How to Fix a Power Plug with Sugru!

I have a first generation Asus Eeepc, but the power plug is failing. All plugs do this eventually. Lots of tiny wires, bending back and forth all the time… It just happens. So should I throw it away and buy a new one? No! It can be easily fixed. Here is what you need: Soldering Iron + Solder Flux helps if you have it (If you have not soldered with flux, you are missing out big time) Heat shrink or electrical tape Sugru can add a nice touch Start by using a sharp blade to cut off the plastic molding around the connector to expose the raw barrel connector and wires:

Read Full Post…

Help Wanted: What is the pattern in these new WEP Keys?

Can you see the pattern? ESSID ESSID in Hex BSSID KEY MCFVC 23CB158 0021636A7177 F8AA1AABA2 H47MD 1B6B095 001D19E2A557 BFD896F9D4 Q36G7 29C9D67 0021632D31E3 BCD77B3755 UX78G 31880E0 0024d2682944 18DD3AB249 These key pairs were graciously provided by Eric Betts. They do not conform to my existing WEP key calculator. Maybe Verizon wised up and made them random? The previous correlation was dead obvious, but this one I can’t see. Of course, I am only a wannabe cryptologist :)

Read Full Post…

Status.net - The future (hopefully) of microblogging!

First, if you think Twitter / Google Buzz / Petstatus.com are silly and just fads, you can go ahead and navigate away from this page. For those of you who believe that “microblogging” is a new form of communication between people, then listen up. If you have an account on twitter, why do I have to have an account on twitter as well to subscribe to your updates? What about facebook?

Read Full Post…

XKCD's Collatz Conjecture

In the XKCD comic dated 3/4/2010, the Collatz Conjecture presents the following scenario: Well I don’t know if your friends will stop calling your or not, but I was curious about what the graph would actually look like. The graph in the comic looks like it was created with Graphviz, one of my favorite programs! So I wrote a quick bash script to generate the approrpiate links for graphviz to interpret:

Read Full Post…

Sugru Covered Joysticks

A shout out and big thanks to my friend DangerJim who gave me some sugru to help coat the joysticks of my RC trainsmitter so they don’t hurt my thumbs. The results look pretty nice:

Read Full Post…

Super Paper Mario - Chapter 2 Graph

My girlfriend plays an interesting Wii game called Super Paper Mario where Mario can shift between a 2-dimensional and a 3-dimensional world. Pretty interesting. In chapter 2 section 4 there is a maze of rooms where one must find the last room, room 10. Of course there are walk-throughs all over the internet, but I had her read to me what room she was in, which door she walked through, and what in what room she emerged.

Read Full Post…

Automated Aftershock Playing Bot

This is a bot I wrote to play Aftershock games for me. Aftershock produces these 5 games that are all basically the same, but with different themes: Engines of War - 138071613 Undead Live - 175496321 Mark of Mafia - 833613775 Gunshock Racing - 124286853 Dragon Masters - 304299067 If you play any of these games, feel free to ally with me :) If aftershock bans me, no big deal :)

Read Full Post…

My Jar of Fireflies

I’ve seen a lot of electronic fireflies on the internet. Here, here, and probably others. The theory is simple, just small LED’s charlieplexed with a microcontroller. I wanted to take it a step futher, with a light sensor, solar panel, and more complex firmware. This is my first microcontroller project from scratch, and I got to learn all sorts of interesting things like SPI programming, Watchdog Timers, Sleep states, and many other things…

Read Full Post…