This is my entry for the 555 Contest recently started by Jeri Ellsworth and Chris Gammell. It is a camera timer (aka. intervalometer) for taking time lapse videos with my DSLR. It is a very simple circuit designed around a 555 timer IC. It has indicator LEDs, a relay to control the camera, and a potentiometer which allows me to set the photo interval between 15 seconds down to around 1 second.
Have you ever had a cassette tape adapter that quit working all of a sudden and just keeps getting ejected from your tape deck? Here is an easy and virtually free way to fix your cassette tape adapter and get you back to listening to your iPod, iPhone, or whatever mp3 player you use it for.
This is a story of how I was able to fix a broken and long forgotten LCD monitor. This is a cheap CTX monitor, but I’ve seen this method work on other brands of monitors and I think it is a pretty common problem.
While cleaning up my computer room I ran across an old cell phone that had quit working. It got wet a few years ago on a camping trip when my tent leaked during a rain storm. I tried all the tricks like leaving it in the oven with just the pilot light to help dry it out, but even after a few weeks it still wouldn’t work so I gave up on it. Well, just for fun, I stuck the battery in and it powered right up and said “insert sim card”. I tried plugging in the sim card from my current cell, but since I’ve since changed from T-mobile to AT&T I just got a message about the phone being locked and wanted me to enter an unlock code. So, this started my journey to see if I could unlock it without spending any money.
I’ve been watching the goings on at the several hacker spaces which are popping up around the world. Specifically NYC Resistor has a lot of interesting activities and the Cow Town Computer Congress is a new space that shows a lot of promise. I was looking for something like that going on in my area but it seems there is none. So, if anyone in the Tulsa area is interested in starting a group like this, please leave a comment here, or send me a message through the contact form.
If you don’t know what a hacker space is, it is a place where people can get together and share ideas and equipment that they may not be able to afford on their own. It is also a place for people to learn from each other and to work on whatever projects they are interested in from electronics to arts and crafts or whatever.
To learn more and maybe find a hacker space in your area, check out this link.
I was listening to the latest Pauldotcom Security Weekly podcast and they were discussing their favorite hacker movies. They, as most people, dismissed Hackers as cheesy, lame, whatever and try to sweep it under the rug. I disagree with this and think it is a great hacker movie and would like to point out the reasons I think so. I have also included some quotes from the movie that exemplify my reasons.
So, Here are my top 10 reasons “Hackers” is a good hacker movie: