• Great projects up at ImaginEERIEing.  The Magic Mirror is awesome, Rich I may have to borrow the office Mac to build this (the software is Mac only).
• Halloween software – a number of items up here to help you layout and build props – linkage simulators, etc.  I’ve blogged this before but still a good one.
• This rotating room prop is a cool idea.  More work than I want to do this year but maybe someday…
• This expanding foam is great for prop construction
• Mounting pneumatic cylinders – one person’s notes: I have purchased a number of rod clevis (RC-xx81) and clevis brackets (CB-xx95) from clippard.com. I have also purchased a number of rod clevis and clevis brackets from grainger.com.
• Molding supplies at FXSupplies and Monsterclub

Yahoo’s spyware detector doesn’t default to picking up adware – yeah I’ve noticed this too.  That said, the Yahoo spyware detector is free and seems to work pretty well.

I also just installed WinXP SP2 and am liking it’s ability to detect and disable browser add-ins.

Nucleus – takes an RSS feed and automagically looks for torrent files matching.  The guy uses it to automagically grab his favorite tv shows – kind of a season pass mechanism for torrents.

Screen as scanner – toshiba showing this at SID.  Imagine if every screen was also a scanner – wow!

Doom9 – directory of tools for manipulating DVDs.

lushe.net – have google search just a subset of the net, set indicated per a list you feed the service.  very very cool – i can see people creating topic specific lists that they could trade – “here’s the best list of sites for power tool freaks, for cat fanciers, for shoe collectors, …”

Intel releasing next gen bios source.  Interesting, I bet this is worth playing around with.  The BIOS does seem to be the reptilian core underlying the PC and needs a good shakeup.

Besides watching movies this weekend I also did a lot of mindless music bit twiddling.

* Installed two new ipods. Downloaded the latest itunes and ipod drivers. Point itunes at my server with all my mp3s and had it crank away and import them all. While my laptop was doing this… * …I Installed ExactAudioCopy, which requires Lame and AccurateRip, and you might as well install dbpoweramp. Ripped all the latest CDs i have purchased. While my desktop was doing this… * Bittorrent churning on another machine, downloading various (completely legal) torrents, which come in RAR files and Ogg Vorbis encoding. Downloaded a RAR unpacker, and the Ogg Vorbis Codecs. And now I really needed dbpoweramp to convert the Ogg Vorbis content to MP3. * Then back to the laptop to jam it all onto the ipods. What a production. Man this has to get easier.

Rich wants to try some Ipod knockoffs.  As I commented, my experience with the dell and gateway variants was bad – terrible UI.  And my kenwood phatdisk in the car has miserable UI too – I’d have been better off with an IPOD and FM interface.

Soyuz Parachute Bag.  Wow, maybe even cooler than Timbuk2.  Fascinating business idea as well.

Two handy docs – Windows Server command reference and Win XP Command line reference.  Driverquery, msinfo32 – all kinds of cool stuff in here.

Shrek2. Entertaining but not as good as the first one. The minor characters drawn from fairy tales are hilarious – puss n boots, pinocchio. But too much screen time for the king and fairy godmother, who just aren’t that funny.

Troy. Hector the role, and Eric Bana as Hector were great. But somehow the movie felt fatiguing, I was glad when it was over.

Day after tomorrow. A blast. So what if the science is probably crap. And the political manipulation ham-handed. Probably due to my fly-over country upbringing, there is just something glorious about seeing LA trashed by tornados and NYC swamped and frozen.

* geekdiy.com – great site for fun geek projects. * “SID in Seattle”:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1602357,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532. Crap how did I miss this, this would have been fun to attend. * “Brian analyzes traffic trends”: http://www.brianstorms.com/archives/000365.html. Perhaps the web is becoming less US-centric? * “Paul recommends FarCry again”:http://www.internet-nexus.com/2004_05_23_archive.htm#108575101479230876. The problem with this game is that it ruins you for other games, nothing else measures up. * In the comments of this post, some “good links to torrent seed sites”:http://feeds.feedburner.com/AVc?m=141 * “Tech info on some current hack techniques”:http://www.iunknown.com/000449.html. The rootkit site is fascinating, I had no idea it was that trivial to hide processes from task manager. * “Simson finds a good history fo computers”:http://www.simson.net/blog/archives/000090.php. * “Lockergnome points to Yahoo toolbar beta”:http://channels.lockergnome.com/news/archives/010502.phtml. I’ve installed this on all my machines, the free spyware detector is very worthy. * “Ed points to info on word tracker”:http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000611.html. Basically you can’t open a word document and have an expectation of privacy. * “Windows Server 2003 R2”:http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7173. Despite MSFT’s protestations it sure seems to me that VPNs are a dying technology. * “Jon Udell on partial trust”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/05/24.html#a1007. Very common problem in the home. Will be interesting to see how XP SP2 improves. * “Advice to Tivo”:http://www.engadget.com/entry/3611628962873617/. Seems wise, Tivo has a great UI, but it is trapped on a box that is available only to some people in some households.

From the forums this week:

• Inexpensive color organ – hard to know quality but for $5…
• Audacity – open source sound editor up at sourceforge
• Two flicker lamp circuits – Higher end or Simpler
• Simple voice playback box from terror by design
• Simple motion detector
• What’s inside a trash compactor – in case you happen to come across a junked one, there is a motor and mechanism in there to cannibalize
• Webcam server software – webcamxp or webcam32 – in case you want to watch part of your haunt remotely – i am sure there are equivalent open source alternatives

As rich points out, VC Buzz is incredible – what a great resource.

According to studies referenced at this New Scientist article, file-sharing is 70-80% of net traffic. Wow. I am way behind the norm, I need to up my level of participation!

evhead: The Way We Eat Now – great article on the sad state of the American diet.

Matt Croydon::postneo - good list of open source APs. The meshbox sounds really cool.