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December 15, 2008

Install OS X on a netbook

The new micro-sized "netbook" laptops that have popped up this year are quite nifty, but unfortunately for Mac users, none of them ship with OS X. Fortunately, while you wait for Apple to release their own model, you can hack most standard PC netbooks to run a patched version of OS X.

Dan from Uneasy Silence got 10.5 up and running on his Dell Mini (photo above) and documented the steps required to make it work:

Kevin advised me that the chipset and processor of the Dell mini is so similar to the MSI Wind that a special slipstreamed version of 10.5 customized for the MSI Wind would be perfect (and painless) to get the little guy up and running.
The steps to Leopard-ize the mini are actually quite simple and easy to follow. After you download the slipstreamed ISO and burn the 3.2GB ISO to a DVD you boot up the Dell mini off a external DVD drive (Press 0 (Zero) at the BIOS screen) and installed Leopard as usual.

Brian Chen from Gadget Lab posted a video that shows you how to do this with an MSI Wind. The only complicated part of the process is to swap out the wireless card with one that's supported under OS X - not too big a deal.

Update: no alternate wireless card needed for MSI Wind

Kevin C. Tofel from the jkontherun blog wrote in with good news for MSI Wind users:

I've run OS X on my MSI Wind netbook as well as my touchscreen Samsung Q1UP UMPC... it's a great experience when you want OS X but don't want to carry a 4.5+ pound machine or can't drop $ on the MacBook Air.

I wanted to point one thing out that might be of benefit to your readers. You mentioned that MSI Wind owners need to swap out their WiFi card, but that actually changed just yesterday.

Realtek decided to create unofficial drivers for their wireless module, which is used in the MSI Wind. As a result, you can now get OS X to recognize the native WiFi card. This tip could save some folks the time, effort and cost of a replacement module.

Run Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) on a Dell Mini 9
Gadget Lab Video: Running OS X on a Netbook
MSI Wind netbook gains WiFi drivers for Mac OS X

December 14, 2008

Change the screen capture location in OS X Leopard

If you use the Command+Shift+3 or Command+Shift+4 commands to save screen captures, you know how quickly your desktop gets cluttered with mysteriously named PNG files. A post on the Sneak blog points to a solution to this problem for Leopard users:

To change the default save location, open up Terminal and run the following command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Documents/Screenshots

Your screengrabs will be saved to the Screenshots folder on your desktop, which you can drag onto the dock and use as a Stack.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for those of us who still run Panther. If you're a Pather user, your best alternative is just to use Command+Shift+Control+3/4. The image will be saved to your clipboard instead of the desktop, which you can then paste it into Photoshop. A File->New in Photoshop will default to the height and width of the clipboard's contents.

Save screen captures into a Stack in Leopard

December 13, 2008

FPGA hacks - Cornell ECE5760 final projects

We've previously covered the student projects that come out of Cornell's microcontroller design courses, and I'm always excited to see what's released each semester. Bruce Land wrote in today with an update on the Fall 2008 FPGA projects:

During the last 5 weeks of the fall semester in ECE576, Advanced Microcontroller Design, students at Cornell University are given the responsibility of using an Altera/Terasic DE2 FPGA development board to build an interesting system-on-chip project. This year's projects include an graphical L-system generator, a brute-force DES keyspace searcher, a polygon render pipeline, and speech recognition engine. The projects are typically combinations of hardware specified in Verilog and C software running on an embedded controller, although some are pure Verilog generated hardware. The projects range from tools to games. The parallel nature of the FPGA encourages graphics and audio applications, but infrastructure applications such as hardware UDP are encouraged.

Show above is a two player FPGA version of Tetris. If you've been interested in developing software for FPGA devices, the Altera development boards will set you back about $600, but the projects from this course all all open source and a great place to look for inspiration.

ECE 5760 - Advanced Microcontroller Design and system-on-chip
Advanced Microcontrollers Final Projects

Previously:
Cornell University's student microcontroller projects - Spring08
Microcontroller design final projects from Cornell University
ECE576 Final projects

December 11, 2008

Swiitboard - homebrew Wiimote jogging game

What do you do if the Wii Fit games aren't intense enough for you? You build your own exercise gaming system, of course:

wondered about a way to get fitter, work out without having to go running outside (although that is very healthy). I didn't think the Wii balance board would do the trick, as the Wii games where reported not to be very intense, and the board itself is to hard for running on it. So what is different about the Swiiboard is that can absorb running effort, measure the effort and perhaps that it can use those measurements to control a virtual environment. It turned out this can be achieved using a Wiimote controller.

The controller is a simple setup: a wooden plank spans two chunks of mattress foam, and a Wiimote is zip-tied to the center. The accelerometer in the Wiimote can be used to measure your jogging pace, as well as the left to right tilt on the board, giving you all the control you need to move an avatar around a 3D world.

The Swiitboard (Footwii/Pedal navigation device)

December 10, 2008

Fun with genetic algorithms

A genetic algorithm provides a simple way to search for an approximately optimal solution for an otherwise difficult and complex problem. By simulating the process of evolution, random mutation, breeding and selective pressure, a program can evolve a solution to a problem.

Seth Just wrote in with a simple and customizable genetic algorithm written in Perl. Given a problem set, you can define a function to randomly initialize each "individual", a mutation function to alter an individual, a breeding function that combines individuals with the strongest members, and a fitness function that computes the strength of an individual. His code is well documented and you can adapt it for your own problems fairly easily.

He also points us to a couple of interesting projects that are worth mentioning. The evolution of the Mona Lisa, pictured above, is an example genetic algorithm written by Roger Alsing. Given only 50 semi-transparent polygons and over 900 thousand mutations, his program is able to optimize their placement and color to produce an incredible likeness of the Mona Lisa.

Another cool example is this Flash vehicle simulator. A car with two wheels and two passengers is randomly constructed and its fitness is defined by how far it is able to drive without the passengers touching the ground. At first, most iterations don't even get past go, but as the evolution proceeds, a more robust vehicle is formed which is capable of navigating the terrain.

Genetic Algorithms in Perl
Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa
Genetic Car

December 9, 2008

iPhone Doom

Using the undocumented MPTVOutWindow class, Steven Troughton-Smith was able to update his iPhone Doom port to enable TV-out and on screen controller support. Doom on the iPhone on a TV is a pretty big deal to start with, but the bigger story here is that in addition to the TV-out features, he was able to get the touchscreen input and display working concurrently.

Now, if you make an app with TV out support, you can use the iPhone for motion and touch input, as well as an additional output device, which might be useful as a heads up display.

The MPTVOutWindow patch is included in the latest iPhone Doom source. You can try it out by following Erica's instructions over at Infinite Loop. It amounts to swapping out a couple files, adjusting a few settings, and rebuilding the project in Xcode.

iPhone Doom with TV-out: Try it yourself @ Infinite Loop
iPhone Doom

December 8, 2008

Text to speech holiday carol

We just finished a holiday "text to sing" program for Yahoo! Messenger where I work, Colle+McVoy, in Minneapolis. Here's an open source themed maker's carol for you all.

If you want to create text-to-speech music yourself, check out the Festival project. It includes a singing mode which uses XML to describe the pitch and duration values for the syllables in your song.

The Emoticarolers
Maker's Holiday Carol
Festival Speech Synthesis System and a Singing Mode Example

See also:
Text-to-speech in PHP

December 7, 2008

NoKES - Nintendo keyless entry system

Instructables user action_owl created this fun keyless entry system using a classic NES, an Arduino, Processing, and a spare CD-ROM.

Once activated NoKES (NintendO Keyless Entry System) will be blinking letting you know that it is alert and keeping guard. Once the Start button is pressed on the controller, the arduino starts recording what buttons are pressed, converts them into a number and adds them together. When you press Start + Select the Arduino compares that number to the combination that you have set.

If you enter an Incorrect combination the arduino activates an attached circuit and plays a sound. It then sends a serial signal to processing and snaps a picture with an attached Webcam (so if someone is messing with your lock you have a picture of them).

If you enter a correct combination the arduino sends a signal to the cd-rom to eject and thus will lock or unlock the door. Upon a correct combination a signal is also sent to processing which plays a sound.

Obviously, this one is a prototype. For anything besides securing your bedroom from nosey siblings, you'd probably want a beefier lock, and the software should check the specific combination instead of summing the keys. With a few tweaks, though, this would be a fun addition to the garage, dorm room, or a boring office space.

Raise your hand if you're thinking of the Contra code right now.

Nintendo Keyless Entry System (NoKES) [via zombie_funk]

December 6, 2008

iPhone projector graffiti

The Zeptotools blog posted this demo of an iPhone application they are hoping to release. I haven't used the application or seen it outside of this video, but I like the idea of adding whiteboard features to the iPhone by sending screen data to a nearby laptop with an attached projector.

What would really be something is if someone extended this idea to allow multiple iPhones to draw collaboratively to a single projector screen.

Zeptotools developers blog

December 5, 2008

MPTVOutWindow - make the iPhone talk to your TV

Using the undocumented MPTVOutWindow class and iPod A/V cables, it's possible to program an iPhone to have television output. What's cool about this is that since the iPhone be both the game platform and a controller, since it contains Wiimote-like accelerometer features. Using the MPTVOutWindow class, the makers of Moto Chaser were able to tweak a bit of their code and hack together a demonstration of the iPhone's video-out capabilities in only an afternoon. iPhone hacker Erica Sadun has a writeup of the whole process, including some of the development challenges, over at Ars Technica:

When Morrison approached senior programmer Mark Levin, he had basically one set of instructions. "Make it work before lunch." Freeverse had very little time to allocate to putting together the demo. In the end, the entire development effort took about three hours. And, of that time, nearly half was taken up dealing with Xcode provisioning issues, not technical demands from the porting. In the end, they created several build profiles in Xcode including a TV build in addition to their standard Debug and Distribution builds.

The MPTVOutWindow class, though undocumented, is part of the standard iPhone libraries. Erica has posted class documentation and how to go about using MPTVOutWindow in place of the normal UIWindow. There's no telling if the API will be officially published, removed, or altered in upcoming Apple firmware releases, so keep that in mind and go make something awesome.

Hidden SDK features transform iPhone into TV gaming device
iPhone 2.2 SDK offers undocumented TV-out features
MPTVOutWindow Class Reference

December 4, 2008

Quake's fast inverse square root

The inverse square root function (1/sqrt(x)) is used heavily during a game engine's draw loop to normalize vectors into "unit" vectors with a length of 1. Normalized vectors are important because when you take the dot product of two of them (Ax*Bx + Ay*By + Az*Bz), the result is the cosine of the angle between the two vectors.

So imagine you have a vector that describes the way a surface is facing (its surface normal) and a second vector that describes the direction of sunlight. If the sunlight vector is parallel to your surface normal, which is to say the surface is facing the sun, the dot product of the two normalized vectors is the cosine of 0, which is 1. If the surface is 90 degrees from the sun, the dot product is the cosine of 90, which is 0. Anything in between and you get a value between 0 and 1, which essentially allows you to describe how brightly you should light that surface.

Now, you run this calculation on every triangle visible in a 3D game, and you do all that 30 or more times a second, and you have a basic point-source lighting effect! Recall, however, that you need that inverse square root function to calculate unit vectors for each of those triangles. The square root operation is slow. Do it thousands of times per draw loop, and you have yourself a slow game.

But if you don't mind throwing away a marginal bit of accuracy, there's a faster way.

There's an inverse square root function that a lot of game engines use that is rumored to have originated in Quake III by Nvidia programmer Gary Tarolli. It looks like this:

float InvSqrt(float x) 
{ 
    float xhalf = 0.5f*x; 
    int i = *(int*)&x; // get bits for floating value 
    i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1); // gives initial guess y0 
    x = *(float*)&i; // convert bits back to float 
    x = x*(1.5f-xhalf*x*x); // Newton step, repeating increases accuracy 
    return x; 
}

Hold on, what was that?!?!

So way back when, Newton came up with a clever way of approximating the inverse square root. First, you divide the original number x by two. Lets call that "xhalf". Then, you make a reasonably close guess at the inverse square root. Let's call that g. Then, you take those two variables and perform this calculation (which you'll recognize as the last step in the InvSqrt function):

g = g*(1.5 - xhalf * g *g)

If you do that over and over, substituting in the updated g on each iteration, g will quickly hone in on the inverse square root of x! In fact, if you pick a decent g to start with, a single iteration or two will get you very close to the correct value.

The question is, how do you find that initial guesstimate for the first g? The game engine coders use trick with how floating point numbers are represented in binary, with the exponent and mantissa broken up similar to scientific notation. In a 32-bit float, the left-most bit is a sign bit and is 0 for positive numbers. That's followed by 8 bits of exponent (biased by 127 to represent negative and positive exponents), and the final 23 bits represent the mantissa.

Well, to do an inverse square root, you basically need to multiply the exponent by -1/2.
When you shift those bits to the right (a very fast operation), the effect on the exponent is to divide it by 2. You still need to subtract the exponent from 0 to change it's sign, though, and what do you do about the mantissa which was also affected in the bit shift operation?

This is where the magic 0x5f3759df number comes in. It's absolutely bonkers, but by subtracting the bit shift result from 0x5f3759df, the mantissa is reset to near to it's original state and the exponent is subtracted from 0 (taking into account it's bias of 127).

The result is very close to the inverse square root. Close enough for a single pass through Newton's equation to end up with a value precise enough for practical purposes.

Understanding Quake's Fast Inverse Square Root
Fast Inverse Square Root - details and math behind the magic number (PDF)

December 3, 2008

Wii Drum High

HE Zhao wrote in to tell us about an open source Wii peripheral drum-kit project he's been working on:

I have recently developed Wii Drum High, a software integrates Wiimote, Nunchuk and Wii Balance Board to stimulate a complete drum set. Different gestures and joystick buttons result in correspondent drum sounds. I recorded some videos of real drummer playing with it, and it worked out pretty good.

The software, released under the GPL, is written in C# using Brian Peek's WiimoteLib API. Using the Visual C# Express development environment and WiimoteLib, you can make your own PC apps that use the Wiimote or Balance Board for input. Zhao's source is a good example to look at if you decide to head down this path, as is Peek's WiimoteLib guide on the coding4fun blog.

Wii Drum High - Wii peripheral drum kit
WiimoteLib API for .Net
Brian Peek's Wiimotelib development guide

Hacker Gift Guide: Gift ideas for your favorite geeks

When I look for gifts for a lot of my friends, the most important thing on my mind is finding things that are hackable. Is the gift modifiable, open source, and fuel for future projects? Does it teach you something? These are essential qualities in a hacker gift.

In this guide, you'll find a collection of gadgets, books, and gear that have carefully been selected for their fundamental hackability and technical awesomeness.

The list starts off with an obvious gift candidate, the open source/open hardware Arduino.

The Arduino has quickly become the platform of choice for hardware hacks and physical computing projects requiring a microprocessor. The devices are cheap, fun to program, and there's a healthy community of Arduino hackers publishing both software libraries and hardware add-ons. For many applications, you'll want to check out the Arduino Duemilanove, which is compatible with snap on "shield" daughterboards like the robot friendly MotorShield or the XPortShield ethernet adapter. A lot of projects can also benefit from the ultra small footprint and breadboard compatible Boarduino, which you can assemble yourself for only $17.50.

Price: $17.50 - $34.99

A great gift idea for someone who's new to Arduino is the Arduino Starter Kit. It's currently backordered, but if you order quickly you can still get one in time for Christmas. It includes an Arduino Duemilanove, a huge pile of electronic goodies, and the book Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe.

Price: $89.99

Read full story

December 2, 2008

Image processing in Mathematica

A clown fish, diced into 40 pixel squares.

Theodore Gray demonstrated some impressive image processing features of Mathematica 7 on the Wolfram blog. You can drag and drop an image right into a line of code and perform a number of image processing functions on it directly.

I'm not sure how many of you are Mathematica users—I haven't used it myself since college—but from a UI design perspective, it's very cool to see multimedia assets integrated so seamlessly into a programming language.

This function identifies patches that are similar in color, then connects them into a network. The parameter says how many neighbors to look at before building the network.

The same tools can be used to process through frames of video. In one example Theodore shows off about 15 lines of functional code that can separate flying ducks from a stream of video by examining the morphology of the image frame and identifying the unique objects. Pretty impressive stuff.

Mathematica Image Processing

December 1, 2008

Reware - hack your old PDA

The problem with bleeding edge devices is that they quickly become old and irrelevant. Replaced with the latest gizmo, old smart phones and PDAs tend to find their way to a drawer or a landfill after about 2 or 3 years.

It's not that most of us want a throwaway society. It's that most of the gadgets we buy are designed to expire, with hardware that cannot be user serviced, batteries that cannot be easily replaced, and with firmware and software stacks that cannot be modified to accommodate the future. Proprietary. Closed. User subjugating. Stupid.

One half of the solution is to choose open hardware and open source whenever you have the choice. The other part of the solution is to hack your closed devices to do your bidding. Thankfully, there are a lot of people working hard to make the latter possible, and you can run Free Software on everything from Palms to iPhones.

We caught this note from Hans-Christoph Steiner on the dorkbot nyc mailng list. He's currently working on a project called Reware, which is attempting to bring a common hacker-friendly Linux distro to a variety of PDAs:

We've been working at Eyebeam since July on making it easy to hack old devices and run new software on them. We now have our first Reware HOWTO video, showing the basics of how to use a Reware image yourself, then it illustrates some of the Pd patches we've made.

Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.

Currently Reware supports several Palm devices, but with iPods on the radar and a number of Pocket PCs that can run Linux, there's a lot of potential here. Just think about all those 200-400MHz ARM processors just waiting for something interesting to do.

Reware Wiki - tools to recycle old devices
Reware First Release
Ångström - Linux for devices, including many Palm, Nokia, HTC, and iPaqs
iPod Linux

November 30, 2008

Google Code University - tutorials and course content for CS students

Google's Code University is another great "bootstrap education" resource for CS students. I've written previously about other free resources for the self-guided software engineer, such as MIT's Open Courseware and Standford's Engineering Everywhere. While Google Code University currently offers a smaller subset of courses, it's all geared toward topics related to large scale web application development.

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

AJAX Programming
Algorithms
Distributed Systems
Web Security
Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

As you might imaging, there's quite a bit of content that's motivated by the sort of development challenges that Google engineers deal with on their projects. For instance, here's a Lecture by Jeff Dean that discusses distributed storage systems, from the perspective of Google's Big Table technology:

If you're interested in large scale web application design and distributed application development, here's a good opportunity to learn from some of the experts.

Google Code University

Previously:
Bootstrap Education
Stanford Engineering Everywhere
Lecturefox: Free University Lectures

November 29, 2008

MIDI Hero - Guitar Hero with a drum kit

This Guitar Hero mod posted by Youtube user Egyokeo blew my mind. A MIDI drum kit and some custom software on a PC send button-press input via the Xbox Input Machine (XIM) hardware to an Xbox running Guitar Hero.

Since I injured my middle left finger playing Guitar Hero 2 way too much when it came out, I've been dying to get back to playing it. But my finger hasn't healed. I was holding the neck too tightly on the X-plorer guitar controller and it hurts to bend it anymore. I've never had an injury playing the drums, so I thought "wouldn't it be great to be able to play Guitar Hero on the drums?" So I thought about how that might be accomplished... researched, implemented, borrowed, and here I outline the finished product.

Here's the whole chain of what's going on:

Me banging on my drumKat MIDI drum pads
drumKat MIDI Out to MIDI/USB adapter to PC
PC running my own custom MIDI Hero software
MIDI Hero calls into XIM which sends input to the Xbox 360 console

To make the songs playable with two-sticked drum input, some of the pads simulate multiple button presses for the 3 note chords and an input buffer on the PC automatically holds all notes until just before sending another hit event. You could tweak the setup to use a MIDI keyboard or even a MIDI guitar.

There are a lot more details on Egyokeo's site as well as the blog maintained by XIM creator OBsIV. Unfortunately, there are no instructions for actually playing like this. I'm pretty sure it involves secret ninja stuff.

MIDI Hero: Play Rhythm Games using any MIDI Instrument
Building your own Xbox 360 Input Machine (XIM)

November 28, 2008

iPhone Linux

The iPhone dev team, hard at work as usual, announced a successful iPhone Linux port today. It's still at a very early stage, but the kernel boots on first and second generation iPhones and the first generation iPod touch. A framebuffer driver and a working Busybox installation point to an exciting open source future:

What we have:

- Framebuffer driver
- Serial driver
- Serial over USB driver
- Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc.

What we have in openiboot (but hasn't been ported yet):

- Read-only support for the NAND

What we don't have (yet!):

- Write support for the NAND
- Wireless networking
- Touchscreen
- Sound
- Accelerometer
- Baseband support

If you're a Linux hacker and want to pitch in with the porting process, hop on the #iphonelinux IRC channel at irc.osx86.hu.

iPhone Linux - Official Announcement

It's just a demo at this point, but if you can't wait to see this running on your own phone, here's what you need:
Installation Instructions
iphonelinux-demo.tar.gz

November 27, 2008

Build a Skype server and replace your land line

With some of my family overseas, Skype and iChat have become important tools for voice communication, second only to the cell phone and face to face protocol. It occurred to me that outside of telemarketers and the very occasional late-night pizza dial, the land line has become a relatively unused service. Unused, yet a consistent and not insubstantial monthly bill.

With thoughts of finally ditching the land line, but still a bit resistant to going completely phoneless in the home (what about when my cell battery dies?), I came across an article in Linux Journal by Andrew Sheppard, author of Skype Hacks, that shows you how to reconfigure your home telephone system to be completely routed through a server running Skype and Linux.

My solution was to build a Skype server that provides 24/7 phone service with the minimum of hassle and fuss. By dumping your regular phone company and taking back control of your home phone wiring using a Skype server, you will have not only a phone system with nearly the same capabilities as before--indeed, in some ways better--you will also save a bundle of money! In my case, I save a little less than $700 US each year (this year, next year, and the year after that, and so on), or about 82% off of my old phone bill.

Using a Skype server plugged in to the existing copper phone wiring of your home means that you can lift a receiver anywhere in your home, at any time, and get a regular dial tone. Incoming calls either from Skype users or regular phones ring all handsets throughout your home. Basically, you can make Skype behave like a regular phone line, but at a tiny fraction of the cost.

There are some big benefits to switching to a Skype server. It's likely a lot cheaper and if you're a regular Skype user, you can now use the service with any handset in the house instead of sitting at your computer.

There are also some downsides. The phone system still remains one of the most reliable services. It's more likely that I'll lose electricity than I won't have a dial tone, which may be of some concern for fire and bugler alarm systems. You also wouldn't have 911 service in this scenario, but if you have a cell phone anyway, this may be a moot point.

What are the rest of you hackers doing for phone service these days? Is it time to give up the land line entirely, simulate it with a Skype server or VoIP service, or are you still happily rocking the POTS? Give us a shout in the comments.

Build a Skype Server for Your Home Phone System
Andrew Sheppard's Skype Hacks - Tips & Tools for Cheap, Fun, Innovative Phone Service

November 26, 2008

Springatron 3000 - awesome Slinky reverb

Hackszine pal and music hacker Braden Stadlman wrote in with a link to the Springatron 3000, a gigantic spring reverb made out of Slinky and cucumber:

This is basically a giant spring reverb made from 10 slinkys. I was trying to make the best sounding spring reverb possible, I think I achieved this but it is probably the most inconvenient spring reverb ever made. The reverb time (sustain) is so long that the springs need damping and I found that the best material for doing this is a slice of cucumber wedged under the end of each spring, other materials like foam or rubber tend to kill all the treble.

...Although it is very inconvenient as a reverb, it is very good for making horror sound effects by playing it with a violin bow.

This is just one of several DIY mechanical synths made by Nick of Nick's World of Synthesizers.

The Springatron 3000