it cut the time by..well a lot, eliminating the delay of reading a CF.

So, in conclusion before I leave for the evening, I setup a batch to clone and it's ready for me in the morning.

Quick and easy, nice and cheezy.

Thanks for the tip Left-O-Matic! I'm sure there are more than a few of you IT folks out there who could save some time this way. I have to admit I haven't done anything like this in many years. What's your favorite way to clone a room full of boxes? Ghost? GParted? Send us your cloning tips in the comments.

GParted Live CD

October 17, 2008

Coding a Flickr bike

One of the developers behind the Yahoo Purple Pedals project posted a lot of details about how they went about developing a networked bike that automatically uploads geocoded photos to Flickr.

The team created background applications for the GPS-enabled Nokia N95. The software forces the camera to take photos regularly without user interaction and posts the photo, the device's IMEI ID and the current location to a server application over HTTP. Finally, the server application matches the IMEI to a Flickr ID in its database and posts the photo to Flickr for the world to see.

Both the device-side and server-side applications have been made available under the LGPL license, which should give you a pretty significant head start with developing your own mobile-photo project.

Coding a Networked Bike
Purple Pedals

October 16, 2008

Sync your iPhone with multiple computers

One of those annoying "features" of iTunes is that it wants to erase your music library every time you connect it to a different computer. For those of us who move between a couple of different machines every day, this just won't do. Thankfully, iPhone hacker Andrew Grant put a nice guide together that shows you how to trick multiple iTunes installations into connecting with the same phone without bombing your tunes.

The trick is that each iTunes installation contains a unique ID that's embedded in both the "iTunes Music Library.xml" and "iTunes Library" files. The former can be edited with a text editor, the latter with a hex editor. It's as simple as copying the ID from the computer that is synced with your iPhone, and pasting that into the two files in the second computer. You want to save the second machine's old ID from the XML file, so that you can search for (and replace) that string in the binary "iTunes Library" file. Once you're done, your iPhone will function correctly on both machines.

How to sync an iPhone with two (or more) Computers [via tinyfish]

October 15, 2008

Scraping Wikipedia tables with Google Spreadsheets

Fitting in nicely with the discussion on pulling financial data into Google Spreadsheets, the OUseful blog recently demonstrated another Spreadsheet data import function, importHTML(), which allows you to easily link an external HTML table to your workbook.

The Google spreadsheet function =importHTML("","table",N) will scrape a table from an HMTL web page into a Google spreadsheet. The URL of the target web page, and the target table element both need to be in double quotes. The number N identifies the N'th table in the page (counting starts at 0) as the target table for data scraping.

The author goes on to show you how to pull a country population table from a Wikipedia entry into a spreadsheet, create a graph from it, publish the spreadsheet as a CSV, consume the CSV in Yahoo Pipes, export the Pipe output to KML, and import the KML into a Google Map. Whew!

The importHTML function will accept either "list" or "table" as the second parameter, which allows you to retrieve records from either UL/OL/DL lists or TABLE contents, respectively. If you want to retrieve something that's not table or list based, the importXML may also come in handy. With importXML, you can pull data from any XML or HTML file using an XPath query to target a specific tag or attribute. For more information on these import functions, consult the official documentation below.

Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets
Google Docs Documentation: Functions For External Data

Previously:
HOWTO - track stocks in Google Spreadsheets

October 14, 2008

Linuxstamp embedded Linux system

If the Beagle Board caught your eye, here's another embedded Linux platform that's worth taking a peek at. The Linuxstamp is an ARM powered, ultra-tiny, open hardware Linux system that has a bunch of low-power goodies packed into what appears to be a 3 inch by 4.5 inch footprint.

Compared the the Beagle Board, the Linuxstamp has a bit less processor muscle and lacks video output. To its advantage, it has on-board 10/100 Ethernet, and (I presume) it has lower power requirements, making it a better fit for some embedded needs. Both projects are near the same price point (Linuxstamp: $120, Beagle Board: $150), so you'll be able to make decisions mostly on feature-set when choosing the platform for your next project.

Linuxstamp Project Wiki at Open Circuits [via ladyada]
The Linuxstamp Store

October 13, 2008

HOWTO - track stocks in Google Spreadsheets

One of the most convenient features in Google Spreadsheets is the ability to pull live external data sources into any worksheet. Instead of copying data into your worksheet, when the linked source changes, the cells in your spreadsheet will automatically update, which can save a lot of work if you pull reports regularly. This external data can be pulled from XML, other spreadsheet documents, and even (assuming you can bear to look) current and historical stock quotes from Google Finance.

Linking a worksheet to Google Finance is as simple as calling the GoogleFinance spreadsheet function. There are two ways to use it: you can pull current information on a ticker symbol, or you can pull historical trade data for a particular date range. Here's how:

Retrieving Current Stock Information

If you call the GoogleFinance function with two attributes, you can link to current market data for a particular ticker symbol. Just open any cell in your worksheet and enter the following:

=GoogleFinance("symbol", "attribute")

Replace "symbol" with the ticker id, such as GOOG or AAPL. The attribute parameter determines what information will be retrieved for that symbol. There are a number of supported attributes, including price, volume, tradetime, beta, pe (price to earnings ratio), and changepct. If you omit the attribute parameter, it will default to "price". There are a number of other possible attributes which I haven't listed, including some specific to mutual funds, so check the documentation link below for the full list.

Pulling Historical Stock Data

Another thing that you can do is retrieve historical stock data over a large date range. Once you have this in your spreadsheets, you can use formulas to process, compare, and chart this information over time.

Here's the syntax for pulling historical stock data:

=GoogleFinance("symbol", "attribute", "start_date", "end_date", "interval")

As in the previous example, "symbol" needs to be replaced with the desired ticker ID. The "attribute" parameter, however, works a little differently. It's possible values are limited to high, low, open, close, vol, and all. "start_date" and "end_date" define the range of data that will be retrieved, and interval should be set to "DAILY", "WEEKLY", or a number from 1-7, which represents the number of days between measurements.

When the stock data is retrieved, a number of columns and rows will be consumed to capture the linked data, so make sure you have room to accommodate the data you've requested. It's not a bad practice to contain this data in separate sheet. One thing I noticed is that the column names always appear in French for me, despite my language preference settings. If you notice this as well, you'll just have to ignore it until it's fixed.

You can have up to 250 of these Google Finance feeds in a single spreadsheet. It's not an unlimited amount, but it's not exactly lightning fast to pull that much data anyway. If you need more than that , one possible option is to separate your report data into different spreadsheets and then refresh them as needed.

Example Google Finance Spreadsheet
GoogleFinance Documentation and Examples

Microsoft Surface without a surface

Microsoft has released what's more or less a stripped-down version of their multitouch Microsoft Surface; in face, there's no surface included at all. Anyone with a webcam (and Windows) can try it out. From Geek.com:

Although many developers may be waiting for the release of the Surface SDK expected later this month, Microsoft have in fact released another touch-related SDK you can play with right now.

Called Touchless, this SDK allows you to experiment with multi-touch applications with little investment in hardware. In order to use Touchless all you need is a webcam as the video above demonstrates.

Microsoft release webcam multi-touch Touchless SDK

October 12, 2008

Have fun with color changing RGB LEDs

Jimmie P. Rodgers brought a whole bunch of color changing LED throwies to Providence recently, and I just had to get some of the LEDs he used for my own enjoyment.

Each piece has three LEDs inside that are under the control of an embedded microcontroller. There are two main variants: fast flashing, and slow flashing. The slow flashing models have more of a gradual change to them as shown in the video above. You can also get diffused and clear versions of either. Unlike the four-lead common cathode or anode RGB LEDs, there is no way to control the mix of colors (you just have to sit back and enjoy them).

The best place I've found to buy these is eBay, where Jimmie and I have both found them for around 25 cents each (shipped) to the USA. A search for rgb led slow or rgb led fast should turn up some.

It may take a couple weeks for them to arrive, but they are well worth it; use them to make some LED throwies, and let the fun begin.

October 11, 2008

Fine-tune Gmail's IMAP settings

Tweaking IMAP settings

Gmail Labs has released Advanced IMAP Controls, which lets you control the labels that appear as IMAP folders and make Gmail behave a bit more like a traditional IMAP server:

From the team that brought you Mail Goggles, here comes...Advanced IMAP Controls, a Labs feature that lets you fine-tune your Gmail IMAP experience. You can choose which labels to sync in IMAP -- useful if you find your mail client choking on a big [Gmail]/All Mail folder.

After enabling this Lab, just go to the Labels tab under Settings. You'll see a new 'Show in IMAP' checkbox next to each of your labels. Uncheck the box and the corresponding folder will disappear from IMAP.

New in Labs: Advanced IMAP Controls [via jkOnTheRun]

October 10, 2008

Speaking UNIX: !$#@*%

Mac OS X Terminal
IBM developerWorks has an article that goes over many of the symbols you'll encounter at a Unix/Linux/Mac OS X/Cygwin command line:

You've learned a few of the basic commands to help you maneuver through a directory structure, create and modify files, see what processes are running, and maybe even administer users and the system. That's great, but you want to understand what the UNIX® administrators next to you are typing. It looks like a lot of commands interspersed with strange symbols. Learn what |, >, >>, <, <<, [[ and ]], and many more symbols mean in UNIX and Linux® as well as how to get the most out of operators such as &&, ||, <, <=, and !=.

Speaking UNIX: !$#@*%: Learn even more command-line tricks and operators [via LinuxDevices.com]

October 9, 2008

Repairing a Vectrex using CPLDs

Para JVE

This is amazing; it's an article from Programmable Logic DesignLine that describes how you can repair an old gaming system by using programmable logic (in the form of a Xilinx CPLD) to emulate ~~a hard-to-replace~~an obsolete (actually 35 cents each as Kyoorius points out in the comments, but assumed obsolete "for the sake of this project") chip. The author, In Choi, has a great justification for doing this project:

You may be wondering why I did this exercise. Wouldn't it have been easier to buy a video game console from this or even the last decade? I didn't do the design simply to restore the video game - I did it for a number of reasons.
First off, I think logic design is fun (and I'm lucky enough to get paid to do it). Second, I wanted to show that I could create the RLD [retro logic device] to directly replace a failed part. But my main reason for doing the project was to create a methodology with an FPGA to show that there are indeed practical ways to overcome chip obsolescence.

Replacing obsolete video game circuits with Xilinx CPLDs [via Andrew Plumb on twitter]

(Pictured above, a screenshot from the cross-platform ParaJVE Vectrex emulator)

October 8, 2008

HOW-TO Request Microsoft hotfixes quickly

Getting a Hot Fix

Hotfixes are patches that Microsoft makes available before they've been fully tested and integrated into a service pack or official patch. But if you're one of those people who's been affected by a bug, you might not hesitate to give the hotfix a try. However, getting a hotfix can be tricky: in some cases, you'll see an option to request it online, in other cases, you'll have to contact support directly.

Aaron Tiensivu has posted information about a technique that generates the online request even when it doesn't appear by default:

I don't know if this is considered a 'backdoor' or not, but it has worked with every KB article I have tried it on so far.

Most of the time, if a KB article is available to the public, there will be a "Hotfix Download Available - View and request hotfix downloads" message on the top of the screen like this:

If you have a particular KB article that you want to download, and the image above seems to be missing, try this link in your web browser:

https://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=[KBnumber]&kbln;=[KB language]

Requesting MS hotfixes online has changed slightly - new way of generating a request

Also, the How-To Geek has an article up about Hotfixr, which will generate URLs of this format for you.

October 7, 2008

Photographing the night sky

Rosette Nebula

The Wired How-To-Wiki has a page up on how to photograph the stars with a digital camera, tripod, camera mount, and telescope. If you want to compensate for the Earth's rotation (so you don't get trails in the image), you'll also need to pick up motor drive for your scope:

It sounds like something you'd have to be a pro to attempt, but taking pictures of the heavens is easy to do with the even the simplest of set-ups.

Here are some tips for getting the best results when you tilt your camera towards the heavens.

...

Stars are very dim, so to photograph the night sky, you're going to have to keep your camera's shutter open for several minutes. Of course, the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear to move in the sky. Leaving the shutter open on a stationary camera is going to result in each star leaving a trail behind it.

Photograph the Stars - Wired How-To Wiki [via lifehacker]

The photograph of the Rosette Nebula at the top of this post is taken by amateur astronomer Steven Childers. His photo is also featured on the cover of:

Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders: Get it now at the Maker Shed

October 6, 2008

HOWTO get Microsoft to subsidize that netbook purchase you've been putting off

Things I learned today:

Microsoft is encouraging people to use Live Search by running a generous rebate program. At times (such as this morning when I bought an MSI Wind), the rebate can reach 30% or higher.
eBay sellers techtreasure and multiwavevideo are also known as Mwave.com, a reputable seller of computers, such as the MSI Wind I bought from them this morning.

To be clear: yes, Microsoft is paying you to search. Here's how it worked for me this morning:

I started my search at Live.com and searched for "cheap" along with some product name; I tried a few variations such as "cheap wii" and "cheap laptop" and both worked. (Nick pointed out in the comments that you should sign into Live before you search; I'd forgotten that I was signed into Live when I started. Thanks, Nick!)
Looked for the link titled "Buy A Cheap Laptop. You may get XX% off with PayPal if eligible." (This morning, it was 30%. As I type this, it's 20%)
Searched for the MSI Wind (Buy it Now items only), and purchased it using Paypal.
Made sure that at every step of the way, I saw the icon for "Microsoft cashback" at the top of the screen.

eBay has a page with terms and conditions, and Microsoft has a FAQ about the program. See a list of other stores that participate in this cashback program.

So, how did I make out? I paid $479 for the laptop, and qualified for $144 cash back. On top of that, there's a $50 manufacturer's rebate on the MSI Wind, so all told, $285. Get while the getting's good, and let us know how you fared!

FatWallet.com: eeePC 1000H for $330 shipped with live.com and ebay
FatWallet.com: *EDITED again* 20% off at eBay through MSFT cashback program

October 5, 2008

Electronics hacking lab in a cigar box

Raphael Abrams just posted a peek inside his portable hacking lab to the NYC Resistor blog :

I like to hack on the go. So I made a charming little mini lab out of a cigar box and some electronic parts. It's got a breadboard, a built-in Arduino, a couple of places to put loose parts and a control panel on one side. The control panel is the best part with LEDs, potentiometers, a switch and a button all mounted on the side of the box. I love it so!

Hand made since 2008, Raphael Abrams' Cigar Box Lab

October 4, 2008

Making Windows XP play a little better with solid state drives

disable prefetcher

I tried getting Windows XP running on my 20GB EEE PC 900, but out of the box, it's pretty sluggish. The problem may be that Windows XP is not being optimized for solid state drives (SSDs). Posting on the OCZ (maker of SATA SSD drives) forums, Tony has written up a HOWTO on making Windows XP play quite a bit better with SSD drives:

Cheaper SSD drives like our Core V1 and Core V2 series have limitations with random writes filling up the write buffer on the drive and causing the SATA controller to pause while this is flushed. The reason for this is Nand MLC drives at present have to erase before they write...hence you get added latency. So every bit written to the drive has to be preceded by a bit erased, the drive can not write over the top of pre written data.
What we are trying to do here is limit how much XP writes to cache/database. many apps within XP do this, apps you add also do this (such as outlook)
The tweaks you will see listed may help with this, SSD's do not take well to lots of tiny random writes.

I gave these a try on my EEE PC today, and they made things quite a bit faster. I'm still getting the occasional freeze, but that only started happening after I put some files on the 16GB secondary drive in my EEE PC. As long as I stuck with the faster 4GB C: drive, these tips made a world of difference in performance. My next step is to try formatting the D: drive as FAT32 to see if that makes any difference at all.

Making XP pro SSD friendly

October 3, 2008

Cooking a meal on one 10" grill

Grilling with the Cobb

Pinball hacker extraordinaire Bill Bumgarner has had great success with the Cobb compact Grill: four cheeseburgers, five potatoes, two heads of garlic. All with just seven pieces of charcoal:

Altogether a delicious meal. And I have to admit a bit of amazement at the Cobb. I was expected a grill that made significant sacrifices in the quality of the cooking experience to yield a portable and versatile grill.

Not so. The thing is dead simple to use. The only temperature control is the number of bits of charcoal you put in at the beginning. Beyond that, it is pretty much just a matter of planning the cook around the cooking times of the various ingredients' cooking times with a goal of opening the Cobb the minimum number of times.

At $120, It's not super cheap, but it's the most compact grill I've ever seen. And think of all the money you'll save on charcoal.

All On One Grill: Cheeseburgers & Grilled Whole Potatoes

October 2, 2008

2008 Interactive Fiction competition entries available

Absolute Worst

The 2008 Interactive Fiction competition is up and running, and you can download the games and vote:

For the last fourteen years, the readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction have held a yearly interactive fiction competition. For fans of the old Infocom games as well as for newcomers to the genre, the competition is a chance to enjoy some of the best short adventure games available anywhere.

The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition
via Grand Text Auto

Gaming Hacks
It doesn't take long for an avid or just wickedly clever gamer to be chafed by the limitations of videogame software or hardware. If you want to go far beyond the obvious, there's an awful lot of free fun you can have, using the creative exploits of the gaming gurus. Gaming Hacks is the indispensable guide to cool things gamers can do to create, modify, and hack videogame hardware and software.

Retro Gaming Hacks
Whether you're just discovering Tetris or you've been a Pong junkie since puberty, Chris Kohler's Retro Gaming Hacks is your indispensable new guide to classic games. Kohler has compiled the how-to information that used to take weeks of web surfing to find and presents it in highly readable Hacks style.

October 1, 2008

iPhone Hacks: tips & tools for unlocking the power of your iPhone and iPod Touch

iPhone Hacks Cover

What better way to celebrate the lifting of the NDA than to hack your iPhone?

iPhone Hackers David Jurick, Adam Stolarz, and Damien Stolarz have been hard at work on the upcoming iPhone Hacks. Because it's such a moving target, we decided to do an experiment with the folks at Near-Time. The authors are developing the book in a Near-Time space, which is a lot like a Wiki. It won't be long before we turn this into a print book, but with everything changing constantly, we wanted to get the information out as soon as possible.

The first chapter is available for free viewing, and we have a subscription option in case you want to subscribe to the whole book. On top of that, there's a forum where you can post your own hacks, and you can post comments at the bottom of every hack.

Collaborate. Contribute. Develop.
Join iPhone Hacks and gain advanced access to hacks, tips, and tricks to make your iPhone experience even better. You'll learn how to do things to your iPhone that would surprise even Apple engineers! Members of this community site can make comments, participate in the forums, and help author the book by submitting their own hacks. Start your 30-day free trial now!

iPhone Hacks

September 30, 2008

Today is the last day of the 10% off everything sale at the Maker Shed store, order something now

Today is the last day of the 10% off everything sale at the Maker Shed store, order something now and save some cash - if your order is over $25 you also get a free Maker's notebook. Halloween is coming up soon, here are a few scary/related items to pick up while the sale is still going on.

Bonus: If you're shopping for Make or Hacks books, you can take advantage of our back to school special: 35% off Make & Hacks Books. (Enter in the following code at checkout "BOOK4ME" and get 35% off at checkout! Offer good for the Make books & Hacks books only, magazines & box sets excluded.)

Mkvn1-2
Mkvn1-3
Animated Ghost Kit
Grab this cool kit for Halloween. Sound activated, the ghost flashes his little red LED eyes, vibrates and makes scary sounds! Easy and fun to build. Hack it!

Hallow07-2
MAKE: Halloween Special Edition
DIY HALLOWEEN from the editors of MAKE and CRAFT brings you 40-plus DIY projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

Mktet2-2
Mktet2-3
Twitchie Robot Kit
Twitchie is an open source multi-purpose robot kit. It has the capacity to frighten and scare, but also the power to love and care! It's a regular pathos-o-matic! Grown men scream! Maternal instincts long dormant, suddenly activated! It's a robot unlike any other, and you can make one with this kit. Cover your Twitchie any way you'd like to make it truly unique.

Msak-2
Arduino Starter Kit
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino is open source!
We've put together our own Arduino Starter Kit, tossed in our bestselling Making Things Talk book, wrapped it up in some cool packaging so you can get started quickly without having to do a lot of shopping first. Check out the "How To" for some helpful links to provide support and contact with the growing Arduino community. Happy Hacking!