Cool toys and Gadgets

If I keep coming on PS3 superiority on handling Blu-ray materials, I might get flamed with fanboyism. May be it is better if I state the opposite first. Why PS3 is not a good standalone? PS3 is loud, the noise tops my projector runs at high beam mode. Bluetooth remote sucks, additional IR dongle requires to add PS3 on Universal remote control. Hardware constraints; no multichannel audio support on analog output, advanced audio codec limits on LPCM though HDMI. Last but certainly not least, it’s awfully ugly!

But truth hurts; we’ve seen how PS3 leads loading time in a small group test, here’s another victory for PS3 fans – An exclusive Blu-ray player benchmark test from Blu-ray.com - The dreadful beast once again crowns the best in system booting, disc loading and operation. It is not only stands out among 12 Blu-ray players in test, but performance trumps contestants in Blu-ray Disc Java department by a large margin.

No surprise there, the results reflect the superiority of cell power processing in comparing with hardware-based units. The best-equipped standalone can’t even come close to the level of PS3 achieved; on the other hand, user has to deal with cooling noise works against the excessive heat resulting from the cell processor.

Test in question didn’t cover audio quality or image reproduction in legacy DVD upscaling or blu-ray disc, but unit’s ability to handle intensive Java content and interactive menu. You can visit Blu-ray.com to see more information on how the test was conducted and categorized.

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced today that their fourth-quarter revenue would be much weaker due to widespread weakness particularly among customers. Shares have recovered much of the 8percent premarket drop, but investors and analysts are seemingly unfazed.

Cody Acree, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus said, “the market was not surprised given the state of the PC industry, which is being crippled by poor demand.” AMD along with rival Intel have made virtually all the microprocessors for the world’s 1 billion PCs. Acree went on to say AMD has done a great job of making itself a better competitor to Intel. I think this has nothing to do with AMD individually, this is fully macro.”

AMD is expecting revenue from operations ending December 27th, to decline around 25 percent in the 3Q to around 1.19 billion. The average 4Q analyst revenue estimate is 1.53 billion according to Reuters Estimates. Earlier this year AMD cut 500 out of the 15,500 jobs to try and cut costs.

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The MAKE/CDM/Etsy sonic fun-derland event returns - this time @ our new location, Third Ward in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY! Kicking off the new monthly schedule, the first meet-up will be Thursday, Dec. 11th. Peter of CDM gives details -

Bonus – Make Your Own Beep-It Optical Theremin. For the cost of parts (about $10), Mike Una is giving a workshop – no experience required, and you’ll leave with your own Beep-It. (Space is limited!)

Double Bonus – You! We’re looking for hardware and software projects to share.

Not in New York? Stay tuned – we’ll have some ways to join up live online with both the CDM community and the Etsy community.

If you are in New York:

Directions to the Space

Party: 7-10p, 12/11 (snacks/drinks + lots of sounds for everyone, from non-musicians to hardcore musical hackers!)

Make Your Own Beep-It Workshop: 7:30-8:30p (arrive promptly!)

Here’s what the event is about, as described by, well, me:

Part party, part mixer, part Science Fair, and part performance, this is an informal chance for geeksters and the geek-curious to come together, relax, and discover new sounds. The evening is a gathering of inventors of circuit-bent toys, custom software and patches, interactive digital & visual instruments, custom electronics, electricity-powered noisemakers, DIY robots and new acoustic instruments. And it’s open to everyone from hard-core hackers & newcomers to music lovers who want to learn about the DIY music scene.

And here’s a big bonus: if you liked Michael Una’s Beep-It DIY optical Theremin, as debuted here, you can make your own for the low, low price of parts: about ten bucks.

Michael Una will demonstrate his optical theremin synthesizer Beep-it and conduct a workshop wherein attendees will build their own optical theremin. The basics of analog synthesis will be discussed. No skill level is required- all tools and parts will be provided by the participation fee.

Pay for your parts by Wednesday 12/10, and reserve your spot at the workshop, at EventBrite:
http://beepit.eventbrite.com/

Logo design by the amazing creator of the CDM logos and endless musical posters, Nat aka onetonnemusic.

See you next week, in New York or online!

We welcome people showing up with gear and creations at the last minute – bring cables, an extension cord, and (if you’ve got it) small speakers / headphones / PA (though we’ll do our best to provide some sound). But it does help to know who’s coming if you want to give us some advance warning, and we can help publicize your work in advance.

Head over to Create Digital Music to fill out the project submission form. I'm quite psyched for this - it's been a while since the last event and this one looks to be fully awesome!

More:

Beep-It optical theremin

Handmade Music Night photos

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"O'Clock" by Nadine Grenier, a student at ESAD Strasbourg in France, is a kinetic installation made from 300 analog clocks set in sequence to display this sentence every 12 hours when their hands come into alignment: "le temps passe, et chaque fois qu'il y a du temps passe, il y a quelque chose qui s'efface." The quote is from Jules Romains, a French poet, which roughly translates in "Time passes, and every time the time passes, there is something that fades".

"O'Clock" via Today and Tomorrow

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Found under: Palm, Freeware, Smartphone,



BellTime v1.2 is an alarm clock application for Palm handsets which will require Palm OS v5.0 to work. Need to wake up in the morning Want to be on time on your next meeting BellTime should take care of time monitoring for you. Depending on what version you get Full or Lite you have access to a customizable layout of 20 or 5 slots. You get to set up your analog clock and various alarms and there are even two slots reserved to digital clocks. You can set up daily weekly and single

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What is open source hardware? Briefly, these are projects that creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and "board" files to recreate the hardware - they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source hardware like Linux, but hardware centric.

This is one of the new and emerging trends we've seen really take off over the last few years. Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 60 projects/kits - it's incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (now shipping over 60,000 units) but there are many other projects just as exciting and filled with amazing communities - we think we've captured nearly all of them in this list. Some of these projects and kits are available from MAKE others from the makers themselves or other hardware manufacturers - but since it's open source hardware you can make any of these yourself, everything is available.

You can also call this guide... "The Open source hardware gift guide - The one and only, 3rd annual celebration of open source hardware!" - we think these are some of the best things to consider for the holidays and it supports an exciting development in hardware design.

So sit back and get ready to scroll through the list! Here we go!

Arduino Duemilanove - The new classic
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. "Duemilanove" means 2009 in Italian and is named after the year of its release. The Duemilanove is the latest in a series of USB Arduino boards.

Features:

• Microcontroller ATmega168
• Operating Voltage 5V
• Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12V
• Input Voltage (limits) 6-20V
• Digital I/O Pins 14 (of which 6 provide PWM output)
• Analog Input Pins 6
• DC Current per I/O Pin 40 mA
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA
• Flash Memory 16 KB (of which 2 KB used by bootloader)
• SRAM 1 KB
• EEPROM 512 bytes
• Clock Speed 16 MHz

Price: $34.99

Keep reading for the rest of the projects and kits!

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Found under: Windows Mobile, Smartphones, Pocket PC, Freeware,



Telling the time is one of the most important features of any phone. I happen to not wear a watch so my phone is my savior when I really need to be on time. In case you have a Windows Mobile handset and you also happen to rely on your phone for telling the time I might have a nice app to tweak your mobiles default clock. S2U2 Customizer will do what it says. It will help you customize that S2U2. Heres a list of its features � Change Digital Clock. � Change Analog Clock Face.

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Photography by Sam Alvar

Bob Dylan was born in his hometown, but Duluth TankPodDrum's shell is a hollow, 6"-diameter, performance artist Tim Kaiser has a different musical 14"-tall stainless steel vessel that Kaiser scored for hero: Harry Partch (1901-1974), an underappreciated 70 cents at a salvage yard. In his home studio, he composer who invented new microtonal scales for used stove bolts to add a right angle fitting from a instruments he built himself. hot water heater, brass bells from a rotary phone, a

"He was a curmudgeon and a brilliant musician comb of rods from a toy piano, music box tines, bits who couldn't stand convention and created his of chrome, and rack handles. When Kaiser bangs on own," says Kaiser, who also coaxes foreign sounds the attachments with a mallet, the drum acts as a from far-fetched equipment made by hand. resonator. A pickup epoxied to the barrel's interior As a teenage musician, Kaiser discovered a new connects to an amp or, if Kaiser is playing, a modu-auditory universe at the University of Minnesota lation delay that echoes and fades not only the pitch and began assembling avant-garde noisemakers but also the frequency. to suit his sonic tastes. His technique? Scrap parts After Partch died, the American Composers Forum and a junior high school electronics class. inherited the rights to his work and released more Some 20 years later, Kaiser has made more than than 100 of his recordings on the Innova record label.

150 instruments, including a stenography key- "I've always dreamed of being on Innova," Kaiser says. board wired with the guts of a mini teaching piano, Dreams apparently come true. In June 2007, a green effect box with beehive lenses that loops Kaiser's latest solo album, Analog, was released on a 2-second delay, and an old espresso bin called -- you guessed it -- Innova.

TankPodDrum, fitted with all things pluckable and tappable. Kaiser takes commissions, but saves his favorites for his own live shows.

Watch and listen to Tim Kaiser: timkaiser.org

makezine.com/go/eriksub

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 12, page 15 - Megan Mansell Williams.

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For those of you in Oregon, here's a dork-tastic event on December 7th:

DorkbotPDX brings you Collin Oldham, Shelly Farnham and Steve Davee

Come join us for an evening of geek meets art. The fine folks at AboutUs will be hosting us for this event, which takes place December 7th at 6PM. AboutUs is located at 107 SE Washington St, Suite 520. Feel free to bring snacks and drinks to share. Please spread the word!

Collin Oldham: The RT (radio trowel) and The Cellomobo

Collin spent the 2005-2006 academic year at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) where began to develop the electronic musical instruments he is presenting today.

The RT (radio trowel) uses a capacitive sensor array based on Max Mathew's radio baton to detect the position of the trowel on the playing surface. The trowel's movements control sound synthesis parameters, including filters which process live sound from a contact mic attached to the trowel.

The cellomobo is a computer music instrument that attempts to model the behavior of a bowed string. It gives haptic feedback to the bow at audio rate to simulate the stick-slip action of a bowed string. This feedback stream finds it way back into the audio stream, creating a unique hybrid of digital and analog synthesis.

Collin Oldham is a cellist who has performed around the world with such varied and luminous artists as Placido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rosemary Clooney and Aretha Franklin. He's active as a session player, and has recorded with the Decemberists, Richmond Fontaine, and Elliott Smith, among many others.

Shelly Farnham: Dorkbot Dorkbot Dorkbot + Seattle

I am that rare combination of geek, artist, and scientist and when I first met Dorkbot Seattle I felt like I'd *finally* found my people -- where technology is artistic medium, science is art, and geeking out is just a whole lot of fun. My one complaint was that Seattle Dorkbots were not collaborating enough, and when I took over as Seattle's "Dork Overlord" it was my main mission -- to cultivate the creative geek community.

In this talk, I will review the best of Dorkbot Seattle's art, geekery, and science, and discuss how we have worked to increase cross-disciplinary collaboration through our meetings, workshops, and art shows.

Shelly Farnham received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at UW in 1999, after which she worked at Microsoft Research for seven years studying community technology. A few years ago she quit to join the start up world, and is now co-founder of Pathable (professional networking for events). In her "spare" time she paints, does collaborative installations, and instigates people to have more fun creating stuff.

Steve Davee: Not to kill a thought: The impact of language on curiosity, creativity and scientific inquiry.

This talk explores how easy it is, even with the best of intentions, to stifle creative thought and true learning when it comes to working with children in the areas of science, math and engineering. We will investigate examples of simple but powerful changes in language, with the intention of provoking the best of creative potential and shared inquiry.

Steve Davee is a math and science teacher at Opal Charter School and a Media Specialist for the Center for Children's Learning at the Portland Children's Museum. He is a recovering Biochemist with a background in physics and over 20 years of volunteer and work experience in education.

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R Scott's analog MIDI drum machine puts circuitry from an old organ's rhythm section under digital control -

The 8 knobs on the top of the case control Master Volume, Kick, Clave, Snare, Conga, Low Tom, High Tom, and Hi-Hat levels. The two LEDs indicate power and midi activity.
[…]
The drum sound circuitry was taken from a broken old Farfisa organ. I removed the entire rhythm accompaniment assembly and later built a power supply for it, turning it into a stand-alone drum machine.

MIDI control was implemented via a custom kit from Highly Liquid. Combining pre-existing analog synth boards with new controller hardware is an awesome idea that coud be applied in a number of creative ways. Head over to the site to hear samples and get more of the story - analog MIDI drum machine

More:

MegaDrum MIDI trigger

MIDI glockenspiel

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