Does your camera’s focal range not have the chops to take quality close-ups? Why make things complicated? Just tape on a lens from a pair of dollar store reading glasses. Sean Lee shared this hack on Make: Projects, and posted impressive before and after shots, especially for a paltry 50 cents.

(Via Hackszine.com.)

The two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, built the Apple brand on its synergy between hardware and software. 25 years on, you pay a premium for that.

It’s £599 for the cheapest Mac Mini. £1999 for an entry level Mac Pro. But since 2006, new Macs have had a very similar internal architecture to Windows PCs. The same Intel CPUs, the same Nvidia graphics.

Since then, people have been hacking together Macs in their bedrooms. They call them Hackintoshes; PCs that run OS X for a fraction of the price of a brand new Mac. My aim was build the cheapest, usable Hackintosh possible.

Basic hardware configuration

Forget all about bells and whistles like Blu-Ray and 5.1 surround sound. I wanted to get a basic system up and running with the barest of necessities.

I needed to choose a motherboard and compatible CPU, DVD drive, a SATA hard drive, 2GB of RAM and a video card. All were picked to fit nicely into the ATX case of my choice and most of the components were bought on eBay. This was my build:

Case: GMC R-3 Corona with built in 350 watt PSU
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad q8200 running at 2.33GHz
Heatsink and Fan: Intel Socket 775 Heatsink & Fan for Core 2 Quad
RAM: 1 x 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 Memory module
Hard Drive: 3.5 inch Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA
DVD-R: Pioneer DVR-S18L
Video: Gigabyte nVidia 8400 GS

MOBO: The Gigabyte G31M-ES2L, a low cost motherboard chosen for the high level of success reported by other Hackintosh builders

The final damage? After adding in a couple of fans, some thermal paste and a USB Wi-Fi dongle, £303.40.

When you consider that an entry level Mac Mini packs a similar wallop, but comes in at £599, that’s a bit of a bargain. You can see the full build cost as a spreadsheet here.

There were other things I had to take into consideration, though. I had to design the machine, I had to put it together and then I had turn it into a Mac…

CASE STUDY: The ATX case I chose shows you what the final Hackintosh looks like. It’s not quite a Mac Pro…

Compatible hardware

Thank ye olde Gods for the OSx86 Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCLs). In fact, thank them for the entire OSx86 Wiki – a must bookmark for wannabe Hackintosh builders. I picked out the components for my build based on the experiences posted there, cross checking with the HCLs for potential pitfalls.

CHECKLIST: It’s essential you check drives, cards and motherboards against OSx86 Hardware Compatibilty Lists, or your custom Mac project may never get off the ground

Another way to make sure your system will run OS X is to use someone else’s tried and tested build. At the time of writing, the build I’ve listed above is running Snow Leopard 10.6.4 and – for the most part – it works. There are many other Hackintosh build guides available, though. Here are some other build resources I’d recommend taking a look at:

Insanely Mac is the community flipside of OSx86 with a message board where users exchange advice. They also post full hardware build details, which is very handy if you don’t know where to start. Check out the Tutorials section.

Then there are a series of builds at tonymacx86. They’re all centred around Gigabyte P55 series motherboards. tonymacx86.jpeg – tonymacx86 Blog started as a document of the author’s specific build. Now it’s a general resource for Intel based custom Mac projects. Handily, Tony also provides downloads for boot tools and an OS X installer. More on those in a moment.

Some guides will tell you that building your own Mac is legally grey. It’s not grey at all. Apple’s OS X license says quite explicitly:

‘You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so.’

We’re unaware of any individual case where Apple has enforced this condition – though it has pursued companies who make Mac clones for profit vigorously. As a homebrew Mac maker the licensing conditions practically mean that you’re on your own if things go wrong. And things quite possibly could go wrong.

OS: The Snow Leopard upgrade disk costs just £25. If you’re planning on installing Snow Leopard on more than one machine, you should purchase the five-license Family Pack

Having got the warning out of the way, there are several fairly reliable methods for getting OS X to run on PC hardware. Let’s have a look at two boot loaders that’ll do the job. The first is the version I used in my build, iBoot and MultiBeast. Briefly, you’ll need a PC built using OSx86 compatible hardware, a legitimate, retail copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iBoot and MultiBeast.

iBoot is a ready to burn CD ISO that will enable your PC to load Chameleon, a boot loader for Mac OS X. You see, Mac OS X was specifically designed to run on Apple hardware only. Chameleon fools your OS X retail disc into thinking that it’s being installed on a Mac. There are full instructions at tonymacx86 which I heartily recommend you follow to the letter, but briefly the process should be:

1. Tweak the target machine’s BIOS settings so it boots from CD
2. Reboot your computer using the iBoot disk
3. Eject iBoot and insert the Snow Leopard Retail disk when prompted
4. Format your hard drive using Apple’s built in Disk Utility
5. Install Mac OS X
6. Reboot your computer using the iBoot disk, again
7. Launch OS X on your homebrew Mac…

BIOS: You’ll need to set your CD drive as a primary boot device and enable AHCI as the SATA/Raid controller type – at least. See full instructions for your chosen boot loader

The second method I’d recommend uses a tool called MyHack. Again, there are full and comprehensive instructions for getting OS X up and running on a custom built PC at MyHack’s site. The method is nearly identical, except that MyHack boots from a USB drive, meaning that there’s no need to swap CDs. The disadvantage is that you’ll need a Mac to prepare the flash drive.

Post install

When I built my Hackintosh, there were still some tweaks to make after the ‘Welcome to Mac’ intro had played. I ran Apple Software Update and downloaded upgrades to the system. In my case it was the combo update to 10.6.4.

When that had finished and been applied, I tested the Mac/PC to see what was working and what wasn’t. The sound ports, video settings and Ethernet got a work out. I tried each USB port in turn. My careful planning has worked out. USB and ethernet were fine on the Gigabyte board – but I needed to install drivers for audio and video to get them working properly.

MULTIBEAST: MultiBeast offeres two types of post-installation. You can enable hardware level compatibility using a custom DSDT file and add support for installed peripherals on a driver by driver basis

That’s where MultiBeast came in. It’s a combination boot sector creation tool and driver installation application. I fired it up on my Hackintosh and was able to select the additional drivers – called ‘kexts’ – I needed, writing them to the local disk.

MyHack has a similar post-installation function, enabling you to write drivers direct to your Hackintosh drive. Crucially, both tools add their boot loader to your local drive, so there’s no longer any need to boot from CD or USB stick.

Finally, the moment of truth. I took out the iBoot disk and restarted the machine. It launched into OS X with sound working correctly, running in the native resolution of my Nvidia graphics card.

SUCCESS: If all goes well, this is the screen you’ll see when you finally reboot your Hackintosh. If not, it’s best to retrace your steps and start again

After all that, did I end up with a suitable substitute for an Mac Mini or even a Mac Pro?

There are some definite cons. The finished machine doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Apple’s range of computers. Sleep doesn’t work properly and I’ve yet to find a successful workaround for that. And every time I apply new, official updates, my heart pounds in mouth. It’s not an undertaking for casual users.

What I do have is a machine that effortlessly copes with video editing, 3D graphics and office applications. It runs creative tools like Photoshop and games like Left 4 Dead 2 without any problems, on Mac OS X.

And all it cost was £300 and a couple of my weekends. Can’t be bad.

”

(Via TechRadar: All latest feeds.)

Gear Thieves Will Think Twice

New products day or what?!

Obviously spinning off the bike lock thing ROCKLOCK is a terrific idea that is waaaay overdue!

Okay, so this is not gonna stop seasoned criminals from haulin’ off your gear, BUT I kinda think this will keep some ‘honest’ people honest– which is all locks do, and prevent many of those quick phantom, would-be heists that have been known to occur between sets.

AND… if you somehow manage to lose those keys during a break, ROCKLOCK will also double as the capo you can’t lose;)))

(Via Strat-O-Blogster Guitar Blog.)

Roger Mayer was an acoustic engineer for the British Navy who in the late 1960s, through his pal Jimmy Page, became the go-to electronic effects whiz for Jimmy Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, and a bunch of other innovative musicians. For Hendrix, he built the Octavia, a pedal that doubled the input pitch an octave higher or lower and, natch, added fuzz. I love the 1968 photo above of Mayer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mayer is still in the game, making and selling guitar effects pedals via his site here. And for an interview with Mayer, check out the video below.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Last month, Twitter unveiled a total site redesign. The new Twitter homepage is robust, more like a stand-alone application, and offers support for multimedia, keyboard shortcuts, and easy access to various types of content.

The new design also has different dimensions (originally based on the golden ratio) and treats backgrounds in a slightly different way. The result is that a carefully customized Twitter background that looked fantastic on the old Twitter, may not work so well with the new design. In many cases, the best solution is to create a new color scheme or background design to fit into the new parameters.

As more and more users are gaining access to the new Twitter, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the area of Twitter customizations. Fortunately, Twitter now offers some fantastic theming tools to make the process less of a chore, and we’ve created some Photoshop (PSD) files mapped to the dimensions of the new Twitter to help give you a head start.

Plan Your Layout

The new Twitter utilizes a fluid layout, meaning that the browser window or screen resolution can impact the width of some of the columns, as well as how much of the background image is visible.

Check out this image that we created to show off the layout of the new Twitter. Although resized to fit this blog post, this screenshot was originally taken at a resolution of about 1440 pixels wide.

There are a few points you need to keep in mind when designing or altering your Twitter background to fit into the new site:

• The new design has a constant top toolbar that is 40 pixels tall and spans the entire length of the web page. For most designs, this shouldn’t interfere with any of your elements, but be aware that this bar is always there. Also note that there is a 20 pixel tall space between the toolbar and the start of the two columns.
• The spacing to the right and left of the columns is fluid and will vary based on the resolution and size of the browser window. The spacing is also significantly reduced from the previous design. As an example, in a 1280×800 browsing window, in the old design, there were approximately 251 pixels on each side of the Twitter columns. On the new design, that is reduced to 112 and 113 pixels respectively.
• The Twitter sidebar on the right is now semi-opaque. The opacity is about 75%, which means that depending on what color you choose and the color or style of your background image, that can impact readability.
• The timeline column on the left is always 540 pixels in width, but the sidebar can vary. After a certain resolution (about 1130 pixels), it becomes fixed at 500 pixels wide, but on smaller screens or in smaller browser windows, it can be as small as 380 pixels.
• Because of the way the columns are now laid out, background images should probably only be tiled if they are patterns or seamless. Larger images are much better off transitioning to a solid color rather than repeating.

Use the Built-in Twitter Theme Tool

The excellent Themeleon tool from COLOURlovers has been updated for the new Twitter. You can access the tool by either going directly to the site or by selecting Themeleon from the sidebar in the Design section of the Twitter settings page.

You can login to Twitter in the app and customize your colors and backgrounds on the fly. The great thing about the tool is that until you hit ‘save,’ none of the changes take effect. Think of this as a great way to test out color combinations and various motifs.

COLOURlovers has provided a number of quality pre-built themes using backgrounds and designated color palettes, but you can upload your own background image and set your own color schemes. You can also browse the very large collection of COLOURlovers patterns and tiled background images. One of our favorite features of this tool is that if you use one of the pre-built patterns, you can apply a color scheme that will also change the color setup of that pattern.

COLOURlovers also has a ton of color palettes to choose from and to play with. If you’re already a COLOURlovers member, you can access your own palettes or palettes you follow or have marked as ‘loved.’ It’s a free community, and given the difficulty in actually discovering new color palettes in the theme creator, we recommend signing up so you can favorite your own schemes.

Find Your Perfect Palette

COLOURlovers is a great resource for color fans, but there are tons of other great resources on the web to get the perfect color combination.

We’ve written about some of our favorite web tools for working with color, but here are a few more:

• Color Hunter – This site offers up some palettes based on photographs uploaded on the site. You can also search through palettes and upload your own photograph to find the perfect palette.
• ColorCombos.com – This site has a great listing of user-generated color palettes and you can also test your combinations out to see how well they work together.
• PHOTOCOPA – PHOTOCOPA is another tool from COLOURlovers and it helps pick out the colors that are in an image. What’s great about this tool is that you can not only upload a photo, but you can also link or search for a photo from Flickr. Once you find your colors and create your palette, you can save it in your COLOURlovers library, which can then be accessed in the Themeleon tool.

Test Your Resolution

Because the new Twitter layout is fluid, how things look can vary based on the size of your browsing window. It’s a good idea to test how your background or color scheme looks at different screen sizes.

Fortunately, there are free extensions available for all the major browsers that make resizing your browser window a snap.

• Firesizer for Firefox – Firesizer is a simple add-on that shows up in the bottom status bar of the Firefox browser. Not only does it show you the current dimensions of your browser window, but right-clicking the resolution lets you select a pre-defined browser size. Your window will be resized as soon as you select your choice. You can customize the extension to add your own pre-set sizes.
• ResizeMe for Safari – ResizeMe lets you quickly change the size of your browser window. It works as a toolbar button and clicking the button can either auto-change the size to a selection of your choice or give you the option to select various sizes.
• Window Resizer for Chrome – This extension shows up in the Chrome toolbar. Clicking the button lets you select from a dropdown list of various browser sizes or device types. You can customize this listing. It’s got a great interface and is really easy to use.

Test it Out in Photoshop

Lots of designers like to manipulate their backgrounds or color schemes in Photoshop or other image editing programs. We understand. While there are plenty of PSD files created for the old Twitter layout, we had a hard time finding any good PSDs for the new Twitter.

Thus, we rolled up our sleeves and created this collection of PSD files. They are in resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900 and 1600×1200. If you need a different variation, let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do. The guides and layers are all editable so you can customize these files for your own uses.

You can download these files at http://drop.io/mashnewtwitter.

(Via Mashable!.)

Matt posted the steps he took to build a proper stompbox development platform -

Designing and building your own guitar effects is a great way to combine a passion for electronics and guitar.  However, when testing new designs, I found the fragile circuit on the solderless breadboard was difficult to connect to patch cords and control the potentiometers.

The answer was simple: build a guitar pedal just for prototyping!

A thoroughly sturdy design, including a custom cut/drilled & folded aluminum enclosure with standard hole sizes for swappable pots and switches. Check out the projects instructable for details.

More:

• FX pedal proto board MAX
• Guitar pedal prototyping kit

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

You’ve already forked out plenty for your iPhone or iPod touch, so why tax your wallet further by buying an expensive stand?

Whether you want to save money, keep your personal drain on the planet’s resources to a minimum, or are looking for a quick-fix solution at your desk, we’ve found five fantastic iPhone stand designs that require no more than everyday objects — and some MacGyver-style skills.

Have a look-see below at our homemade docks, then have a go at making your own and let us know the results in the comments box below!

1. The Paper Clip Stand

What you’ll need:

Overview:

This solution utilizes a large paper clip, cunningly straightened and then twisted to make an impromptu stand for your iDevice. Depending on how strong you are, you might need pliers to help manipulate the clip, but the principle is pretty darn simple — and pretty darn effective. Mods include wrapping a rubber band around the ‘legs’ to aid stability.

In the immortal words of MacGyver himself: ‘A paperclip can be a wondrous thing. More times than I can remember, one of these has gotten me out of a tight spot.’

MacGyver Rating: 5/5

2. The Cassette Case Stand

What you’ll need:

Overview:

We love that this takes (almost) obsolete tech and upcycles it into a useful object. You can use either a cassette case from an old camcorder tape, or an old audio tape (which, if you’re of a certain age, you’ve almost certainly got lying around at home).

Put the tape and the cardboard sleeve to one side, open the case, flip it around, and — presto! — a minimalist desk stand. To make it a super-stable solution in landscape, you might want to use a file to make a nice neat groove for the iPhone to better sit in.

This really works for us as an easy way to keep our iPhone out of calamity’s way on a desk surface.

MacGyver Rating: 4/5

3. The Pencil Stand

What you’ll need:

Overview:

This easel-esque stand can be created from five pencils and several rubber bands. It will require some dexterity to get the pencils in the right place, as you use the bands to hold it all together, and then a little more to get it to stand up straight. However, it is a strikingly simple design once made, and can be collapsed down to nothing again, should the occasion require.

Although this requires the most stuff to actually make, the Boy Scout-style binding process keeps it firmly in MacGyver territory.

MacGyver Rating: 4/5

4. The Sticky Tape Stand

What you’ll need:

Overview:

Perfect for those ‘I just want to catch ten minutes of [insert favorite show] while I eat lunch at my desk’ moments, this devilishly simple solution requires only a roll of sticky tape to work. Simply stick a bit of tape to the back of your iPhone or iPod touch — and voila! — your iBuddy is propped up at a nice angle while you consume both your lunch and choice of video-based media.

It’s not quite duct tape, but damn!

MacGyver Rating: 5/5

5. The Paper Stand

What you’ll need:

Overview:

The instructions call for the use of at least a 270 gsm paper or card stock, so assuming you have that, simply print out the template (available for both A4 and U.S. letter size paper), cut, fold, and faster than you can say ‘origami,’ you’ve got yourself a new dock.

And this one really is a dock (rather than just stand), as it includes space for the iPhone’s cord underneath. We would suggest that anyone not old enough to have a Facebook account should find a responsible adult to take care of the craft knife elements.

(Via Mashable!.)

I guess it’s true that there’s a first time for everything. After years of watching people doing presentations, I finally got to create my own.

I wanted my first time to be special, so I tried to find ways to make sure that mine was not going to be ‘just another boring presentation’. I noticed that most people paid too much attention to data and sacrificed the appearance. On the other hand, there are others who create a presentation that is too ‘flashy’ which distracts the audience from the real content.

The perfect combination would be to use related beautiful images to complement the content of the presentation. Then your audience can digest your content without getting bored.

Creating The Perfect Images

There are many ways to acquire perfect images that go along with the content of your presentation. You can create your own, or find and use somebody else’s.

If you are a good photographer with lots of stock photos, then the first option would not be a problem. But for those whose image capturing skills are below par, the easiest method to create your own image is to make the text itself as the image.

This is a trick often used by one of the greatest presenters out there: Steve Jobs.

The key is minimal use of text and extra time on tinkering with font properties and background. For example, I would like to present the statistic of blogs from Technorati. Some copy and paste routines would give me something like this:

To modify the data into text images, I cut out the fat and deleted most of the text. I also changed the written numbers with real numbers to add some drama.

Then I did a quick change of the font type, size and color using ‘Formatting Palette‘. I assigned white for the title and dark grey for the content.

You can also use the ‘Format – Font’ menu for more comprehensive options.

I added some shadow and reflection to spice things up a little bit.

Centered text is so static and boring, so I moved them around.

And the last step was changing the background using right click and ‘Format Background’

I chose a simple 90 degrees linear gradient color fill from dark to light to further emphasize the text.

I clicked ‘Apply’ and here’s what I came up with.

Be sure to add real life context to the presentation. Using the blog statistic example, I’d show my audience the stunning slides while saying something like this: ‘In 2009, Technorati said that there were more than 130,000,000 blogs out there. That’s as much as all Japanese people in the world.’

Adding Real Images

To take things a little bit further, you can also use real stock photo images. My favorite way to get free to use and free to modify photos is downloading them from Flickr. Just be sure to use the Creative Commons licensed ones.

To find photos within that category, you can use Flickr Advanced Search while ticking on the CC boxes.

Or you can use Quix and ‘fc’ command for faster results.

Use the downloaded image(s) for the background of your slide(s), and you can get something like this:

Using text images (and real images) is just one of the simple and easy tricks that will boost your presentation several levels above boring.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

Non-U.S. users frequently encounter the annoyance of geo-blocked content when trying to access popular sites like Hulu, but every now and then we feel the burn in the States, too. Reader hengehog details how to access BBC’s iPlayer from outside the U.K.More »

(Via Lifehacker.)

We’ve discussed numerous methods for making a cup from a glass bottle, but I don’t recall seeing anyone use the neck before. Brookelynn from CRAFT has us covered, though, with this guitar slide made from a wine bottle:

One interesting historical example of upcycled crafting is the bottleneck guitar- or as it is now widely known, slide guitar. The unique resonant sound of slide guitar was originally formed by playing with a glass bottleneck over one finger and running the slide up and down the strings. While the materials for making slides have evolved, bottles are still a popular choice of material. We were given one, and as it has been used over the years, the piece has developed some lovely scratches that give the glass beautiful character. Slideplayer.com has two great ideas for making your own, including a ‘Burning Twine’ method that sounds really cool (and drunkenly dangerous).

Read more

(Via MAKE Magazine.)