• DIY

    DIY Paradise at Maker Faire

    By Posted on 5.5.2008 2 Comments

    We're back from this weekend's Maker Faire, the third-annual event in San Mateo, CA . Our friends at Make continue to up the ante, bringing DIYers from far and wide to show off their projects at the ultimate geek county fair.

    6.19.2008 at 01:21am - Comment by deadtrout

    no doubt about it, this event sucked! I enjoy the make blog and have it as one of my daily reads. I'll also occasionally buy a copy of Make Magazine even though I find this micromag to be overpriced. But nothing readied me for the dissapointment of the Maker Faire. Let's start at the gate. $50 for two people. That is only the start of the insulting prices. Make Mag shows it's deep love for it's community by allowing vendors to charge $7 for hot dogs and $3 for fountain drinks. That kinetic wood model which fetches $5 in retail stores has a pricetag of $40. Second-hand shirts attempt to fetch $60. That's right, a $10 shirt plus a silkscreened bird = $60. Make Mag thinks it's community is made of idiots. They have no shame.

  • DIY

    Eee PC School: Add a Keyboard Backlight For Under $15

    By Posted on 5.22.2008 11 Comments

    As we showed you in our May 2008 issue, Asus's Eee PC has quickly become a favorite of hardware hackers around the web. Here, we offer the first installment of our Eee PC School series. Check back in the coming weeks for more tiny ultraportable tweaking.—Eds. What good is that portable PC if you can’t type anywhere and anytime? With its ultra-compact keyboard, even touch typing pros will be hard-pressed to avoid frequent mistakes on when the lights go out. To say it’s a frustrating exercise in futility to locate the miniature F3 key in the dark is an understatement. Oops, you just lost WiFi contact by accidentally hitting F2.

    6.18.2008 at 11:46pm - Comment by deadtrout

    Maybe I'm being dense here but I didn't see mention anywhere that the letters are visible after doing this hack. If we're only talking about lighting up the spaces between the keys then I'm not sure this would be useful for me. If this does light up the keys I wonder if it will work with the black EEE.



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