Using an S4 on a Mac Book Pro is an exercise in futility now that it and other phones no longer appear as a disk drive but as a weird media device. The Samsung Kies software doesn’t help and actually seems to make things worse. If you run Windows 7 inside VirtualBox you can see the phone’s storage but doesn’t see it when the phone is in upgrade mode. So you can’t run the usual Odin software there. »
In addition to the recent Andro100 box, the guys in TV Trade also gave me a Sab Unix HD Triple Tuner box to try out. The specs on this thing were pretty amazing for something that costs approx €130+VAT so I was intrigued to see how well it did. After the reliability horror that was the Ferguson Ariva 120 pile of junk, I went in with open eyes. The box itself is pretty compact with a 1980s Amstrad stereo vibe off it with the chrome accents. »
I generated this list a few months ago for Clonakilty Coder Dojo after demoing a pile of my projects/gadgets to them. Can’t believe I’m only blogging it now. Hope you find it useful. Learning about Arduino Adafruit has a ton of stuff on their learing site MAKE Magazine is amazing. Get a subscription Watch the Sparkfun Friday New Products Videos Watch the Ben Heck Show every week Hack a Day is very hardcore but amazing to see how hackers think. »
#“How hard can it be to make a simple LED blinking circuit? Conor’s stupid questions to self, Episode 5892” Last night after a few glasses of vino, I decided to make a simple blinking LED circuit but I didn’t want to involve Arduinos, just discrete components. Most of that auld internet does them with 555 timers but I don’t have any of those so much googling ensued. I finally found one and tried to make it, learning in the process that soldering and Sauvignon Blanc don’t mix: »
#“Fabulous printable geeky Valentine’s Day labels from Evil Mad Scientist” Dare ya. Click image for full set. Best company name of all time. »
#“Was anyone else a member of Fireball’s Club from the 1970s Bullet comic?” It was huge in our school. I even had the special plastic medallion/key. For some reason I managed to block out his ‘tache in my memory. Here are two pics from Google Images which match my own experience. Secret codes and invisible ink were major parts of my youth. I wonder if we could use something similar to get kids interested in privacy and crypto ;-) »
#“Run the @espruino JS interpreter on Windows” I just got my Kickstarter Espruino yesterday. It’s one of those projects that just makes me smile. A tiny board with an ST ARM MCU running a special JavaScript interpreter that can do all the stuff with hardware you would normally associate with C/C++/Assembler/Wiring. I’ve only just got started playing with it and I swear it feels like my first days using a ZX Spectrum. »
#“The AND100 Android Box is perfect for Netflix, RTE Player etc” David in TV Trade very kindly gave me an AND100 Android Box before Christmas and I’m only now finally getting around to reviewing it. I’ve been keeping an eye on the whole Android TV Stick/Box market for a while. There are so many out there, it is almost impossible to pick one and I haven’t been overly impressed with the sticks due to all the compromises involved in getting everything into such a small form factor. »
#“When a 10 year old tiny utility program saves your ass” After many many years on a barely-used 1024-bit GPG/PGP key, I decided to go full-blown 4096-bit recently. More for the principle than anything else, but also to mess around with some secure apps like Retroshare, as mentioned by Cathal Garvey. Whilst I was as it, I moved to a new much improved longer password and made sure to drill it into my brain over and over. »
#“The FrankenLego RC car is progressing nicely” The idea behind this was to highlight how Lego could do something really powerful for a much wider range of kids than the insanely priced Mindstorms. I started with this really impressive Lego Technic Dune Buggythat some of my kids assembled ages ago. I then butchered it and added a geared motor, a motor shield, an Arduino Uno, a LiPo battery, an nRF24L01 transceiverand a servo to create FrankenLego: »