Geek culture

The era of floppy disks is long gone, and I can't imagine how many are sitting in landfills today. Many hardware hackers, though, are determined to give them a new life. Call it a New Hope.

One Polish programmer, who goes by the name Silent, has wired two 3.5-inch floppy drives together along with an ATMega microcontroller.

Using the step motors in the drives, Silent recently got the obsolete duo to play "The Imperial March" from Star Wars, seen in the vid below.

Using the unique groaning sounds of FDDs to make music is nothing new, of course, and Darth Vader's theme has been done many times, even with HDDs. But I like the two-drive approach for a duet performance. … Read more

A new series of Angry Birds iPhone/iPod/iPad speaker docks is winging its way over from accessories maker Gear4.

The units feature a red Angry Bird ($79.99), an explosive black Angry Bird ($99.99), or an evil helmet-wearing pig ($99.99). Each includes a 2.1 speaker, power adaptor, 3.5 mm line-in cable, and 3.5 mm port. Though Gear4 is hyping the products' release now, they're not available just yet as "coming soon..." is splashed across the Gear4 Web site.

We've already seen Angry Birds plush toys, T-shirts, bras, Halloween costumes, stickers, and amusement park attractions, to name just a handful of tie-ins to the Rovio game.

These new Gear4 speakers might be excellent products, but the onslaught of Angry Birds gear is starting to give the popular game that Disney/Star Wars/Mario Brothers uber-merchandised feel. Kind of makes you wonder how far away Mighty Eagle Condoms might be.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Disney spent the last couple of decades making mermaids into friendly, lovely creatures bursting with curiosity and love (see "The Little Mermaid" and "Splash"). It took about a year's work from the visual-effects pros at Industrial Light and Magic to return the fair ladies of the sea to their classical, bloodthirsty ways.

To show off the effects studio's work on the billion-dollar-grossing "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" as it arrives on Blu-ray next month, ILM's Ben Snow (visual-effects supervisor) and Aaron McBride (art director) sat down with reporters at George Lucas' Presidio compound here earlier this month to discuss the challenges of creating mermaids beautiful enough to lure Johnny Depp to water and ferocious enough to devour him.

"Classically, mermaids were beautiful but deadly creatures," Snow said. "We were excited to bring them back to that tradition. But the challenge was developing creative concepts that preserved their beauty while making them scary again." … Read more

An update is on the way to repair serious shortcomings with the iOS version of Madden 12, EA Sports says.

Earlier this week, we reported that reviews in the iTunes store were brutal for the iPod, iPad, and iPhone versions of the massively popular National Football League game. Our hands-on play only verified the problems.

Initially, our attempts to get an explanation from EA were met with silence. But, according to EA Mobile representative Michelle Jacob, the Madden 12 iOS team gathered its details together and wanted to update fans with the latest news.

"The Madden development team closely monitors customer feedback in the App Store and is focusing on these concerns," Jacob told CNET yesterday. "We are currently working on an update that is due out shortly and will address the following..." … Read more

Ever wished you could win money--big money--for playing video games?

While that dream may never come true for most of us, there is a chance for anyone with an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 to become a gaming god. Virgin Gaming, EA, and DICE are teaming up to host a Battlefield 3 Worldwide Conquest tournament with $1.6 million in cash and prizes on the line.

Potential fraggers must be 18 years or older to register for the online tourney, which begins in 2012 and which Virgin is calling the "largest online console game tournament ever." Unfortunately, the contest is not available for PC gamers, who make up a huge portion of the fan base for the series. In some aspects, I can see why Virgin Gaming may want to avoid integrating PC gamers, as cheating has soured FPS games for many years on the platform.

Nonetheless, Virgin's official response to PC gamers being excluded was rather disappointing. "Our technology is only set up to integrate with console games at this phase in our life. We're still new and trying to create a unique service that resolves a lot of the challenges in the competitive gaming space today," a Virgin rep said. "We have much love for gamers on all platforms, and as we grow we'll try to bring everyone under the tent." … Read more

I have a Gibson guitar. I have to tune it myself. It doesn't have onboard effects. I can't load third-party apps onto it. My guitar is so old-fashioned, it has a hole in the top for the sound to get out. In short, it's no Firebird X.

The limited-edition Firebird X launches on September 30 with a list of specs that reads more like a Dell computer than a guitar. It even has system requirements for Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

The guitar retains the classic look of a regular Firebird, but stuffs the innards with enough technology to make your poor roadie's head spin. This may be the geekiest guitar ever made.

The latest version of Gibson's RoboHead tuners takes care of pesky tuning chores for you. An onboard multiprocessor spews out sounds and effects. It has its own preamp and Bluetooth for connecting to its pedals.

Gibson declares that all this digital stuff won't affect the guitar's "tube mojo." If you have a tube amp, then you know exactly what that means.… Read more

The Rev. Justin Yu is out for the rest of the week, but in his place we have the always informative financial guru Jill Schlesinger. Today we talk about the new Amazon Kindle Fire, and how it changes everything in the tablet market (especially for Google). But we also quiz Aunt Jill about the ongoing crisis in Europe, and she tells us about the sugary grab bag at the News & Documentary Emmys.

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. I'll let you draw your own conclusion as you gaze deeply into the 99-cent Bachmann-Eyezed app for iPhone and iPad.

Bachmann-Eyezed lets you add the Republican presidential candidate's well-known steely stare to any photo. A "Craziness" slider lets you ramp up the intensity from regular eyes to radiating red eyeballs that jump aggressively off the screen.

Choose from pictures in your photo gallery or take fresh snapshots to adulterate. A yellow guide outline helps you get everything in the right place. Pinch and swipe to change size or move the eyes around.

I turned my normally cuddly kitty cat into a unrecognizable creature from beyond the polls in a mere matter of seconds.

All of this madness was inspired by the kerfuffle over Newsweek's Bachmann cover that highlighted her wide-eyed look with the accompanying headline, "The Queen of Rage." Bachmann supporters protested that the photo was deliberately designed to make her look unappealing.

Those radiant peepers caught on with a meme that photoshopped her gaze onto a variety of celebrities. Thanks to the new app, you don't have to be a celebrity to get your Bachmann eyes on.

May I recommend a soundtrack of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" and "Hungry Eyes" from "Dirty Dancing" to go along with your Bachmann-Eyezed experience? Just remember, she's watching you.

(Via Huffington Post)… Read more

If you've ever wondered what words taste like, you're now in luck. Russian artist Morskoiboy has created a contraption that mixes cocktails based on letters.

Behold, the Typewriter Cocktail Machine. It's the illegitimate child of a Remington crossed with a bottle of Smirnoff. It features more tubes than the DareDroid 2.0 cocktail-making dress and has a rainbow of flavored syrups at its disposal.

It's hard to describe exactly how this contraption works, but I'm going to try. Each key on the keyboard is a syringe pump. Push it down and it sucks syrup from a corresponding bottle, mixing it with the top-mounted alcoholic beverage of your choice.

The resulting combination of liquids lights up an LCD-style display that shows the letter you just pushed. It all gets mixed together in a glass off to the side. The video below should answer your questions.… Read more