Check it out.

Nothing is more aggravating than recording a video and then finding out later that your video is ruined due to an overly bright recording light. With the Kodak Zi8 pocket HD camera, this problem seems to happen quite often.  You cannot record in low light or record any glossy type surfaces due to the record light being so bright. All of the videos have a red tint or a red dot right in the center of them.

Fed up with the red cast and red dots in my videos, I decided to do something about it. I was going to put tape over the light but then I realized, tape would eventually come off and then it’d leave a sticky residue on the camera. So the next best thing to do was to paint the darn thing! I didn’t want to paint the outside because I figured it’d be more work than what it is and it’d also take away from the over all appearance of the device.  I found out you can remove the lens cover and gain access to the light post from within the lens cover.

Video after the jump.

]]> http://www.knoxware.org/how-to-hide-zi8-record-light/feed/ 6 http://www.knoxware.org/do-you-find-your-computer-boring-just-sitting-there-you-might-want-to-check-this-out/ http://www.knoxware.org/do-you-find-your-computer-boring-just-sitting-there-you-might-want-to-check-this-out/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:35:56 +0000 snowman http://www.knoxware.org/?p=795 This one of a kind Mac Mod utilizes all of the default electronics from a LEGO Mindstorms NXT set. Crammed into the iconic Apple Power Mac G4 Cube’s famous “8-inch” (acrylic) cube are a LEGO NXT programmable brick, 3 interactive servo motors and all 4 sensors: touch, sound, light, and ultrasonic.

For full detail check out the source site

This mod here is version 2.0 of the first thumbdrive mod (this one is slightly enhanced). This time around, I used the newest 1 Gig thumb drive from PNY to do the modification. My 512 died after dropping it on the ground really hard.

Guide is below the images. Feel free to share your projects in the comments area.

Today (Sep 29th 2005) I took an old, busted 15 gig ipod hard drive and thought, “what am i going to do with this useless hunk of junk?” I didn’t want to throw it away because I am a pack rat, I keep all kinds of things, even if they’re broken. I got to thinking, “I could make this bad boy a belt buckle”, so that is what I did.

inside fabric:

outside fabric:

After picking the fabrics I wanted, I needed to come up with a plan for what I wanted my case to look like. Should it have pockets? Should it have a strap? How should it be kept shut? What should I use to cushion the fabric? How thick should it be? Where would I put the strap(s) if I decided to have any? Should I put something inside to make the bag stiff or should it be floppy? If I use buttons to keep it shut, what buttons should I use? How many? If i use a zipper to keep the bag shut, what kind of zipper? After much deliberation, I decided to keep it simple.

The MacBook is a mere 1 inch thick, so i decided not to go with a strap, fearing that it might rip out. I decided on buttons rather than a zipper to keep the bag shut worrying that the zipper might scratch the edge of my baby. I chose 2 large white buttons from my grandmother’s old button collection to keep the case shut. I found some fusible interfacing that was pretty stiff so I decided to use that along with a few (4) layers of batting.

I decided to make the bag as simple as possible, so I searched through patterns and found one that I liked the idea of and adjusted it to suit my job. The pattern requires 3 pieces for each layer of the bag (inside, outside, and filling). The three pieces are (1)a large piece (13.75″x25.25″) that will become the front, back, and top flap of the back, (2) a narrow strip (1.75″x9.75″)for one side of the bag, and (3) another narrow strip (1.75″x9.75″) for the other side of the bag. I had to cut 2 pieces of fabric for the large strip from the inside fabric because I messed up the first cut and made it impossible to cut a big enough piece from the remaining fabric.

first cut (nonono!!! stop!! wait!!):

After I cut out all the pieces of fabric that I’d be using for the case, I started sewing the inside of the bag (if you’re sewing anything, a good rule to go by is to cut all your pieces before you start sewing. same rule for cooking, assemble all your ingredients before beginning. You don’t want to find out half way through that you don’t have enough flour for your cake…I just thought about who I’m talking to, moving on….) Here are what the inside pieces look like without being sewn together:

After I got them all sewn up, I ironed on the fusible interfacing (the stiff one). After it was attached, the bag looked like this:

I stitched the batting together so it wouldn’t slide around inside the case too much. Next I sewed the side strips of the outside fabric to the large piece of outside fabric. Once this was done, I put the right sides of the inside and outside fabric together and started sewing, making sure the batting was getting picked up along the way. After pulling and stitching and tearing out seams and re-sewing seams, I finally got everything together. It’s very snug (I think it’s a little too snug, ghostshadow thinks it’s perfect), and very soft. Besides the snugness I’m happy with the way it turned out. Here is the final product:

closed from the front:

closed from the side:

finished back:

finished open:

If you have any questions, if something doesn’t make sense (I wouldn’t be surprised), ask away. I did not have to buy any of the materials I used to make this case so it was kind of free. It didn’t require any special skills (besides the 3 month long training course on how to operate the sewing machine), I used plain old scissors, rotary cutter, ruler, cutting mat, straight pins, and didn’t use any fancy stitching. The whole process from nothing to a bag took a few hours, a lot more time consuming than buying a bag, but it’s a good feeling knowing that you made something rather than bought it. That’s all I have for now, thanks for reading this far into the post.

- Bookgopher

Today marks the 30th year anniversary of Apple Computer, Inc. On April 1st 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. 30 years of ups and downs have proven to the success of what Apple is today. Apple has a loyal user base, if you’re an Apple / Mac user, you know what I mean. We have stood by our favorite company through the thick and thin years. I am sure we will do the same for the years to come. I would like to wish Apple more success in the future! This is my tribute to one of my favorite companies. Apple Computer, Inc.

I went out today and got the classic Apple tattooed on my left arm above the elbow. Pictures of my Apple tattoo are below.

This is to you Apple. Thank You for the years of great computing joy!

Edit: It has now been 24 days after getting the Apple tattoo done. The colors are much more accurate and the tattoo is nearly healed.

Edit 2: The images have been featured on BMEzine.com Link 1 Link 2

The images can also be found on my Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/20334233@N08/sets/72157604852146820/

Materials Needed

Dead 9v battery
Pliers
22AWG Wire (preferably a red and a black wire)
Soldering iron
Solder
Hot glue gun (optional, but works well in assembly)
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How To

First, take your dead 9v battery and start prying at the seam of the battery, starting at the bottom until you can get the battery all the way apart, like so:
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Next, what you want to do is take out and keep the bottom plastic part and the top plastic part (the part with the connectors on it). You can recycle the rest of the battery, you won’t be using the rest of the contents at this time.
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Now lets take a look at this connector. We have a positive and a negative. The positive on the 9V battery is the “Round” connector and the negative is the “Star” connector. For this project we have to change this so that the positive side is the “Star” connector and the negative is the “Round” connector. This is why it’s a good choice to use two different colored wires (red & black in this case).
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Now that you know the “Star” side is the positive side and the “Round” side is going to be negative, you can flip the connector over (remember which side is which). In the photograph below, the “Star” side is on the right.
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Now you are ready to put this thing together. Heat that soldering iron up and get ready. What you want to do is take the red wire and solder it into the “Star” side connector. Do the same with the black wire with the “Round” connector. If you find the solder is not sticking to the metal area, you might need to rough it up a bit. My connector had a coating on it and I had to sand the connector a little and the solder connected to it. Just take some sand paper and rub it a little and your solder should adhere to the connector.
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Now that both connectors have the wires attached there is one more step before assembling the final product. You should flip the wires to the other side (see the photo). This puts less tension on the wires when the battery snap is being used.
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Next step is to put this thing together, so heat up that hot glue gun. What you want to do is get your other piece of plastic ready and you’re going to put hot glue on the part that has the wires connected, dab just enough glue on there so the other piece of plastic will hold. You’ll want to squeeze both plastic pieces once you put the glue in since hot glue dries fast. Once it’s dry you should have something like this:
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Now you are done and ready to test your projects or attach the battery snap to your project, etc. Here are a couple of pictures of the new battery snap in use.
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Remember to properly dispose of your batteries. Please recycle when you can.