So it was another night with the wild and crazy boys [1] of TVIC (The Valley in Christchurch).
TVIC is the second thursday of the month [2], but I’ve only just gotten the video I took off my Treo – I’ve been having problems with my sync softhardware, and with the impending launch of Interclue 1.5 [3], a bit too distracted to figure them out. Sorted at last, though.
For this particular TViC, Phil had inspired Marek to go hunting for dead CD-ROM drives we could take to bits in search of useful components. Unfortunately the call went out about a month after I threw out my own half dozen deaders, but Morris had a stack just as large, so the scene was set.
After dinner we went to the Bohemian, near the Incubator, got pints, and got out the screwdrivers. I’m really not sure what the rest of the clientel made of us, but the staff didn’t seem to mind us using their table as a workbench.
For a while it was “who’s got the 2nd smallest Phillips”, “did anyone bring one of those star-shaped drivers?”, and of course “who’s for another beer?”
The best things inside CD-ROM drives aren’t circuit boards (what sort of “boards” did you think I was talking about in the title?) but rather motors, gears, magnets, sliders, switches and LEDs. We found that the old drives were the best – less custom-designed plastic bits, more off the shelf components and metal bits.
The hardware hack of the night came after Morris used a DC motor wired to a CD-ROM tray slider as a DC generator to power a blinking red LED, when Phil suggested hooking up a green one with the opposite polarity…
Geektacular!
Marek took all the bits home afterwards. I have no idea what he’s going to make with them, but I’ll be standing well back when he demonstrates.
[1] Pssst! TVIC needs more girlgeeks! And well, more people in general actually. If you find this post amusing you’d probably fit in.
[2] Well, for the moment. It’s possible it’ll move back to Tuesday. Also, I think dinner needs to move to somewhere with an on-licence.
[3] It’s not too late to give us feedback on the new beta version
About the Author
4 Responses to Boys, beers, and ‘boards at the Bohemian.
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The Author Seth Wagoner is CEO and Geek in Chief at Interclue.
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Interclue is our popular Firefox add-on. UltimateStatusBar is our similar but much more lightweight add-on for Safari. |
| We also make the "life-saving" Lazarus: Form Recovery for Firefox, Safari and Chrome. | |
| Mail: Seth AT sethop D0T com | |
| The idyllic scene atop my blog is the view from my parents' place in Kaikoura, New Zealand. They rent out the upper floor apartment. It's not expensive to stay there, and I can sometimes even arrange mates rates if you ping me before booking yourself in. | |
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
[...] Here’s how to repurpose an old CD-ROM drive and turn them into last-minute flashing Christmas lights – Link & more. [...]
[...] From: Dan Date: Feb 8 2008 02:45 UTC Categories: kiwifoo08, Aotearoa New Zealand Last weekend, Michael and I, and some Christchurch web folk that we knew (and some that we didn’t) ventured to Warkworth for Kiwi Foo Camp 2008. Kiwi Foo Camp is an invitation-only gathering of web, art and science people modelled on O’Reilly Media’s Foo Camp. This means 150-odd people speaking fluent geek all weekend, in groups of all sizes, at all times of the day and night, and in states ranging from intrigue, through bafflement, hilarity, inebriation and exhaustion. The format is unstructured. Someone said “the best thing about conferences is the conversations in the corridors, and foo camp is all conversations in corridors”. On the way up in the car, Julian, Seth, Michael and I were limbering up with geek talk of our own. I was wishfully speculating about mass-customisation. You know, people are sick of consuming the same goods as their peers, so they are start to make stuff themselves. Kids that have barely stopped scoffing at their parents are making and crafting and hardware-hacking. But that’s only because the Web taught them that they can, and it’s cooler to customise a beanie than a MySpace profile. But making things is time-consuming, especially say a fine-knit merino beanie. Before long we’ll be picking a design from a user-contributed online gallery, and ordering a custom-made, individually configured and fitted item, that is produced in a plant that spits out a thousand unique items in a minute. Hmm, we all nodded, how cool would that be. In two days at Foo Camp, I’d met the people who are making this happen. First, you select your design, from the prototypes at felt.co.nz. The Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland have already modelled your body shape, size and posture. You combine your fitting information from there, with a 3D model of the object you’re purchasing, and view rendered simulations of you using or wearing it, while you vary colour, material and adornment parameters in your price range. When you’re happy, you place your order with Ponoko, who fabricate and ship it. Of course, this too is wild speculation. Felt is actually an online marketplace for hand-made products. The Bioengineering Institute will be glad when they’ve modelled the human eye. And Ponoko cuts things out of plastic sheets. But they’re all doing this stuff with speed and sophistication. And they all had someone at Foo Camp. And they are only a small sample of the amazing and diverse people that I met there. [...]
Funny you should mention it – about two weeks ago I turned a burnt-out CD drive into a USB-powered fan (just in time for Winter). My new project is to build an arcade cabinet (currently in pieces on the kitchen table).