Alice Wang’s tyrant makes waking up a little more important… via Engadget.

This alarm clock steals your mobile phone and randomly shuffles through your contact list and calls someone every three minutes after the desired wake up time.

This looks like a concept piece, but you could actually build one of these in few ways… Bluetooth snarf a phonebook, or just allow contacts to be transfered, use the phone SIM and GSM module, or connect up with a web service that shares your contacts with your phone and dial’em up via Skype.

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Jason writes -

Sebastian Tomczak has been playing around with controlling VGA output from an Arduino. Using Max/MSP to process audio and send data to the Arduino and a standard VGA output to send sync data to the monitor, he’s been able to put together some cool video effects.

You can grab the Max patch and Arduino code from Sebastian’s post. I dig the effect - it reminds me of the cool C64 demos kids used to make.

More:


Arduino TV.

Arduino @ The Maker Shed store.

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Tinselman had a link to these wonderfully confusing images. Nothing is actually moving on the screen - they work if you print them out, too. Here’s a short explanation of the peripheral drift illusion. And I found this article on the science of optical illusions.

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Ah, a blast from the video storage past. The now dead VHS tape gets remixed as a 4 port USB hub thanks to a clever maker who even decided to use the incoming power line from the USB port to create this glowing blue backlight. So next time you are thinking of dumping your old tapes, think again and turn them into something your friends will envy.

Glowing video tape USB hub

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Peter Kirn of createdigitalmusic/createdigitalmotion is curating the A/V performance lineup @ the soon-to-be-now Hackers On Planet Earth conference -

live music:

• Ezekiel Honig (Anticipate/Microcosm founder) explores warmth in electro-acoustic music “into a comfortable space between techno, house and ambient”

• Ben Neill, “mad scientist of dancefloor jazz” (CMJ Magazine) continues to evolve live music with his newly-redesigned, original mutantrumpet
• Michael Una plays custom digital, acoustic, and circuit-bent instruments, with a robot drummer, for rhythmic, textured, and melodic musical experiences
• Todd Thille makes sounds from the electromagnetic signals of potted plants
• Guitarist Animalstyle plays through home-built 8-bit fuzz pedals and Game Boy foot controllers
• Roger Tsai DJs with hand gestures using his original digital gloves “Groovy Hand”
• Peter Kirn balances musical styles and Wii balance boards with a live music and keys set and vocal strains pulled from his Gmail spam folder

plus live visuals:

• Joshue Ott creates live visuals with his homemade superDraw generative illustration tool

• Paris and Don Miller (No Carrier) create glitchy, lo-fi visuals from custom-created 8-bit visual software on Nintendo and Commodore systems
• vade spins out live hacker imagery and sniffs data packets in 3D
• Bill Jones creates live cinematic worlds inspired by sci-fi noir

Where: The Hotel Pennsylvania, New York City (map); head to the main door, on your left is the entrance to Penn Pavilion and you should see a table there.
When: Friday, July 18 2008 - performances run 11pm - 2am
Cost: US$10 at the door. First come, first served. (free if you have a conference badge)

More info and relevant media - We Are Hacks: Music and Visual Performance at HOPE, NYC - Preview

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