Projects involving Conway’s Game of Life and utilizing a Nokia 3310 screen are quite popular with electronics hobbyists. [Droky] put these two together and went one step further by adding capacitive sensors to control the Game of Life. His work is a great example of how to use the Atmel QTouch capacitive sensor (QT100a datasheet). This chip does the heavy lifting that we’ve seen in other touch sensitive solutions. It operates from 2V-5.5V, requires only three capacitors and a resistor, has a one pin active high output, and sells for around $1 in low quantities. One thing [Droky] overlooked…

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It appears that Social Hour, one of the few ad networks to be completely banned from the Facebook platform, has now relaunched under a new name: Dizzy Networks. According to one source, Social Hour had been looking for a new face for the company and according to the company’s website, they hired Jeremy Olsson, who was previously the Director of Performance Marketing for RockYou. While the company is still focused on trying to convert IQ quizzes, it doesn’t appear as though Dizzy Networks is running as aggressive of advertisements this time around.

It was only a matter of time before…

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Thanks to the technology available nowadays, you can instantly discover the full name, address and even background information about anyone by having only their phone number. This is done by using a “reverse cell phone search” – let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
As you might imagine, this type of service will usually cost a few bucks, but there is a way to get the same information for free.
With the phone number you want to get details about, go to Google and type in the number. Use the following format: “555-555-5555″ (make sure to include…

Many people receive phone calls from numbers they don’t recognize. In some cases we want to contact the person that called us. Sometimes we want to get the details about the caller so we can prevent receiving future phone calls from them.
There is an innumerable amount of reasons why you would want to find out what the caller’s identity is. In that case all you need is a simple reverse phone look up site that will help you get the required information.
So what are some of the reasons to run a reverse phone lookup?
With the help of…

We’ve covered this sort of thing before, but there is something to be said for the simplicity of this tiny GSM alarm system by [trax]. The alarm system is designed to send the owner a text message when a sensor is triggered. This alarm only works with Siemens phones, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find one.  The alarm is configured via a dip switch on the board and can also be armed and disarmed by text. The brains of this system is a PIC16F84A. The code and schematics are included at the bottom of the page.
[Thanks…

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Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid | Publishing Perspectives
An interesting read from my Perspective. You may not find this one very interesting unless you plan on writing something.
(tags: books publishing)

Cisco IOS hints and tricks: Disable flapping BGP neighbors
There are also some links at the bottom of this article that are related to other aspects of BGP. If you are one of my BGP students you should find them useful.
(tags: bgp ccie-r&s ascolta)

Related posts:links for 2009-07-10 How to edit the hosts file in Mac OS…links for 2009-07-29 CCIE Blog » L2 Tunneling…

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iFixit has done a tear down on the symbolic do-it-yourself Espresso machine, the Starbucks Barista. Believe it or not, there is not a single circuit board in the works. There doesn’t seem to be much to the Barista; A few switches, some solenoids, a heater, and one way spring valve among other things. The assembly of the device is very simple. It is noted that in a pinch it may be torn down with a pair of pliers and washer; in place of a flat head screw driver. We have pondered the possibilities of this machine numerous times, while enjoying…

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It’s been a few days since I’ve had a real post, although I have added some comments into the link posts that I’ve added.  If you haven’t noticed I just installed a new toolbar on the bottom of the site for your reading enjoyment.  If you find something you like you can easly share it now.
As for me, it has been crazy.  At one point in time I had 13 people in my house.  Now that all the visitors are gone and things are settled down I am getting back into the swing of things.  I’ve done some light…