July 2007 Archives

Zack Kim has posted a video of himself playing the theme to the "Simpsons".

Not too interesting you'd think - only he uses two guitars at the same time.

Other videos of him in action there too. 

Meccano was a very popular toy during my childhood yet this computer is not a toy.

Read the story of the mechanical computer that helped develop the "bouncing bomb" of 'Dambusters' fame. 

The 'Retro Thing' weblog has a post with 5 old TV ads for, what were once, cutting-edge consoles. Interesting to look back at them.

With the kit highlighted on Tuesday you could be producing better games for yourself.

Back in June I pointed a link towards the 'Scratch' programming system produced by MIT.

For the summer holiday you might want to go further with a real hardware system you can program for. "XGameStation" produce a range of kits which enable you to build and program for yourself. The 'Hydra Game Development Kit' appears to be their top-of-the-range model.

If you find programming like this interesting then there's also the Microsoft Visual Studio Express packages - free to download and a great way to get some development experience.

This article shows how an inventive mind can see opportunities in the everyday objects and activities that surround us all.

Mary Robinette Kowal has modified her laptop so that it looks like an old-style portable typewriter.

Her article explains how she did it - any of you up for something similar?

Take a look here - this story links to a video which shows how a guy has programmed his computer to play 'Pong' against another computer.

Not much to that you'd think except he's got his computer "looking" at the game a via a webcam. So this is about visual recognition - and that's good.

Now ..... anyone fancy trying something like that this summer?

Gizmodo - with their new design - have a nice little article (and links) about a very thin digital camera. It is likely to lead to much thinner phones in future.