Be it strange hardware like the Stinky foot board or a custom Arduino interface, or odd/new (open source?) software like No-Euclid, or asciiquarium, what do you have, use, or know of, that's a little bit odd or that you'd just like to share with the community. (anything goes, from as mundane as PureData and Processing to as odd as Hannah Montana Linux)
Remind me later (next week or so) that this post should be moved to the new "hardware - legacy and curiosities" category once the new categories are implemented, please.
It will fit in much better there and get more exposure. If you want you can also repost it there, just PM me for what you want done at that point.
Thx
I love curiosities and legacy tech stuff. I have stuffs lined up for when the category comes to life.
That's pretty cool actually. I've set up just a simple arduino and arcade button thing for controlling my set up, but using it to change what device is connected to which VM (if I understood correctly) is a great idea.
That's the idea. It's using a 16x2 display over i2c, and when it's done, I hope to be able to set up "favorite groups" so you can press a "hotkey" and it will toggle your keyboard, mouse, and whatever else is in that group.
That guitar looks awesome. But still not as awesome as SynthAxe.
On topic:
As far as hardware goes, I'm using a laptop, Lenovo T510 as my daily work station (PC broke down several years ago). This laptop has an ExpressCard 34 slot which I recently filled with a converter to USB 3.0. I can't believe I didn't do this sooner, it's a really neat thingy and puts my USB port count up to 6: 3x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA which doubles as a USB and 2x USB 3.0.
Other than that, I find that HDD docking stations are extremely useful. I got a Sharkoon QuickPort Duo, used, for 15 or 20$ and so far I'm very impressed with it's usefulness. And I don't know anyone else who's ever used an HDD dock. Very underrated gadget.
I'd also bought a USB numeric keyboard, also used, for less than $1. Useful since my laptop doesn't have a separate one, and I'm left handed so I finally had a numpad on my left side... Excel was suddenly much easier.
As for software, I always keep an installation of "Billy" music player on my PC. It's a relic of a resource-optimizing past, an extremely lightweight player which is entirely keyboard controllable, and was definitely the best background player for gaming back when CPU's had only one core. I've grown somewhat attached to it. There was other obscure software but I can't remember now and it's getting late.
On the note of HDD docks, I have an old SAS (which is convertable to SATA) raid card that supports up to 200+ HDDS, so i wired up my own HDD dock with a spare PSU that was jumpered on to main systems PSU, so I could shut down the main system, which would shut down the extra drives in turn, and then add a new drive that would just slot in as the SATA power and data connectors were both zip-tied into place in an internal-turned-external HDD cage. allowed me to hot swap up to 8 drives with how I had it set up. It was limited to SATA2 speeds, but on old mechanical disks that was usually fine. It was awesome for mass data recovery and moving files out of a pile of dead laptops among other things. Other things including but not limited to purposely making a raid array on 8 known to be failing hdds and then playing minecraft with the world saved on the array via symlink. Sadly the world just crashed instead of getting corrupted. Still cool though.
Speaking of "known to be failing" HDD-s, there is some more hardware I have a strange/odd use for.
The hardware itself is not exactly strange, it's just how I use it. I use an old laptop HDD (it could be 80% dead and it would still serve nicely) and an HDD caddy for this purpose.
I have 50+ programs installed on my laptop, about 35+ of them never need updating. Most of them are small utilities, but some are larger like ArcGIS and AutoCAD. I also like trying out new programs although I rarely like one enough to put it in the perma-lineup. Once or twice a year I refresh my OS. Instead of backing up data, reinstalling Windows, updating it, installing drivers, de-bloating it, re-installing all of the programs again etc... I just back-up any data and clone the good-to-go HDD (used exclusively for this purpose). I just swap the SSD from my laptop with the HDD, and put the SSD in the caddy slot where the DVD drive was, format+clone and I already have a de-bloated OS with all the drivers and framework and the 35 programs that don't need regular updates.
The HDD goes back in the drawer for another 6-12 months. I just finish up with installing the programs that I do update regularly (Skype, security programs...) and that's about it. Yes I know I can use System Restore but I've had some bad times with it where it failed to get rid of some malware. Yes I know I can use Clonezilla with a USB stick or SD card and avoid HDD data degradation over time, but I'll experiment with it when this system starts failing.
The caddy and HDD cost almost nothing, can be bought used, and save a tremendous amount of time. Plus if the HDD dies, no important data is lost, it's just an inconvenience.
A cleaver way of doing things. I actually refresh my linux system about yearly as well (arch based) and I like the idea of this. How are you avoiding problems when copying programs that rely on registry keys? also, do you still keep backups of your data?
This is their FULL performance of their speed run of the original Metroid played along with live music. The only sounds from the game are the basic sound effects. All the music is performed entirely by the band on stage while another of the members plays the game live on stage as well.
