Hardware

I’ve been interested in sound engineering with synthesizers, mixing desks and effects units since I was at school. A couple of years ago, I discovered Eurorack modular synths and started to combine these interests with my more recently-obtained skills in amateur hardware hacking. The…

Last Friday I had the great privilege of giving a keynote talk at the ApacheCon Europe conference in Amsterdam. My topic was the new possibilities for software hackers coming from cheap, scriptable hardware prototyping. I illustrated the path from the desktop via my work in…

I’ve been interested for some time in the possibilities offered by bringing external data into virtual environments like Second Life. This data might come from the web, but it could also come from the real world — from physical sensors and interfaces.

Last year I bought a Dell Latitude X200 laptop, which was a wonderful machine. In October it was stolen from my flat in a break-in. I made do with a refurbished HP Omnibook 500 but I wasn’t happy with it. When a 2nd-hand X200 came up…

Recently I was trying to connect a Garmin Geko 201 GPS unit to my laptop on a 2.4 series linux kernel…

After seeing Richard Clamp’s excellent talk at a london.pm techmeet on using Ericsson phones as remote controls I went away to code something similar (but less fully-functioned) in python for my own use. My code plugs into the Twisted framework and…

UPDATE: more notes written recently

My new laptop arrived this week — a Dell Latitude x200. And it’s marvellous. Wonderfully lightweight, good battery life for such a small box, good keyboard and a really clear bright screen. After…

One thing I’d like to do with a silent PC is make a homebrew TiVo-alike. Well, I would if I watched any TV. Which I don’t. But still, the idea interests me beyond any use I’d actually make of it. Anyway…

Here’s a little script I wrote that checks incoming wireless requests for a known MAC address. I’ve been using it on my Linux gateway/router/wireless-bridge.