Personal Computer Produced Search Results

Eyes Officially Popped: The Future of Gaming Looks Awesome

Tune in! Below, an attendee of the Game Developers Conference 2011 captures footage of the new eye-popping visual effects in Epic Games' latest upgrade of their Unreal Engine 3, a "toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more." If this is what the graphics looks like captured from an audience cell phone, well, one can only imagine what it would look like on your widescreen... The demo, titled "Samaritan", ran on a custom-built PC system in real-time compu...

News: Apple Engineer Builds Fully-Functional Ancient Computer With LEGOs

Apple software engineer Andrew Carol built a fully-functional replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's oldest known scientific computer. The 2000-year-old analog device was used by the ancient Greeks to predict the year, date, and time of future solar and lunar eclipses accurately to within two hours. Carol put together the 110 gears (made with 1,500 LEGO Technic parts) in just 30 days. See how it works below. For more information, check out Fast Company's interview with Carol.

News: Touchpad Made with Paper and Pencil Scribbles

Who says nothing productive ever came out of doodling? Certainly not the hacker responsible for this fun (and at least somewhat functional) paper-and-pencil touchpad, which takes advantage of the natural conductivity of graphite: There isn’t much to explain here. It just uses pencil graphite on paper as a kind of two dimensional potentiometer. Four voltage dividers between 5v, 2M ohm resistors, the paper, and my grounded finger feeds signals from each corner into an Arduino. The Arduino does ...

How To: view PDF files on your PSP

PDF's are handy ways to send and receive documents so that you never lose formatting. But, did you know that you can view these files in places other than your computer or smartphone? In this tutorial, learn how to check out PDF documents using your PlayStation Portable! Your PSP is like a mini computer in your hand and can do a lot more than support video games.

How To: Build a Mini Altoids BBQ

Instructables user vmspionage demonstrates how to make a tiny bbq grill with an Altoids tin "powered by a standard-sized charcoal briquette and capable of cooking a full-size hot dog (cut down to size) or smaller hamburger patties with ease." Impressive design and execution. You Will Need:

Water Music: Conducting with Conductivity

What do you get when you mix water-filled bowls with electrical wiring and human hands? The answer may shock you. Artists Ion Furjanic & Isaac Souweine write, "Electric Tea 1.0 is the first in a series of works that put sound where it doesn't belong. [It] uses porcelain bowls, metal orbs, speaker wire, water, and the conductive power of the human body to create a water based musical controller."

How To: Remove Amazon's DRM from Any Kindle eBook

Want to drop Amazon's DRM from a Kindle eBook you've purchased? As the saying goes, where there's a will, there's a way. And, in this case, there are actually a couple of ways: One method uses Calibre and works for both Windows and Mac users, the other uses an AppleScript and is Mac exclusive. To maximize the usefulness of this guide, we've chosen to excerpt a tutorial that uses the OS-agnostic method. Mac users looking to find a writeup of the latter method, however, should look here.

How To: Download & Run the Latest Developer Build of Mac OS X for Free

Apple has announced the release of their OS X Beta Seed Program today, which allows anyone with an Apple ID and a Mac to download and run the latest developer build of Mac OS X 10.9.3—the most updated beta version of Mavericks. The OS X Beta Seed Program allows us to run software that was once only available to limited test audiences or registered Apple developers—with the latter costing $99 a year for a membership. With this program, not only do we get our hands on extremely new software, bu...

How To: Organize Your Chaotic Cable Clutter

If you are like most people, you probably have a discordant mess of cable and computer cords in your workspace or living room snaking all over the floor or against your desk. Though you can buy various cable organizers at the computer store, you can also organize them the DIY way with bread twist ties, binder clips, cardboard tubes, old credit cards, Velcro tape, or even your old hair clip.

How To: Add an Extra USB Port to Your Wired Computer Mouse

Ever try plugging in two flash drives into your MacBook Pro before? The USB ports on MacBooks are not only directly side by side, they're insanely close to each other, so it can be extremely difficult to plug in a large USB device with another smaller USB device. Sometimes it can fit, but it's a strain on the USB port and the device itself. If one of the items in question is a USB mouse, then your worries are over...

How To: Make sweet pepper jam for the holidays

The holiday season means you're going to be doing a LOT of entertaining and a lot of going to parties where you'll be expected to offer up a thoughtful hostess gift. While you could always make a last minute run to the store to purchase boxed chocolates or a nice bottle of wine, it's so much more personal to make something.

How To: Sharpen an axe or knife with the Boy Scouts

You never know when you may need to sharpen an axe... and who better to learn from than the Boy Scouts? Brace the axe head on the ground between a log about 6" in diameter and two woooden pegs or tent stakes. Sharpen your axe with an 8-10 inch mill bastard file. Be sure to wear leather gloves. Make a knuckle guard out of leather, plywood, or an old inner tube. Place the file on the edge of the blade and push it into the bit. Lift the file as you draw back for each stroke. Turn the axe around ...

How To: Create Encore menus with After Effects CS4

Using After Effects CS4 and Encore CS4 together to create motion menus can produce a more engaging experience when outputting to disc or flash from Encore CS4. This Adobe CS4 tutorial shows you how to create a seamlessly looping motion menu in After Effects CS4 for use in Encore CS4 and is a great example of the new dynamic link properties of Creative Suite CS4. Create Encore menus with After Effects CS4.

How To: Accessorize a black dress

Are you going out in that little black dress that you've always wanted, but you don't know what to accessorize with? Well, The beauty of the little black dress is that you can accessorize it to reflect your personal style. A fashion designer shows you how to incorporate funky and classy pieces into your wardrobe.

How To: Install an Off-the-Shelf Hard Drive in an Xbox 360 (Get 10x the GB for Your Money)

Since the day of the Xbox 360 release, storage space for the device has been overpriced beyond belief. OEM 250GB HDD models still cost $110 USD! A 250GB hard drive should not destroy my wallet, Microsoft. Storage space, especially on HDDs, is cheap. You can buy a removable 2TB external for only $100 USD, so it's a little beyond my comprehension to see how they calculate their MSRP to yield such a large profit. On the other hand, Xbox 360 had very impressive hardware specs back in the day, equ...

How To: Format a memory card using a card reader and a Windows PC

Sometimes it's necessary to format your memory card in your mobile phone or digital camera, just like you need to format a hard drive, because of virus problems or slower speeds. This video will show you the steps to formatting (or reformatting) the SD memory card for a cell phone, using a memory card reader. You'll also get details about a write protect error that could happen.

How To: Microwave corn on the cob

Corn is everywhere, and there are a large amount of methods for preparing it. If you're a corn on the cob kind of guy, you may be fascinated to know that a microwave is all you need to cook it. Bring the fresh taste of summer to the dinner table in a few short minutes by using your microwave to cook corn on the cob.

How To: Draw a cartoon dog on your computer

Using just the airbrush in MS Paint you can make a cartoon dog on your computer. Start off by making a circular shape using the airbrush, keep at it until it is dark and prominent and then color in the lower half of the circle, this is the nose. Now start making a line from the bottom of this circle downwards, slowly start curving the line at a ninety degrees angle. At the end of this line attach a semicircle to it so that it is perpendicular to the line. Above this line also make three small...