Download teen titans archive: Teen titans archive

Read the rest of the story...

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals


Remember that fad where everyone had dining room tables of their favorite Disney character? Or the age in the 70s where tables were shaped like lava lamps? No? At any rate, the modders over at SCAD Inc. have spent all summer crafting a fully-functional Super Nintendo controller-table, which reminds us an awful lot of the fully-functional NES controller-table we saw in May of this year. So, which geek is gonna take on the N64 controller table? Or better yet, the Virtual Boy?
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read the rest of the story...

US $115.00 (0 Bid)
End Date: Thursday Sep-04-2008 18:35:00 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

Read the rest of the story...

US $129.95 (0 Bid)
End Date: Saturday Sep-06-2008 16:03:32 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $139.95
Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list

Read the rest of the story...

US $125.00
End Date: Saturday Sep-06-2008 10:48:15 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $125.00
Buy it now | Add to watch list

Read the rest of the story...

US $110.00
End Date: Tuesday Sep-09-2008 10:04:56 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $110.00
Buy it now | Add to watch list

Read the rest of the story...

Short version of the story: I may fail at starting a pedicab company because city officials don't like my DIY version, get nervous, and possibly break the law when you put them on film. Please keep this in mind when trying to get your DIY projects past any bureaucrats!

5-minute video version (visually boring for first minute):

The longer story:
There are 2 ways to legally drive a pedicab in Austin, Texas: rent one nightly from an existing shop or start your own pedicab company.

Should you want to start your own, there are 2 real barriers: insurance and obtaining a pedicab. For more detail, here's a guide I've found very helpful.

Unless you've got a pot of gold to explore self-insurance options, there's no way around writing a sizable check for the insurance side of things. However, I thought I might have some ideas about how to build a better (cheaper, safer, greener) pedicab.

With this in mind, I went to work and built a pedicab. Then, I made the mistake of trying to get my creation inspected.

After my third design and third failed inspection, it began to become clear to me that this wasn't a matter of proving any specific technical point or placing my rear reflector in the correct configuration: the pedicab inspector didn't like my idea of how to build, didn't like me, and wasn't about to allow my design on the road.

My favorite point of contention is the tires: the city has decided that I have to provide a weight rating for my rims, spokes, and tires. Never mind that:


  • There appears to be no such thing as a pedicab-specific tire

  • Most manufacturers don't rate bike tires for weight

  • No pedicab company has previously been asked to provide this information

  • My wheels are identical and tires equivalent to those in use by 20+ pedicabs in operation

These points don't matter, and I'm told that if I continue raising them all pedicabs will be grounded until they verify their tire's weight capacity. My inspector friend stresses that he'll be sure to inform other pedicabbers who is responsible for this (somehow meaning me). Looking at me as if I may be in need of hospitalization, I'm asked "why don't you just buy a pedicab?"

Oh, and one other important detail: it's been 25 days since I received my operating permit. Should I surpass 30 days, I lose my permit and have to start from scratch.

So, for visit #4 I've escalated to my inspector friend's boss. Having researched my state's eavesdropping laws, I'm accompanied to our meeting by my trusty companion and her digital camera. Because Texas is a one-party consent state, it's legal for me to record a conversation that I take part in without informing whoever I'm talking to.

Unfortunately, my government friends don't seem to realize this. When they figure out that they're being recorded (not exactly hard, considering we had the camera sitting in plain view), they immediately end the meeting, fail my cab without inspecting it, and refuse to allow me into their office. My insistence on a DIY creation is clearly such a threat to safety that they should contemplate calling the cops.

So, this leaves me in a bit of a pickle. My spine tingles at the idea of riding something I've built as my job, but the city's nostrils flare. I've got a few ideas for how to keep pushing this, and I'd appreciate any suggestions you have to add. I'll keep you updated on any progress I make or absurdities that occur, and I'll post the full specs and open-source the plans soon. Happy cycling, and be careful with those bureaucrats!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Bicycles | Digg this!

Read the rest of the story...

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
When we highlighted reader Kaelri's customized Windows XP desktop, pictured above, it drew oohs and ahhs from everyone looking to spruce up their Windows installation. Happily Kaelri was kind enough to respond with a detailed step-by-step for how he made his Windows installation look so great. Even better, he gives an AutoHotkey crash course detailing a few excellent productivity tricks of his own. Here's how he did it.

Kaelri took advantage of tons of previously mentioned tools, like Yod'm 3D, Taskbar Shuffle, Start Killer, Samurize, and D-Color. Below, Kaelri details more closely how those tools took his Windows desktop from blah to "Eureka!" using a few of those applications in addition to a great AutoHotkey 101.

AutoHotkey

Kaelri says:

In my original Flickr post, I mentioned that AutoHotkey is probably the most dramatic desktop enhancement I'm running. I don't think of it as a "tool" in its own right—rather, it fills in the gaps I see in applications, and even Windows itself; it turns my operating system into a system, rather than a bunch of windows squabbling over their share of desktop real estate.

For those who aren't familiar with AutoHotkey, it's a tiny little program (about 680 kilobytes of RAM) that sits in your system tray and cheerfully overrides Windows' default hotkeys to do... pretty much whatever you want it to do. I've barely grazed its potential here, but even what little I've dropped into my personal script has made my laptop a better place.

I even ended up making a cheat sheet for myself (and gave it a hotkey, naturally). It's just a text file that lists all the universal hotkeys provided by Windows, my AutoHotkey script, and individual apps. It's the best way I can think of to demonstrate how much I've really integrated my system—and how easy it is to do.

Screenshot 1.jpg

Nearly all of these commands are defined by single lines of code—single lines, for functions that I've seen proprietary third-party software developed to perform. For example:

#4:: WinSet, Transparent, 217, A

(Windows Key + 4 sets the transparency of the window currently in focus to 217, or 15%, where 255 is opaque.)

#6:: WinSet, Transparent, 217, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd

(Windows Key + 6 sets the transparency of the taskbar to 15%. Anyone remember TransBar?)

AHK supports basic coding structures, like conditionals:

!F3::
WinGet MX, MinMax, A
If MX
WinRestore A
Else WinMaximize A
return

(Alt-F3 restores a maximized window, and vice versa. I'm surprised no one at Microsoft thought it would make sense to assign Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4 to the three corner buttons, so I did it myself.)

AHK can also identify applications and send commands specifically to them.

^right::
DetectHiddenWindows, On
ControlSend, ahk_parent, ^{right}, iTunes ahk_class iTunes
DetectHiddenWindows, Off
return

(Ctrl-Right tells iTunes to respond as if the right arrow key were pressed while it was in focus - in other words, a universal hotkey to skip the current song.)

I'm sure AHK experts will scoff at my elementary scripts, but you're welcome to download my script and edit it to suit your purposes. (Note: I can't take credit for the iTunes-control and CD-eject scripts. They were scavenged from somewhere on the 'net.)

We're also huge fans of AutoHotkey at Lifehacker, which we've used to mimic Vista's rename feature in XP, turn the Capslock key into a dedicated minimize button, and turn virtually any action into a keyboard shortcut. In fact, I developed our very own productivity app, Texter, using AutoHotkey.

Launchy

Kaelri continues:

I haven't really done anything avant-garde with Launchy, but as an integral and revolutionary component of my setup, it deserves a mention. I've never felt so empowered by a computer interface as did when I realized that I was now no more than a handful of keystrokes away from accessing any program, folder, document, song, image, video, theme, setting, e-mail, search engine, bookmark, and IM log on my computer.

Read that sentence again, and reflect on the fact that it's not an exaggeration. That's just what Launchy does. If I had to pick one of these apps to keep and ditch the rest forever—you get the idea. Needless to say, Launchy prompted me to get rid of the shortcuts on my desktop (which I now use strictly as an "inbox" space and clear out once a week or so), not to mention my Start button, which I exterminated via StartKiller.

By the same token, if you've ever been intrigued by the shortcut or batch-file tricks that have been detailed on Lifehacker, Launchy just makes it that much easier to access those tools.

(Also, I don't mind admitting, I make use of the built-in calculator function. A lot.)

Screenshot 2.jpg

Samurize

Kaelri also uses Samurize, our favorite app for embedding info into your desktop.

My Samurize config is probably the most unique part of my setup. It's also the one app that has (humblingly) gotten me questions from dozens of complete strangers ever since Lifehacker featured it.

It's really a very simple arrangement, and deliberately so. Aside from the clock face (which I think I picked up from Creative Commons), there are no images, just text and simple geometric objects that Samurize generates itself, which keeps the size of the config under 400K. Anyone who knows their way around Samurize would find it an easy project to replicate this, or alter it to fit their own resolution.

I settled on the transparent version in the featured shot after playing with several other, more stylized versions. They were all designed to complement my theme, SlanXP 2.0, which I discovered after searching high and low for a simple, elegant soft-black theme that would look good with transparency effects. For example, here's a shot of my desktop from a few months ago:

Screenshot 3.jpg

I've kept roughly the same format throughout. The time and date are read from the system clock. I manually keep track of my location and my to-do list in a pair of text files. The system information meters and the song information are all tools included with Samurize out of the box.

If anyone who downloaded the ZIP file I provided is still having trouble, I've replaced that with a proper Samurize Package, which will automatically import the config into your Samurize directory. Just download it, double-click, let the importer do its thing. Then, run Samurize, right-click the tray icon, and choose your resolution from the list. (And make sure to look at the Readme file for a few extra steps, which the importer sometimes has trouble with.)

Now, for the big problem everyone's been having: resolution.

This config was not designed with public distribution in mind. I made it for myself, and then whipped up a few alternate versions on request. This is not the most practical method to suit the needs of the Lifehacker community. Instead, I shall teach you how to move stuff around yourself.

I promise, this is easier than it looks. First, load up one of the prepared resolutions. I recommend working with something smaller than your own resolution; otherwise, some of the elements may extend beyond the edge of your workspace. Right-click the tray icon, and select "Edit Config."

This is the Serious Samurize Config Editor:

Screenshot 4.jpg

The grid in the middle is your workspace—it's an area that conforms to your screen resolution, and allows you to arrange your config exactly how you want it to appear on your desktop. On the left, you can see a list of all the "elements" of the config - every line of text or graphical object. Click one of them, and all of its properties will pop up in the pane on the right. The numbers you're concerned with are these:

Screenshot 5.jpgX and Y are the coordinates of the top-left corner of the element. The zero-point, naturally, is the top-left corner of the workspace. You can click on these fields, and then either input a new horizontal/vertical location, or press the up/down arrow keys to move it manually. By default, Samurize gives you a grid with 10-pixel spaces to guide you, but if you really want to fine-tune it, uncheck "snap to grid" on the bottom.

Don't worry about moving things off-screen by accident. Again, the size of the workspace is the size of your screen; you literally can't scroll past the edge.

If you want to edit any of the text elements, click the "Display" tab - there should be an editor right on the top. Note: if you increase the number of lines, you'll have to increase the "height" of the element accordingly, or the lower lines will be cut off. If you want to change the transparency level of any element, just use the slider labeled "Alpha."

Those should be all the tools you need to fit my config to your resolution. But don't hesitate to play around. I keep a few other versions on hand, myself. In fact, just in case my action-packed desktop shot came off as a bit messy, I sometimes disable my desktop icons and switch over to this serene alternate config:

Screenshot 6.jpg

Once again, I'm quite honored by this opportunity, and I'm humbled that the desktop setup I use on a daily basis has met with such approval.

Like what you see but have more comments or questions? Let's hear it in the comments.


Read the rest of the story...

Filed under:


Well, that took long enough, now didn't it? We've been hearing about an 8.9-inch MSI Wind for months now, but it has just now popped up on the outfit's website. The Wind U90 will pack an Atom N270 processor, built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam, stereo speakers, microphone, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, 512MB or 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 1,024 x 600 resolution panel, 80GB hard drive and a 4-in-1 card reader. Additionally, you'll find an Ethernet port, three USB 2.0 sockets, VGA out, a 3-cell battery (optional 6-cell available upon request) and a weight of 2.2-pounds. Your guess is as good as ours when it pricing / availability, but hey, we're just thrilled to know this thing is destined to be more than a trade show crasher.

[Thanks, Peter]
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read the rest of the story...

The reasons people have for keeping passwords that grant access to various online accounts close at hand are many. Fear. A desire to risk as little as possible. Lack of trust of software systems, whether they exist on your PC or out in the cloud. The list goes on. But for those of you who tend not to fret over such matters, or simply frequent services that don’t require users to submit sensitive data, keeping your passwords stored in your Web browser isn’t a biggest concern. Perhaps you would like to do yourself one better, then. How about allowing an online service to handle those details? That’s exactly what MashedLife, based in Sunnvale, CA, has set out to do.

The service is free, so other than having to clear the hurdle of consciously entrusting it with your login information, its a quick test. It is also being positioned as a very safe and secure facilitator. Once your information is saved, and you later return to a page, a MashedLife bookmarklet sends the website data and a “big random number” to request information registered with the service. This process is said to operate “on top of SSL.” once MashedLife authenticates the transmission, it “encrypts (the account info) and sends it back via the secure HTTPS session.” (It also sports Yubikey integration for extensive character set generation.)

Seeing as how I tend to enable my Firefox installation to remember most password-based services I use, this seems worthwhile. It operates in a relatively small and nondescript way. And if you use more than one browser across multiple machines - or even just one - and you wish to do away with redundancy, this is something to check out.

Naturally, its feature set and memory mechanism might spook some folks in terms of just how much it knows about what is happening during a users’ login efforts. (See screenshot above.) Yet altogether it doesn’t seem terribly invasive. I wouldn’t submit bank data, to be honest. But accounts for news sources and sites like Digg and Delicious and the like I’d have no trouble keeping out on the Web. For what it’s worth, it is said to have received certificates from Truste, Better Business Bureau, and VeriSign.

While MashedLife is free at the moment, and will continue to be so in one regard, its says it will soon be sending targeted advertisements users’ way. A paid plan offering no ads and more features is in the works.

How trusting of MashedLife are you?
( polls)

Read the rest of the story...
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

 Subscribe in a reader

Archives

Pages