Team Hack-a-Day

Two New Applications – MailBin 2 and Suction

DrNathan — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:45:14 +0000

DrNathan has two new useful applications for your consideration, MailBin 2 and Suction.

MailBin was originally mentioned here last summer, and has changed quite a bit since then. No longer a compiled Perl script, MailBin was built from the ground up in C#. It still checks your Gmail account and remotely queues up NZB files for your favorite newsreader, but it includes a handful of new options, including multiple account support and the ability to download Zipped collections of NZB files, as well as .Torrent files. The program weighs in at only 535 KB, a significant decrease in size from the original.

Suction is a useful tool for those of you out there who find the need to organize large groups of files. Based off the concept of the “Unify” function found in Dir Utils, Suction is a 64-bit compatible alternative to the aforementioned application. Given any number of directories, the program “suctions” all files from the root folders’ subdirectories, depositing them in the root folder for easy access and sorting. You can either set Suction to install itself to your right-click context menu, or you can simply drag and drop folders into the application window. After that, Suction does the rest. It even deletes all of the empty subfolders as it does its work, so you are left with a single folder containing all of your files. At 180 KB, it’s worth a shot.

Click here to try MailBin

Click here to try Suction

Repair Your Xbox 360 DVD Drive

DrNathan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:06:53 +0000

DrNathan demonstrates how a couple of dollars and a few minutes can turn your broken Xbox 360 DVD drive into a fully functioning unit again by tackling a common point of failure – the drive belt that runs the tray mechanism.

Xbox 360 Controller Thumbstick Replacement

DrNathan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:40:55 +0000

Forum member snorkle256 didn’t let a stepped-on Xbox 360 controller ruin his night of gaming. He took the challenge of replacing the broken thumbstick head-on, using a controller from the original Xbox as an ‘organ donor’. Head on over to his blog to see how he got his Franken-controller up and running again.

Enabling ICH10R SATA RAID After Installing Windows

DrNathan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:31:30 +0000

Typically, changing your BIOS’ SATA configuration to enable AHCI or RAID after you have already installed Windows results in a BSOD each time you reboot the machine. DrNathan shows us how he solved that problem on an Intel board with an ICH10R SATA controller using a little manual driver installation magic.

Hack-a-Day.com is dead. Long live Hack-a-Day.com!

DrNathan — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:58:36 +0000

Yes folks Hack-a-Day is back online and it looks like most of the issues have been ironed out. I’m sure Eliot and Co. are glad to have it up and running once again.

If you need your fix, please go to http://hackaday.com versus http://www.hackaday.com. Every DNS server I have checked at the time of this posting does not have a standard ‘www’ record for hackaday.com. If you cannot get to http://hackaday.com, odds are your DNS records are stale. You can clear your local DNS cache with an ipconfig /flushdns at the command line. If that does not work, your DNS provider might not have updated records. In that case, use 4.2.2.2 as your DNS host.

Either way, everyone can calm down now since you can get your Hack-a-Day fix once again!

Hack-a-Day is Down (For Now)

DrNathan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:48:06 +0000

As you have probably noticed (and who hasn’t?), the Hack-a-Day web site is currently down and has been for a few days. It seems that initially, DNS issues plagued the site and then they were DDoS’d when the propagation completed. Now a pending Wordpress conversion is underway, which should be completed soon. Forum moderator snorkle256 got the scoop from Eliot last night:

09/09/2008 21:52:46 ‹eliot› so, we’re moving to Wordpress.com VIP hosting (take that Anderson Cooper)
09/09/2008 21:53:03 ‹eliot› and we’re waiting for them to completel the transition
09/09/2008 21:53:38 ‹eliot› The fist downtime was moving from Blogsmith on AOL’s servers to Wordpress in our colo
09/09/2008 21:54:19 ‹eliot› once we came back up we were getting DDoS’d from the first day
09/09/2008 21:54:57 ‹eliot› that essentially saturated the 1G connection Sunday night
09/09/2008 21:55:17 ‹eliot› the devs took us down and decided to investigate other options
09/09/2008 21:56:13 ‹eliot› Wordpress is not easy to use at our level
09/09/2008 21:58:27 ‹eliot› we decided to go with Wordpress.com since this is there software and scaling will be there problem not ours
09/09/2008 21:59:06 ‹eliot› right now we’re just waiting to hear that it’s finalized
09/09/2008 21:59:26 ‹eliot› it should be within the next day; we were expecting today
09/09/2008 22:00:10 ‹eliot› k, I’m back to watching Spider Man cry

In the meantime, why not check out our Forum or Chat Room to satisfy your Hack-a-Day cravings?

Check back here for any subsequent updates.

MyVu Personal Video Viewer Hacked to Allow Input From Any Video Device

DrNathan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:03:32 +0000

For those of you unfamiliar with the MyVu Personal Video Device, it resembles a set of sunglasses with video screens and a pair of headphones built in. It’s a great little product, but forum member RetroPlayer did not like the fact that his MyVu was tethered only to his iPod. He decided he wanted to liberate the mini-theater to allow it the ability to connect to any video player with a standard CINCH/AV output, aka an “RCA Output”.

He poked around for a bit, then finally ended up calling MyVu in order to try talking to an engineer. Surprisingly, he was put through to one, and the engineer was quite accommodating. He gave RetroPlayer a ton of information, which helped him overcome some issues he was having.

The hack works well, but isn’t quite complete yet. RetroPlayer has posted schematics and all the details of his project, but has stated that he will continue working on it, taking it from the breadboard to an actual adapter.

4th of July Special – Set off Fireworks Using an Arduino!

DrNathan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:17:03 +0000

In an attempt to ensure that all of his digits survive the 4th of July, forum member morehpperliter has devised a simple but elegant replacement to the time-honored tradition of “light the fuse and run like hell!” Using an Arduino and a bit of code know-how, you too can keep yourself out of the emergency room this 4th of July. Or you can continue shooting Roman Candles at your friends and hoping for the best…whichever works for you.

Always on USB Charging Port for Your PC

DrNathan — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:25:53 +0000

Forum member Cerberus posted a tutorial on how to rig up an always-on USB charging port for your PC using a spare USB port, a resistor, and a few pieces of wire.

It requires a small bit of soldering know-how, but anyone who has used an iron at least one time can pull this off. It is a great option for someone looking to reduce clutter while saving energy, since it enables and USB device to charge while your PC is turned off without the need for yet another wall wart.

Newsbin + NZBs + Gmail = MailBin

DrNathan — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:50:25 +0000

I am happy to announce the first public release of my MailBin application, which works in conjunction with Gmail and Newsbin to enable individuals to remotely queue up Usenet downloads by emailing themselves .nzb files.

The concept is simple, utilizing the ability to send oneself a message at Gmail.com with characters appended to your usual email address. The MailBin application, along with Newsbin takes care of the rest. Read more about the program here, and join the forum discussion here.

It is Alpha software in that it has not been broadly tested, but I am pretty sure of its capabilities. Please pass along any bug reports, suggestions, etc you might have.

Thanks to Morehpperliter for the initial idea.