Posts filed under ‘Geeky Stuff’

My good friend Marissa’s Dad received an iPad 2 32gig with wifi as a donation and is raffling it away for our delight. Raffle tickets cost $2 and if you register with the same e-mail address you used to previously buy one of the bunnies (before May 1st of this year) you’ll get double the entries. Also up for grabs are Gears of War 3 Cole Thrashball Plushy codes and Noble 6 Helmet codes both for your xBox Live avatar. The raffle donation money is going to be split 50/50 between Marissa and Joseph’s special needs care. As a bonus, these donations will be corporate matched so the more tickets you buy, even more money goes to helping these two with their needs.

Head over to their blog in order to get in on the action. <-This whole thing is the link go now!

Remember that Mars table for Pinball FX 2 on the Xbox 360 that I review just a week or two ago? No? You should look for it, it’s quite good. Also, for the next two weeks you can win prizes by competing in a contest put on by the developer of the game, ZEN Studios. There are three official prizes for the top 3 scores and also random winners of prizes like: DVDs, Mars bars, and game codes. First place prize wins 4,000 MSP, a choice of Mars Attacks!, Martian Chronicles, or Total Recall Special Edition, and code for future ZEN Studios games. Second and third place get the latter two options but only garnish themselves 1,600 MSP.

So what do you say? Care to take the challenge? I know what I’ll be playing until May 13 when the contest ends.  Well ok, I will be playing the Gears of War 3 beta, but what I meant was that I will be playing the Mars table on Pinball FX 2. Yes, I will be playing Portal 2 as well, stop contradicting me OK?

Did you just do a spit take when you read the title? Any good Xbox Live math geek can tell you that the exchange rate is basically 80 MSP to every dollar. That makes this prize worth $250 dollars. Can you imagine winning this prize? I myself would go on a downloading binge starting with Halo: Reach from the On Demand selection. Signing up is really easy. Head over to EvilControllers.com and click the appropriately worded linkage there that subscribes you to their newsletter. Only entries received by June 1st are eligible.  10 random subscribers will be announced on June 3rd and while only 1 wins the grand prize, the others will receive a consolation prize. What have you got to loose from this? Why are you still reading this? I thought you would have clicked the link 5 sentences ago!

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to use an adjustable arm  to build a mic stand.  It wasn’t until Lifehacker posted a build from Ikea Hackers that I decided to go full bore.  The clincher was the fact that Lifehacker also posted a link to Instructables on how to build a suspension mount. The mounting is the reason I had not built one sooner, I just couldn’t figure out what to use to hold my Rock Band microphone in place.

After some quick perusing at a local Goodwill, I was able to find a nice lamp for $5 ready for me to modify. It’s not quite the same as what the article shows.  There are no springs holding this in place, only clamps at the joints to limit movement.  However the price was right and it was coming home with me.  Once in the car I started to pull the lamp off the mounting to see what I would need to put the shockmount in place.  The lamp had a basic plastic shaft clamped in place.

My next  stop was my local hardware store, after all I would need to at least get a pvc coupler.  I chose a basic white 3″ pvc coupler for $1.69.  Moving towards the Hillman section (Nuts and bolts for those with different suppliers, but Hillman is the best!) I set about trying to find a piece of threaded rod that was about the same size as the plastic shaft.  Bingo, 5/16″ threaded rod at 2″ in length is a perfect fit.  Added to this I purchased: 1 wing nut, 1 stop nut, 1 washer, and 1 lock washer.  My idea was to simply drill a hole in the pvc, put a stop nut on the inside along with a washer and then use a lock washer and wing nut on the outside to hold it in place.

Following the instructable, I cut four notches across the top and bottom of the pvc, and then following my own steps, I drilled a hold slightly off to the back of the pvc in between where two notches would be.  This way I could account for the weight of the microphone and for the path of the binders.  After the notches were set, I raided my fiancee’s drawer to steal 4 black hair binders and put them in place to make sure the depth of the notches was enough to hold them in place.  Success!  Nobody likes the white color of pvc, so I took the piece outside (now free of burrs and sitckers) and coated it with a nice black coat of H20 spray paint. (I find the product best for spraying on plastics.) This was probably the longest part of the build as the paint takes about an hour until it can be handled.

Now for the results, the arm looks and works great.  I’ve placed it on a cheap riser I use for my monitors, and it seems to hold in place nicely.  I’m able to lower it and pull it out far enough to be able to sit comfortably while talking into the mic.  Now all I need is a mic cover to dampen breathing noises (I was told an athletic sock works perfectly and have tested it during the 20 Sides of Nerd podcast I was on.)  so I might have to make something that fits in with the arm, both space wise and color wise.

So what do you think?  This is a sub $8 adjustable mic stand fit for podcasters everywhere.  Also, it just happens to be Ikea free, but if you need to; Ikea has an adjustable lamp for $8 and Walmart Online has one for $14.  Best of all, I no longer need to lean really far in speak into the mic while it is taped to my desk lamp!

Our good friend Marrisa’s Dad of MarrissasBunny.com started up a podcast.  Since his guests who were attending PAX ended up partying instead of podcasting, I was asked to fill in.  We covered a wide range of topics including a People’s Court case involving a Wii modder, the Halo Defiant map pack, and more.  Head over to Marissa’s Bunny to get the podcast. Also, I go by my pseudonym snorkle256; I hope it doesn’t confuse anyone.

Need we say more?

[kleargear via LaughingSquid]

Here are just a few more quick links that you might enjoy:

• Need to conceal the door to your secret lair, or simply want to build a sweet light switch? Check out this Batman-inspired hidden light switch!
• Looking for a unique gift for that Nintendo fanboy (or girl) in your life? Check out this SNES controller belt buckle that can record and play back sound.
• Did you forget it was Valentine’s Day? Do you need a last minute gift? Compose a song for your loved one over at Tellart’s web site, then send him/her the video of it being performed. Who said I never gave you anything cool?

Be sure to Digg ‘em if you like ‘em!

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. It’s a time to celebrate romance! While some choose to do this by watching schmaltzy movies or listening to silly love songs, I like to celebrate by playing games featuring my favorite couples in the world of gaming. All of these couples are endearing for different reasons and make me smile whenever I come across them. So, in no particular order and in honor of V-Day, these are my favorite couples in video games.

Read the rest of this entry »

As most of you are likely not aware, I also write for Hack-a-Day. Today I posted two items that will likely interest a good portion of our audience.

The first is an NES hack that allows for the system to “play itself” and use a speed-run script of sorts to beat Super Mario Brothers autonomously.

The second is a video of a thermic lance made from spaghetti. (Don’t worry about Googling to see what a thermic lance is, just click it)

That’s all, just a pair of time wasters to round out your Friday afternoon. Enjoy!

If you’re like me you’ve been keeping abreast of the recent developments regarding the fail0verflow team’s reverse engineering of Sony’s root signature key. This feat allows the generation of signed homebrew code which can run natively on the PS3 without the need for an existing jailbreak which bypasses the signature check. However, beyond the implications of this feat how did the fail0verflow team accomplish the impossible task of reverse engineering a private key from publicly available data? The answer lies in Sony’s botched implementation of Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).

All code which executes on the PS3 requires a valid signature in order for the hardware to allow its execution. In the case of SELF (Signed Executable and Linkable Format) executable files Sony requires a signature within the file to be present which is an ECDSA signature of the file’s header utilizing Sony’s root signing key as one of the private variables. Sony’s crucial mistake comes in their implementation of the ECDSA algorithm which requires that all signatures be calculated with some unique random number k. Instead Sony used a fixed value for k across all of their application signatures which in turn has rendered the ECDSA algorithm effectively useless.

In the case of ECDSA when the random seed k is constant across more than one signature ECDSA hashing function can be solved for the private key d in the form d = (s*k – z) / r where s, z, and r are either publicly known values or are calculated as part of the ECDSA algorithm from publicly known values.

With the private key d now known SELFs may be generated which pass the security validation on the PS3 hardware and may run as native code without restriction. Furthermore, with this method duplicated across all levels of the PS3′s security layer less scrupulous members of the community may use the same method to trivially generate the private signing keys for game encryption, firmware validation, and even the system’s bootloader.

So with PS3 custom firmwares and native homebrew already starting to show up where does Sony go from here? Only time will tell. However, looking back you can say that you fully understand how it all began.

Now you know!


[Thanks to Armin Tamzarian]