Hack-a-day has a post on the replica of the Apollo Mission Computer.

I often mention this project in my workshops, but the links have seemed dead for a while.

Usually it’s brought up up as an example of universal logic elements. NAND and NOR functions can be used as universal logic gates- you can implement any logic function using only NAND gates, or only NOR gates.

Your ability to do so is limited only by your skill, patience, and sanity.

NOR gates were used in the replica, thousands of them.

Filed under: misc hacks, daily

[Cliff Miller] pointed out this incredible project from 2004. [John Pultorak]’s journey began in late 2000 when he decided to build a 60’s or 70’s era minicomputer. While gathering technical documentation, he found some interesting information on the Apollo Guidance Computer and felt that was the way to go. The AGC was the first integrated circuit computer ever built. Designed by MIT in 1964 it was constructed from ~5000 ICs, almost all 3-input NOR gates. [John]’s version uses late 1960’s 74LS TTL logic which gains him a 10 to 1 reduction in the number of ICs. A good thing when you have to do ~15K wirewrap connections. He also used flipflops and register chips instead of building everything from NOR gates. [John] essentially built the AGC three times: First, he coded a simulator in C++. Then, he imported the logic design into CircuitMaker to verify that it would actually work. Finally, he built the 3 by 5foot machine. He’s provided an amazing amount of documentation for anyone that wants to explore this device and the overview alone is well worth a look.

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Originally from Hack a Day by Eliot Phillips
reBlogged by InterAccess to Geekery – DIY

Tom Ward, whose work will appear in The Best of Instructables book we’re currently editing, has just posted an awesome new “extreme business card.” It uses a matrix of 5×15 0603 LEDs driven by a PIC16F57 MCU. He says you can get the parts cost down to about $5 each in quantity. Not the kind of card you’d give out on street corners, but if you *really* want to impress somebody…
Dot Matrix Business Card

Originally from MAKE Magazine by Gareth Branwyn
reBlogged by InterAccess to Geekery – DIY

Last month we saw Sarah Angliss using the Theremin as an audiovisual controller. If you’ve got a Theremin and want to try this yourself — or try some other similar continuous input — here’s a really simple example of a patch that converts audio to MIDI. It uses Pd, Max/MSP’s open-source cousin for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

If you haven’t used Pd before, you should download pd-extended. It’s a stable, friendly installer for Pd with all the documentation and extras you’d need. Pd can be tricky to install, but this is friendly to just about anyone.
Pure Data Downloads (choose “most recent release” for the latest stable build of pd-extended)

In this case, Charles Martin, a percussionist from Australia, whipped up this simple patch and the fiddle~ object (which analyzes incoming pitch) to control effects in Ableton. Very cool stuff. He describes the patch and includes copy-and-paste code here, though I actually recommend going through the image above one step at a time and recreating it to better understand what it involves.

Theremin to MIDI Control program in Pd [Charles Martin Percussionist Blog]

Originally from Create Digital Music by Peter Kirn
reBlogged by InterAccess to Geekery – Audio

Welcome to Reaperworld. It’s an alternative universe, in which a “2.4.5″ update is huge. Released yesterday, it’s a new build for what might best be described as an “indie” DAW from the original creator of Winamp.

Check out the full feature list, but here are some highlights:

• “Solo in front” for easier soloing
• Track folding for MIDI to hide unused / unnamed rows
• Multimedia keyboard support, so you can use those silly, useless buttons PCs have for something cool
• Mute fades, so you don’t get that annoying pop on muting
• A ridiculous number of MIDI workflow and technical improvements

What’s really nice is I get an overwhelming sense that they’re improving the kinds of arcane MIDI and plug-in details that users would want improved. You know, there are all sorts of little annoyances you find when working that developers probably don’t think of. Those kinds of VST and MIDI improvements might not make big headlines at NAMM or in magazine copy, but then, that’s why so many users pour over release notes — these are the things they actually encounter working.

If you’re interested in using Reaper, now is the perfect time to point out the work Peter Dines has started trying to optimally combine Reaper and Native Instruments’ Kore, with Kore providing various live performance, sound design, sound cataloging, and synth/effect features:

Kore Host How-Tos: Reaper, Affordable PC/Mac DAW [Kore@CDM minisite]

Mac Experience?

I haven’t really had a chance to try the Mac beta; anyone on Mac had testing experience?

Originally from Create Digital Music by Peter Kirn
reBlogged by InterAccess to Geekery – Audio

As a followup to his recent Amazon Book Network visualization, Burak Arikan recently created a suite of social maps documenting the evolution of his twitter network over time. Burak describes his curosities guiding the project as follows:

I decided to look at what kind of interest groups emerge as I cure my Twitter social graph. Do my Twitter friends have always growing interconnections? How do people relate? Do I have friends who link together otherwise disconnected communities of interest? Do my Twitter clusters expand or contract over time?

Check out the related blog post which documents and contextualizes the project.

Originally from Vague Terrain by Greg J. Smith
reBlogged by InterAccess to Cultural Artifacts

Swedish artist Anders Weberg has been working on an interesting project over the last year that explores the intersection of contemporary art production and distribution. P2P-ART.com is a series of projects made for, and only available through peer to peer networks. A succinct statement describes the project as follows:

The original artwork is first shared by the artist until one other user has downloaded it. After that the artwork will be available for as long as other users share it. The original file and all the material used to create it are deleted by the artist … Feel free to don’t or download the film, watch it and share it for as long as you like. Or delete it immediately. The aesthetics of ephemerality.

Thus far Weberg has distributed four video projects in this manner. The imagine accompanying this post is a still from Emphasis, which can (probably) be found by plugging Emphasis[2008]by.Anders.Weberg.P2P-ART.com.XviD.avi into your favourite search engine.

Originally from Vague Terrain by Greg J. Smith
reBlogged by InterAccess to Cultural Artifacts