The Time Capsule Jewelry Box: Hide your valuable jewelry inside your valuable electronics
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Hacks, Mods, Photos, design
Aside from the whole “engagement/wedding ring” thing, I think I have not bought the Bride of Macenstein any jewelry in the 70 or so years we’ve been married. Yes, she’s a lucky woman.
But despite her lack of baubles, I’m sure if she DID have any nice jewelry (or valuables of any kind), she would appreciate this velvet-lined Time Capsule jewelry box. It certainly would look nicer than that burlap-lined one I made out of a G4 tower that’s sitting on her dresser now.
And besides, what better way to hide your valuable jewelry than hiding it inside what appears to be valuable electronics. Double win!
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader psionic0001 for the tip!
[via Instructables]
How To: Add a bunch of useless stuff to your desktop with GeekTool, Yahoo Widgets, and more!
I’ve recently gotten into playing around with GeekTool, an add-on System Preference Pane that allows you to add a wide range of both useful and useless things to your desktop, not only to make your life easier, but to make other geeks feel inferior. Sure, you can display the current date and time in the menu bar like a noob, but why not have a GIANT clock right in the middle of you desktop? Or show CPU usage, AirPort signal strength, Processor temps, RSS feeds, Facebook updates, computer uptime, iCal events, current weather conditions, etc.?
Above: Some cool examples of GeekTool custom desktops: 1, 2, 3, 4
Despite its geeky name, setting up GeekTool doesn’t require a whole lot of geeky knowledge. Luckily for us, the TRUE geeks of the world have already come up with the necessary code and scripts you’d want, so for the most part you will simply be copying and pasting bits of code that you find by Google-ing “GeekTool code” (or at least that’s what I did). I don’t claim to be any sort of GeekTool expert, but I’ll walk you through the basics of what I did to achieve MY results, and you can take the ball and run with it. Read more
Can you say, “Chick Magnet”?
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Hacks, design, iPhone
As if the simple act of owning an Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight Royale wasn’t enough to ensure you a healthy supply of hot and cold running chicks, imagine pulling up the Sorority House of your choosing in said Olds using nothing but your iPhone to control that sweet ride!
Above: Nice touch smashing the Dell boxes.
The hack looks simple enough, and I’d guess it shouldn’t take the average person more than 20 minutes or so. All you need are a few things you likely have sitting around the house already – like a couple wrenches and an old Power Wheels. And a laptop and a motorcycle chain. And a potentiometer. And an engineering degree.
Oh, and they had to rip out the power windows and the front seat, but hey, you planned to spend most of your time in the back seat anyway, am I right?
[via Waterloo Labs]
Meet Frank
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Hacks, design, iMacs
Above: “Frank” even has two giant bolts sticking out of his head, just like the real thing!
Faithful Macenstein reader Julian writes:
Hi Doc!
A few months ago, my brother came to me and asked for a computer which can run some games, runs Mac Os X, looks cool, and costs below 500€ (including monitor, keyboard and all), because he spends most of his money on amps and guitars.
So we had almost no options. A real Mac was way to expensive, and just buying a cheap computer and installing a hacked Os X didn’t fulfill the coolness-factor.A friend of mine and I came up with the idea of the Frankenmac, in short “Frank”.
We took our old iMac (G3 / 333 Mhz / 192 MB Ram) and converted it.
I love stuff like this. It’s probably a good thing I never learned to solder or I would have a whole bunch of oddly configured electronics throughout my house posing a number of fire risks. Of course, as with all hackintosh jobs, you sort of wonder why they didn’t just get a Mac mini… but hey, in things like this, the journey is sometimes as important as the destination. (detailed pics after the jump for those of you into such things). Read more
How to: Create Custom Mask Effects For Photo Booth
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Awesomeness, Hacks, Tips/How To
Like most kids their age, faithful Macenstein readers Len and Jordan were messing around with Quartz Composer’s input parameters and Photo Booth last Friday night, and they figured out a relatively easy way to create your own Photo Booth masks. And by relatively easy, I mean even I could follow the instructions.
So, If you’ve ever wanted to put your face on Steve Jobs’ near-perfect body, read on! Read more
Jailbreaking provides MASSIVE increase in iPhone battery life
Just one more benefit to Jailbreaking the iPhone. Check out this incredibly messed up battery charge sensor amazing increase in battery life one lucky jailbreaker is experiencing on his iPhone!
If that’s LOW battery, odds are this dude’s iPhone can now power Connecticut, or at least Rhode Island.
Thanks to faithful Macenstein reader Rich for the link!
[via imageshack]
Rickrolling iPhone Jailbreakers
Jailbreaking sometimes has a charming, Forrest Gump-like “You never know what you’re gonna get” kind of vibe going on when installing apps. Will it indeed be sexy girls? A virus? Rick Astley? That’s probably the best thing about jailbreaking – you never know!
Hmmm… sounds like the Mrs. is not a Rick Astley fan…
Well, I don’t really see the problem here. I mean, who wouldn’t want a Rick Astley video constantly playing behind all their icons? Someone without a soul, THAT’S who.
When restoring (UN-jailbreaking) doesn’t restore everything
As much as I loved having a jailbroken iPhone, I decided to UN-jailbreak my phone in anticipation of the new 3.0 software update. I also had been experiencing some increasingly frequent crashes to the springboard, as well as what I perceived to be a general slowness to the phone, and figured maybe a factory restore would set things right.
In order to undo the Jailbreak, I figured all I needed to do was hit the “restore” button in iTunes, and then restore the iPhone from a previous backup. However, once the iPhone had completed its cycle, I noticed three odd things:
Apparently three of my customization options held through a restore: Erica Sadun’s Make It Mine (which let’s you change the carrier name from AT&T or what have you), and my numeric Wi-Fi strength and numeric battery level indicators ( I think I used Big Boss Prefs for those, although it was so long ago I don’t remember).
I’m not sure how those hacks went about making their changes to the iPhone’s OS, but for some reason I assumed a full restore would overwrite those changes. Probably somewhere in their documentation they said “Remember to undo us BEFORE your unjailbreak”, but I of course never read such things, as I assume many of you don’t either, so I figured I would just post this as an FYI for anyone else who will be un-jailbreaking. It will be interesting to see if any of these preferences hold through the 3.0 update next week (actually I believe Apple is enabling a numeric battery on their own. So maybe I will have two…) 
The “Mighty Dead” mouse
Apple hasn’t updated the Mighty Mouse in quite some time, but those of you dying for a refresh can make your own out of things you probably have in your own home! All you need is and old (still functioning) USB mouse, and an old (NOT functioning) real one!
That’s right, assuming you are a fan of taxidermy, Instructables.com has a tutorial on how you can turn that dead mouse you have lying around on the basement into a real life working computer mouse, and it looks great with an Apple laptop, don’tcha think?
This would be great for kids – They love stuffed animals.
Above: Here’s all you need… not shown, an extremely strong stomach. [Warning: Images get a little grosser....] Read more
Sonic the Hedgehog for iPhone isn’t a game, it’s a Genesis emulator
Sega’s recently released Sonic the Hedgehog for iPhone has received well-deserved accolades for bringing an amazing faithful port of the 1991 Sega Genesis classic to the iPhone platform, yet at the same time, it has also received almost as much criticism for its slow frame rates and performance issues. Well, the guys over at AllTechRelated may have discovered the reason. Apparently, Sonic isn’t so much a port to the iPhone as a Genesis emulator running Sonic on the iPhone.
It turns out if you open up the Sonic app folder on a jailbroken iPhone (as I’ve done below), you can replace the file named “rom.bin” with another Genesis ROM file you may own, and it will play. In their tests not all ROMs worked, (so far, they’ve had success with Sonic 1 and 2, Afterburner 2, and Ecco the Dolphin).
Above: Replace this file with a bin ROM of your own, and you’re good to go.
The obvious catch here is that only the D-Pad and A button are supported, so only certain games will play well even if they launch. I have tested out Sonic 2, and as you can see from the shots below (featuring Sonic’s friend Tails) the hack does indeed work. (I only tested that ROM because I still own the original Sonic 2 cartridge, and the underlying feeling in the ROM community is that you shouldn’t run emulated games you did not buy at some point).
I actually noticed the ROM for Sonic 2 plays smoother than the “official” Sega Sonic for the iPhone. For some, perhaps the knowledge that Sonic can in fact run many Genesis titles may help justify the $5.99 price tag on the laggy app. Of course, if you have a jailbroken iPhone, there’s already a free Genesis emulator out there.
As someone who plans to UNjailbreak my iPhone when the version 3 OS comes out, here’s hoping Sega decides to do right and fix the performance on Sonic, but in the meantime, running Sonic 2 ain’t a bad consolation prize.
[via AllTechRelated]
