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How-To: Theater or studio acoustic treatments
Have you been yelled at for watching your latest Superbit DVD "too loud" by your mom / dad / child / spouse / neighbor? Tired of having the Tiki-bar TV guys next door in the background of your podcast recording session? In today's how-to we cover tricks to improve your room acoustics for better listening or recording pleasure. Yeah, we know it may seem a little esoteric -- and our own Engadget Podcast could probably take a hint here -- but you'd be surprised at how nice some peace n' quiet actually is.
How-To: Add your own external GPS antenna
GPS is a nifty piece of technology. GPS hardware needs to have a clear view of the sky because it's satellite based, so using your handheld unit can be a problem when the roof of your car is blocking signal reception. The obvious answer is to add an external antenna. The catch-22 is that many GPS units lack external antenna jacks.[Edit: Fixed the misspelling of NMEA in our diagram. (accursed nyquil) Thanks fabrizio]If you crack open your GPS, you could extend the wire between the antenna and the internal antenna, but the loss from the extra wire would degrade the signal. But active antennas amplify the signal to get past the loss in the extra wiring; with a little bit of hacking, you can add an external active gps antenna to just about any GPS unit. Find out how in today's How-To.
Video Guide: Installing WinXP on Intel Mac
After a few days of wallowing around in the forums, I've finally been able to get Windows XP installed on my 20" Intel iMac, and now I'm on the great driver hunt enable some of the hardware in this computer. The big gaping hole in drivers right now is the lack of video acceleration in hardware which significantly affects performance on this machine. Using the software rendering actually gives quite usable performance, but I won't be playing any 3D or OpenGL games on this iMac until there are drivers that let the machine use the video card's hardware acceleration. In the meantime, my 20" Intel iMac is serving nicely as the only "PC" on my desk.The biggest hurdle to getting WinXP to install on this box was indeed the "F7, F4" trick that some have talked about in the onmac.net forums and in my post from yesterday. There's something about the screen resolution on the 20" iMac that causes the install to pause (it gets stuck at 0% copying files), but if you use the F7 key to change the installer's video options, set them to 640 x 480, and then use F4 to return to the installer, then the WinXP installer works fine. Remember that the xom.efi file for the 20" iMac is different than the original posted.Had I been a bit faster in getting WinXP working on this, I would've video documented it, but today Uneasy Silence has released their video how-to on installing WinXP on an Intel Mac. It's quite well-done, and has some great tips.
How-To: Build Wireless Speakers from RF Headphones
Today's How-To shows that with a little ingenious wiring, a pair of headphones can become a pair of low-power rechargeable wireless speakers. For this mod you will need: One or more wireless headphone sets with rechargeable bases (we used inexpensive Sony RF headphones) A soldering iron Two channel socket and plug connectors for power A miniature slider switch Some thin cabling Plexiglas and hot glue or other material to build speaker housings A dremel or similar to make openings in the speaker housings If your artsy friends have been begging you to build them wireless speakers on the cheap for their Burning Man installation, read on. If not, it's still a helluva lot of fun, so read on anyway!
How-To: Run Flash games on your Xbox 360
Note: Microsoft broke this fun how-to when they released the dashboard upgrade yesterday. The upgrade fixes some bugs, breaks things like this how-to and doesn't offer any new features. So, if you aren't experiencing problems, there is no reason to upgrade. Opt-out and have fun with this how-to instead:At the end of 2005 a hacking group known as PI released a copy of the demo disk found inside of the Xbox 360 kiosks. PI has been cranking out a lot of these game ISO files even though there isn't a way to play them yet. The thing that makes the kiosk disc special is that Microsoft didn't enable many of the security features found on regular game discs. Granted, the actual executable files are still cryptographically signed, but you can manipulate many of the other unsigned files on the disc. The disc doesn't have a strict media flag either, so you can burn it to a CD/DVD and it will play in any Xbox 360. The Xbox-Scene community has been investigating booting your own Flash files using the disc which is what we'll be showing you today. The final result will be a disc that is playable on any Xbox 360.
Found Footage: Transferring video into iMovie
Searching about Google Video today, I spotted a nice little how-to courtesy of the Cardona Family that shows you the basic steps needed to transfer video from your DV camcorder over firewire to iMovie. It's basic. It's for total new users. It communicates this basic step clearly, easily, and it would seem to do so from the perspective of someone who just recently figured it out. For that, I think it speaks to the simplicity and magic of using a Mac. Macs enable this type of creativity for everyone without getting in the way of the process.
Resources for beginning paladins
Defenders of the Light, mace-wielding upholders of justice, and hard to kill; paladins are the only Alliance-specific class, and a great newbie class to play. A paladin can take damage, dish it out (although more slowly than DPS classes like the rogue or mage), all the while healing, resurrecting and buffing their party. With the upcoming 1.9 patch, paladins are going to see some changes, but the first few levels won't change much, so here are a few things to get newbie paladins going:Infoceptor lists all the paladin's spells, including costs.Rampage's guide has a lot of general discussion of paladins, but also walks you through the first few levels as a human pally.WoWHealers has a basic FAQ covering race, talents, acronyms and more.TenTonHammer's guide is a good overall resource and promises a 1.9 update.Hester's PvP guide is useful, although you may want to try different strategies as well.The official forums are rich with 1.9 information and the European forums feature a guide.Paladins seem to have fallen into disfavour at the moment, but as a generally good all-round class they are fairly easy to solo with (if you have the patience to wait through the low damage output) and valuable to groups, as well as easy to get the hang of. My second ever character was a paladin and I really enjoyed taking her through instances and the like. Enjoy.[[Previous classes: Mage, Priest, Druid, Hunter]
How-To: Convert a DVD for your iPod (with video) in Windows
Today's how-to will take you through the steps of getting from DVD to the new iPod (with video) on the Windows platform. Happy portable watching!
How-To Control Csound with a Custom Midi Controller: Introduction (1 of 2)
Csound is a free language for sound synthesis and processing. It has a rich history and is still used today by musicians, composers and sound designers including Brian Eno, Richard James (aka Aphex Twin), NIN, DJ Spooky, and many more. Why is Csound still in existence today? It is a simple language which veers quickly to complex auditory experiences. This coupled with a quick learning curve has kept Csound a popular audio synthesis language since its creation in 1985 by Barry Vercoe. This How-To is one of a two part installment. Part One is an introductory leap into Csound. Part Two next week will have you building a physical interface to control a Csound environment via Midi. Please note that this intro is a small daub of paint in the universe that is Csound creation. Many books, entire webpages, and courses have been taught on Csound. This introduction is meant to offer a glimpse into the rich world of audio creation and to hopefully inspire the reader to invest more time in Csound.
How-To: Make a Nokia Pop port to female mini jack
When Nokia announced their music player capable phones they neglected to mention the lack of support for external headphones. Since the release of the 6230 and its related family with mp3/aac playback support, many disgruntled users have made their own home-brew cables to plug in headphones. Today we will show one such mod for the Nokia HDS-3 cable. This cable ships with the 6230 and other Nokia phones capable of stereo playback.
