Here’s a cool Eee PC Hack that uses a modified Fedora Linux to speed up the boot time of Eee PCs.  I think this shows how great linux operating systems are modification by uses.  I am sure you can do something similar with Windows, but not to the extent this hack does.

How did they do it? Arjan said it starts with the right attitude. “It’s not about booting faster, it’s about booting in 5 seconds.” Instead of saving a second here and there, set a time budget for the whole system, and make each step of the boot finish in its allotted time. And no cheating. “Done booting means CPU and disk idle,” Arjan said. No fair putting up the desktop while still starting services behind the scenes. (An audience member pointed out that Microsoft does this.) The “done booting” time did not include bringing up the network, but did include starting NetworkManager. A system with a conventional hard disk will have to take longer to start up: Arjan said he has run the same load on a ThinkPad and achieved a 10-second boot time.

via engadget, slashgear, Hack Page

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Wow, check out this green/red laser projector which can do animations.

This is one of my experimental Dance/Trance songs from 2000. I build laser systems for fun so I have put together pictures and clips from assembly to a full working system to go with the song. I know the song gets really annoying after awhile sorry. Iv’e been getting a lot of email asking how the projector works and what parts are in it.
Here’s how the projector works:
The green laser bounces off a mirror then through a green beam splitter, the beam is then separated (The reason for this is later I added a second beam turret projector which did not work well so I removed it and also the beam splitter  The Green beam then bounces off a red dichroic filter and into the Scanners. The red laser passes through the red dichroic filter this allows you to mix the two colors into one beam or into dual images if the alignment is off.
(Most all of the video uses the red laser because the green was too bright for the video camera)
Here is some information on my laser system and where you can find the parts.

Laser controller and software I use is from
http://www.laserillusions.com/
This is a great package and costs a fraction of any other laser software about $400.00″

via hackedgadgets

Related Posts:

Green Laser Projector

How to Make a Green Laser Projector

How to Make Hard Disk Green Laser Projector

How to Make Music-Syncing Green Laser Projector

Here’s a really cool DIY showing you how to build a hard disk laser scanner made from bunch of old hard disks.

My latest tinkery hardware and embedded systems project is a homebrew laser scanner. You know, the kind you see at planetariums- sweep a laser beam around on the wall really fast, and draw vector graphics. Commercial laser scanners have been around for decades now, but buying a complete system is still really pricy, even on eBay. Besides, where’s the fun in that?

There are plenty of examples of homebrew laser scanners on the internet. Many people have wired up a pair of loudspeakers, hard disk actuators, or other readily available mechanisms to an amplifier and used them for simple laser graphics. This will make some pretty wiggly patterns on the wall, but it isn’t a real vector graphics display. The best example I know of for a totally built-from-scratch laser projector (not using commercial galvo actuators) actually uses custom hand-wound galvanometers. Very nice.

via make