I’m sort of inured to pain by this point. Anesthetic is illegal for people like me, so we learn to live without it; I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger. I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot working in the name of progress: I’m Lepht Anonym, scrapheap transhumanist. I work with what I can get.
Sadly, they don’t do it like that on TV. The art of improving the human is shiny and bright in the media. You see million-euro cryogenics policies and hormonal life-extension regimes that only the elite can afford. You see the hypothesis of an immortal silicon body to house your artificially-enhanced mind. You could buy that too, maybe, if you sold most of your organic body and the home it lives in. But you can do something to bring it down a notch: homebrewing.
Read More – h+: Scrapheap Transhumanism
(via Grinding)
See also: Lepht Anonym’s blog.
Multi-instrumentalist Joshua Ellis, who records under the name Red State Soundsystem, has just self-released his debut album Ghosts a Burning City. Ellis – whose music sounds like a cross between Paul Simon and Nine Inch Nails – recorded, mixed, and mastered the album himself. I caught up with him via instant messenger to talk about his music and DIY music production.
Klint Finley: Can you explain the name “Red State Soundsystem”?
Joshua Ellis: It started from a lame joke. When the band Cansei de Ser Sexy came out, I noticed everybody abbreviated their name to CSS. Being a Web nerd, I giggled.
I used to release stuff under my own name, but I dug the idea of having a sort of secret identity. Plus I wanted to maybe collaborate with various other people. So I wanted a band name. I started thinking about Web acronyms — HTML, PHP…RSS. What would be a cool name that could be abbreviated as RSS?
And it came to me. It just sounded cool and vaguely political and funny. Then I came up with my logo — the old red pickup truck in a field with bigass soundsystem speakers in the bed. And it just seemed perfect.
Read the rest of this entry »
Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. military satellite transponders. [...]
To use the satellite, pirates typically take an ordinary ham radio transmitter, which operates in the 144- to 148-MHZ range, and add a frequency doubler cobbled from coils and a varactor diode. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM’s 292- to 317-MHz uplink range. All the gear can be bought near any truck stop for less than $500. Ads on specialized websites offer to perform the conversion for less than $100. Taught the ropes, even rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware.
“I saw it more than once in truck repair shops,” says amateur radio operator Adinei Brochi (PY2ADN) “Nearly illiterate men rigged a radio in less than one minute, rolling wire on a coil.”
Wired: The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown
(via Global Guerrillas)
We were all quite impressed when the RepRap printer managed to reproduce itself some months ago. But in fact the reproduction was only of its structural members, whereas the metal bits and electronics were not actually reproduced. No worries, it will eventually happen. [...]
Xerox has invented a new type of “Silver Ink”, purportedly for 2D inkjet-style printing. However, we suspect this might also be ideal for 3D printers.
Fabbaloo: Get Ready for Printed Electronics
(via Global Guerillas)
An Australian guy hacked a freezer into a super-efficient refrigerator:
Nearly every household on Earth has a fridge that totally wastes at least 30 kwh of energy every month. Most of the energy is wasted every time you open the door. Cold air is heavier and falls out on the floor every time you open your fridge and warm air rises to fill the space it left. But with a top opening fridge; even if you leave the door wide open, gravity effortlessly leaves the heavy cold air inside. [...]
His home-made fridge uses much energy in 24 hours as a 100W light bulb gets through in just an hour.
Not only is it energy efficient; but it’s absolutely silent too. The thing is only running for a minute or two every hour. At all other times it is perfectly quiet and consumes no power whatsoever.
Home Design Find: Green Fridge Invention Uses Almost No Electricity
(via Atom Jack)
I can see why this hasn’t taken off – space constraints. It wouldn’t fit in my kitchen, or in the kitchens of any of the apartments I’ve ever lived in. This may cause a problem for mass production. Still, it’s a smart solution.
Repairing is the new recycling:
More repair movement stuff: Platform 21
(via Arthur)
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