I just installed the WP Super Cache plugin to prepare my site in the event that something I do actually becomes popular on Hack a Day, Digg, etc.

I was just wondering: do you see a speed difference? My server is a bit underpowered, so I was wondering if there was a noticeable speed difference when the page is loaded.

Let me know in the comments (I also want to see if commenting automatically updates the cache).

I just got an email from MakerBot because I entered in the Thingiverse contest (which wasn't a very smart idea—see this post):

As a small thank you, if you'd like to get a MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC 3D Printer, you can use the code M4K3R to get 5% off until the end of the month.

This offer is valid on any item in the MakerBot store.

I am currently making this app as a TV-B-Gone-like device: all you do is push the button and all the TVs you're facing turn off. The concept is simple: push the button, it maxes out the volume and plays a recorded file of all the TV off-codes, the IR LEDs transmit the signal from the audio port, and all the TVs go off.

Feel free to fork the Git repository to debug it (at the time of this post it has 10 errors and 6 warnings). As I'm new to Objective-C, I need all the help I can get. The project is under the GNU GPL, currently. I'll figure out the licensing stuff later when the project actually contains the recorded codes from a TV-B-Gone; the current "codes.mp3" is just a 440 Hz square wave for testing. That will be replaced by the real "codes.mp3" when it becomes available.

If you have a TV-B-Gone, the means to record its codes as a WAV or MP3 file, and want to help with the project, I'd appreciate it if you'd record its codes and then send them my way so they can be integrated into the project (whoever does so will be credited properly).

Do any of you have any feedback for the blog? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing right? All suggestions are welcome, just post them in the comments.

Also, if you want me to post something, i.e., take HD pics of some electronic pieces, just let me know in the comments.

Can anyone tell me what this is? It seems to be some sort of bootloader. I looked it up, and it seems as though you can update the WinCE image by using WinCE update. If I can get a backup Magellan Maestro 4040 WinCEimg.bin, I'll see if I can upgrade the OS to a normal WinCE environment, complete with desktop. Maybe in the future I'll be able to get Linux on it. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Power button is select, reset button is a down arrow. Here's the Menu breakdown:

If you've wanted to make a mini-Mendel with your MakerBot, I made a set of production files to do just that.

Well, I think it's about time that I made more of a how-to to build a DIY-intosh.

There are plenty of how-to's to make Hackintoshes, but those are teetering on the edge of legality, are difficult to get as stable as a store-bought Mac, and OS updates can't always be installed without any mods. Macs are supposed to be reliably stable—that's one of their main selling points; when you remove that stability, you remove a major component of the Mac. The only reasons you would want to build a Hackintosh is to have a really powerful Mac Pro at a really good cost, to have an OS X netbook, or to have a really inexpensive Mac Mini.

The DIY-intosh can be built as a really inexpensive (mine was around $300) yet still Apple-reliable Mac. Here's how to make one of your own:

UPDATE (8/19/2010): You could probably do this a lot easier/quicker by just making an OS X USB drive by making a DMG of the OS X install disk and then restoring that image onto an 8 GB or larger USB drive, but this post is just about how I did it.

Well, that sleep switch certainly did the trick! It turns out that Macs w/o an OS can't do anything until OS X is installed. This means that boot keys like "T" for Target Disk Mode and "C" for Boot from CD won't work until the OS is installed. The good news is, using this info that I learned myself, I was able to install OS X on my DIY-intosh.

See my iPod touch Cellular Upgrade to see what I mean. This pretty much turns any iPod touch into an unlocked GSM phone. There's also potential for making it have a cellular dial-up modem, but that is a bit beyond my coding capabilities. At least the hardware would be capable of it so someone who can get it to be used as a cellular modem can just fork my project. I <3 Git.

Well, I'd just about had it with my MakerBot's Idler Wheel; It keept ruining prints by separating from the bearing and letting the filament slip to the side, away from the extruder's drive wheel, so I decided to upgrade. I bought an aluminum idler wheel on ebay for $15 + $1.50 shipping (search for "reprap"). It has a groove cut in the side to keep the filament from slipping oast the wheel, and it has the bearing press-fit into the idler wheel, so the idler wheel will never slip off the bearing and slip past the filament! It's been running well during the prints I've been using it, and has made changing my skeinforge settings easier by making the MakerBot's extruder much less dynamic and much more reliable. I have also recently switched to skeinforge 7 from skeinforge 5 so I could use the new raftless plugin with PLA.