One of the projects at Collision that I forgot to mention was Andrew McPherson's compact Mac audio display hardware hack. He had opened up some old mac, a plus i think, and detached the deflection coil leads, and wired them to an external audio amplifier and tuner. When the tuner was turned on and the amp turned up, it drove the deflection coils with the voltage of the music. When the mac was switched on, it still provided a video signal to the electron beam gun which created a bright spot of light that moved around the screen in a chaotic squiggly pattern based on the audio signal. Very cool.
Over the past few days, he and I have been sending a lot of email back and forth about video hardware hacks and compact macs and other projects we'd like to try. I'm thinking of making a working oscilloscope out of one of those mac SE/30s I have sitting in my office, and he's trying to make a NTSC converter so that he can watch TV on his. We may join forces and build some really cool stuff.
In the meantime, I've got a second mac SE/30 and I think I'm going to build a fishtank out of it.
What a difference a free afternoon makes. Went to home depot with luka to get fishtank supplies. They had no 1/4" acrylic, so I just got a propane torch and will get the plexiglass elsewhere later. I took my dremel in to my office and field-stripped one of my Mac SE/30s down to the empty case. Then I spent several hours grinding off all the little plastic nubby bits that would prevent the acrylic from being as big as possible.
The next step is to actually build the tank, so it's off to Mr. Plastic I go as soon as I can find someone who wants to take me there. Probably won't happen before the big event on tuesday, which means it won't happen for at least a couple weeks. Damn.
Watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again today with Tong and Tonia as part of the Chinese new year celebration. The projectionist was terrible, sound was off, and the screen was small. It's startling how much a technically bad theater can screw up a great movie.
Now it's time to go cheer for Jamie, Dan, Heemin, & pals on their inagural night.
