Free applications like UNetbootin let you make a normal USB drive into a bootable device. If you just want to mount the image on a Windows computer try Virtual CloneDrive. Linux and Mac OS X can mount ISO images natively. With the IsoStick, no need to install any software.  You can support the project or find out more information by visiting their Kickstarter page.

Kickstarter Project Video

[UPDATE] Thanks to Reddit user Wavern for pointing out the awesome power of UNetbootin.

This logic analyzer makes me want to revisit the portable game console project. I could include the same functionality and add capture/playback type features.

This is a great debugging tool to have in your arsenal. If you’re in the market for a logic analyzer and don’t want to go the DIY route check out the Saleae Logic. You can pick one up for only $150.

Image from serasidis.gr

Stanford also offers online courses for free. They have several computer science related courses including machine learning, natural language processing, and game theory.

from MikeOS.berlios.de

Operating systems have always fascinated me. It’s something I’ve always wanted to make from scratch. Being able to control computer hardware at the lowest level. While looking up how to make my own I’ve stumbled on a few others have made. These OSes bring me back to the days of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1

Here are some impressive operating systems made by hobbyist. They’ll give you an idea of what is required if you plan make your own. There are a variety of operating systems to try from 16 to 64-bit.  You can download and burn them to a CD or copy them to a floppy.

• MikeOS  – A well documented 16-bit single-task operating system. A great learning tool for students to understand OS. It contains more than 60 system calls and comes with several programs like hangman, draw, and a memory editor. MikeOS also contains a BASIC interpretor so not everything has to be in assembly. Browse through their website, you’ll find comprehensive manuals on how to develop programs for the OS.
• DexOS – A 32-bit operating system with a rather advanced GUI. Does not come with as much documentation as MikeOS, but if you try the documentation you can see where most of their time was spent. Whats impressive are the fireworks and screensaver applications built in. You could have told me it was using Direct X or OpenGL and I’d believe it.
• MenuetOS  – Both 32 and 64 bit version of the operating system is one the most advanced yet. It’s has a networking stack and video playback. However the 64 bit version is closed source.
• OSDev.org – Not an operating system but a resource for OS developers. It has information on how to task schedulers work, file systems, and dealing with interrupts.  A great place to start if you want to make your own operating system.

If you’re planning to make your own OS, I must be the bearer of bad news. It requires a lot of time and patience. It’s not something that can be done in a weekend. In a high level language, we take things for granted. Functions like fopen or fwrite won’t work without the proper system calls provided by the OS. These would have to be written by you. Did I mention you need to know assembly?

If that isn’t discouraging and you invite the challenge, the best place to start is with a bootloader. This is a small program called by the BIOS to find the operating system. How to write your own operating system was written by Mike Saunders, the same gentleman behind MikeOS. Best of luck! I’d like to see what you come up with.

Unfortunately, they are no longer taking orders for the mixer, but their website has all the files you’d need to make your own.

With scrap parts, I created a Connect Four® style game using an mbed microcontroller, a cellphone LCD, and a few buttons. The circuit itself is rather easy and the Nokia LCD library is readily available online. With the right parts and two hours you can get this running on a breadboard. With a little more time, you can solder it on a RadioShack perfboard. This is a fun project that a novice can attempt. It will give them a greater understanding of serial communication and how LCDs work.

My fascination with gaming devices stems from a game console (mbedGC) some friends and I created last year. The game console connected to a regular TV and this is using a cellphone LCD screen. The LCD used connects with serial and the advantage is when graphics are drawn on the screen they stay there until overwritten. It does not need to be refreshed like a TV does. The mbedGC has to use a framebuffer that stores the pixels it wants to display to the screen and constantly refreshes the TV. This wastes time and memory. The LCD acts like a framebuffer storing the pixels for you.

The Circuit

As is, the mbedPG is a very simple device. The microcontroller connects to the Nokia LCD via serial and there are 3 buttons with pull-up resistors. When one of the buttons are pressed, it goes from HIGH to LOW state and triggers a hardware interrupt. It is important to remember both the Nokia LCD and mbed work on 3.3V logic. If you accidentally connect it to 5V you could damage both devices. The LED backlight requires 5V to work properly. It’s important to put a resistor in series with the LED to not burn it out.

Software

The code is available here.

The software utilizes the Nokia LCD Library created by Simon Ford. The Bresenham circle and line algorithms used were from easy.Filter and RosettaCode.

Demo Video

Conclusion

This is a great platform because of its simplicity. It would be great to see more games developed for it like Snake, Tetris, and Brick Breaker. If you make your own let me know! It would be great to see what the community comes up with.

Computer technicians use a wide range of software to get the job done. Some programs make installing programs quicker and others help find viruses/malware. Here are some no nonsense applications that work great and will make your life easier.

Ninite (Win & Linux)

This is the latest program in my arsenal. It’s a package manager that automatically installs the latest programs like Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, Quicktime, Java, Flash, CutePDF, and Skype for free. You just go to the Ninite website, choose the programs you’d like to install and download the custom install file. When you run the small file it will query the Ninite server for the latest programs you’ve requested. All the programs are installed silently. Pesky license agreements are “accepted” and toolbars are never installed. Give it a few minutes and done.

The free version works very well. They offer an Updater version that runs in the background keeping the programs up-to-date and a Pro version that enables you to manage multiple computers.

DirStat (Win, Linux, & Mac)

Is you hard drive almost full and don’t know why? Instead of going file by file looking for the culprit try this nifty tool. It will scan your hard drive and compare files, finding the fattest ones. Once the scans done, it will display a grid of blocks. The larger the block the bigger the file. Use caution, some of the larger files may be important system files. Delete those and your computer may no longer boot.

There is a flavor for every operating system:

• WinDirStat (Windows)
• KDirStat (Linux)
• Disk Inventory X (Mac)

Portable Apps

These applications do not require installation and can run off of USB flash drives, portable hard drives, iPods and network drives. Portable Apps has a collection of popular programs like Firefox, PuTTY, Notepad++, and even a web server (XAMPP). They can all be downloaded from the PortableApps website and saved on your portable device.

These apps come in handy when diagnosing an infected computer. The portable version of Spybot S&D will scan for malware just like the original but it runs right from your portable drive. At times, Internet Explorer is corrupt and you still need to get on the internet. With a portable version of Firefox that won’t stop you.

Portable Apps can be very handy. If your at school or work and your prohibited from installing programs try this out.

Other Noteworthy Programs

• CCleaner – Cleans your computers from cookies, temporary files, straggling install files, and unused registry entries. (Windows Only)
• HouseCall – Free online antivirus from Trend Micro. (Windows Only)
• HijackThis – Another free product from Trend Micro. This will give you a detailed report of operating system and browser settings. This will help you determine if the computer is infected with malware. (Windows Only)

December 21, 2012 is just around the corner. A supposed cataclysmic event is to happen that day. Could doomsday be triggered by a shift in the magnetic poles, or perhaps some unstoppable airborne virus? Who knows! Either way you have to ask yourself, “Am I ready?” If the apocalypse happens in 2012 you don’t want to be caught with your pants down. You’ll need to be prepared. First things first, watch all the apocalyptic and zombie movies ever made. Including the foreign ones! You don’t want to be one of the few humans left not knowing what to do.

You’ve watched the movies and now you must prepare for the worst. You’re going to need a bunker deep inside a mountain, preferably at high elevation – if it’s not magnetic poles shifting it will be global warming that takes us out. You will need some form of communication. That pwned iPhone just won’t do. Sure it’s unlocked for use on any service provider, but on doomsday, it’s more than likely that you won’t be getting any reception. That’s why it’s good to have an amateur radio! Many ham radios act like scanners. So you can listen to different frequencies like airband, police, fire & rescue, CB, GMRS, FRS, shortwave, AM, FM, amateur bands and your local Mickie D’s drive-thru. Look for “wide receive” feature.

To prepare to communicate after doomsday you’re going to need to practice and for that you’ll need to get an amateur radio license. In the US, there are three types of license classes: Technical, General, and Extra. Technical class license is first one you get and has the most restriction on amateur bands. Extra class license has the least restrictions. They no longer test for Morse code. Take one, two, or all three exams for only $14. Go to ARRL.org to see when they are having exams in your area.

Many local amateur radio clubs in the US have an annual Field Day. It’s usually the last weekend of June. Field Day gives hams an opportunity to go outside and test out their emergency radio equipment. Just imagine thousands of people across the country setting up a makeshift communications infrastructure to prepare themselves for an actual emergency. Many times it’s amateur radio operators that are the first to get on the air and coordinate the relief effort. Look up ARES or RACES for more info.

Getting a scanner may not be good enough. Consider getting a software-defined radio. It’s a type of radio that can be connected to your computer via USB. With the help of GNU Radio, you can write custom code to do spectrum analyzing, modulation/demodulation, filters, and packet sniffing. Maybe after doomsday the Internet is severely crippled. Transatlantic telecommunication cables may very well be destroyed. Once human tribes have been established, you and other radio operators can set up bulletin board system (BBS) style nets with the help of software-defined radios.

It’s more than likely that doomsday is not December 21, 2012, but if it is and you got a ham radio consider yourself covered (at least on the communication side.) For the rest of the survival guide I suggest watching those movies.

For more info on amateur radio checkout: [link removed]

Shout outs: Ed, BSoDTV, and the HACKMIAMI crew!

This article, “Post-Apocalyptic Communications,” was originally published in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly (Autumn 2009). Since Dec 21, 2012 is just around the corner I’ve re-released this article to help you prepare. You can view the scanned version of the article here.

Jan 12 14:58:19 jimmy com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[208] (com.facebook.videochat.jim.updater[32112]): Tried to setup shared memory more than once

After some googling, I found I wasn’t the only one concerned with this. What Hunter Ford found was interesting, the Facebook plug-in not only updates, as the name suggests, but it’s also harvesting data and sending it back to Facebook. What data does it collect? Running the updater in a terminal window you can see what it’s doing. It is collecting the version number of your operating system and what applications you are running. You can run the updater yourself using the command below. (You may need to adjust it according the to the version you have installed).

/usr/bin/java -cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Facebook/video/1.0.0.8976/FacebookUpdate.jar FacebookUpdate com.facebook.peep 1.0.0.8976

View the code and you’ll see it runs the following commands:

• ps -ceo comm=tasks
  Gets the names of currently running processes
• sw_vers -productVersion
  Gets the version of your operating system
• dscl . -read $HOME HomeDirectory
  Directory service command (dscl) is a very powerful tool. It can be used to find all kinds of information about your user account including username, password (shadow file) and user’s avatar. In this application is only querying what the home directory of a user is.

The true reason for having this updater maybe benevolent. It is able to self update without your knowledge. Code can be introduced to your computer that harvest more data than it already is. Maybe Facebook is a project funded by the CIA.

Hey Facebook! If I install one of your applications, ask me if I want to update it like Adobe does. Don’t do it with a background process automatically.