Bafoontecha has a post telling you how to build a USB Bit Whacker. While at first glance it may look like a USB to parallel port converter, it actually gives you pretty much full control of the PIC18F2550 it is based on. You communicate with it via a virtual COM port so you can either control it with terminal software or via scripts. Check it out; it's easy to build and opens up all kinds of possibilities for using it for evil science.

Jim Robert made a nice Instructable on how to build some stackable gobos. No, not the patterns that go in lighting instruments, but cube-shaped sound-absorbing or reflecting baffles. They look like they'd be pretty easy to build, and who hasn't been recording somewhere and wishing that the acoustics were different?

Lifehacker says you can stream Netflix movies to your XBox 360 instead of shelling out $99 for a Netflix player box. The site tells you what all you need and has instructions for setting everything up.

The folks over at Near Future Laboratory used their trusty logic analyzer to figure out the codes sent out by the Sony PS2 controller. They walk you through all the steps of how they did it plus give you all the results so you should be building your own Dual-Shock controlled devices in no time!

Yesterday was Midify launch day, and to celebrate I made a new demo video:




It's true. I installed a MIDI port in my microwave. "Why a microwave" you ask?

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Midify launches tomorrow. I've got lots to do to get everything ready, but I threw together a video that gives a first glimpse of the actual board and shows off some of the features it has to offer.



Each Midify output is connected to an LED so it's a little easier to see what is happening. The outputs are also connected to a Game Boy SP running PixelH8's Music Tech synth cartridge for some audio.

Here are some of the features demoed:
-Easy to configure right from your keyboard or sequencer
-Poly Mode (play lots of notes at once)
-Mono Mode (play only one note at a time)
-High Note Priority Mode (the highest key you play wins in mono mode)
-Low Note Priority Mode (the lowest key you play wins in mono mode)
-Pause Mode (inserts a pause between each note you play so some devices that don't react quickly don't get confused)

You can also pick any MIDI channel you want, assign any key to any output and make the outputs be either active-high or active-low.

Remember, you can start Midifying your world at noon PST on Tuesday (6/10/08). Head over to the Division 6 site for more info.

I wish I could play my Syntar but I'm just not very good at it.

Here's a video by a guy who can:

Version 5 of Eagle, the popular (and free!) PCB design and layout software has been released. I've always found it a little bit weird to use, but it looks like the latest version has some new features that will make it more usable. Here are my votes for best new features:

• Context-sensitive menus on right-click
• Current zoom is now saved when switching between sheets of a schematic
• Devices in a library can now have user-definable attributes
• You can lock the position of a part
• Active-low signals can now have a bar over their names

If you've been wanting to get into sound design or music production but can't afford ProTools or Sonar, you should check out REAPER, a new multitrack Audio / MIDI sequencer program that seems to do quite a bit of stuff for $50 bucks. Not ready to drop that much cash yet? You can download a fully-functioning demo.

It's not very bloated (the installer is just over 3MB), but it has quite a few features that the big boys have, including:

• 64-bit Audio Engine
• Multiprocessor Support
• Control Surface Support
• VST, VSTi, DX, DXi Support
• Pitch Shift / Time Stretch
• Automation

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but when I do I'll write a review. If you've played with REAPER please tell us about it in the comments.

All these years I thought I was the only person in the world with a secret love of control panels, with their lights and buttons so shiny, so I've kept it to myself. It turns out I'm not alone; there's a whole Flickr pool dedicated to control panels.