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Diet Coke and Mentos Traps 

As many of you know, since 1990 my friend Jay and I have exchanged Christmas gifts that have been booby-trapped in some way. Since last year around this time I was getting married (and have thus been a little distracted from blogging), I've fallen behind in posting details of these traps. I hope to be a little faster in posting this year's traps, but in the meantime I've finally posted Jay's trap from last year: a particularly nasty trap that sets off ten individual bottles of diet-coke-and-mentos geysers on any would-be MacGyver who triggers it. I've also posted my own version of his trap which, while it's not as pretty on the outside, does win out when it comes to the size of the mess it leaves behind. Enjoy!

Diet Coke & Mentos

Diet Coke & Mentos, Version 2

Wolverine costume with retractable claws 

This year's theme for Halloween was super heroes, so around the beginning of October I set out to design a Wolverine costume. The outfit is based on the X-Men movies, because it's a lot easier to look cool in black leather than yellow spandex. The claws I based on the comic books, with thin claw-like blades coming out of studs on the backs of my hands rather than knives coming out from between my knuckles as they did in the movies. That was both because I like the more animal look of the original and because it made it a lot easier to make the claws retractable.

For more pictures, video and step-by-step instructions on how to design your own, check out my Instructable at instructables.com.

View the 'real source' of a webpage 

One great thing about the web is that you can tell your browser to "View Source" whenever you want to figure out how the page managed to get all those hamsters to dance like they do. Or at least that was how it used to be — nowadays most interesting pages are dynamically generated, which means the source you see often little more than <script>generate_page();</script>.

When I was writing dynamic pages for a project a little while back I got tired of not being able to see what my page looked like after all the JavaScript got done with it, and eventually I tracked down this cute little bookmarklet:

javascript:if (window.document.body.outerHTML != undefined)
{'<xmp>'+window.document.body.outerHTML+'</xmp>'} else if
 (document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].innerHTML != undefined)
{'<xmp>'+document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].innerHTML+'</xmp>'} else if
 (window.document.documentElement.outerHTML != undefined)
{'<xmp>'+window.document.documentElement.outerHTML+'</xmp>'}
else {alert('Your browser does not support this functionality') };

Just copy it all into one line (remove the linefeeds, they're just there for readability) and put it as the URL of a bookmark. Then whenever you want to see the real source of a page, it's just a click away.

(I wish I could remember where I found this little gem, but from a quick search it looks like it's been floating around for a while...)

Magnetic Wall Chessboard 

The latest addition to our magnetic wall: a wall-mounted magnetic chessboard. Basically we took a cheap chessboard, glued some rare-earth magnets into the bases of the plastic pieces, and glued some magnetic backing onto the board itself. To the side is a little magnetic label with one side printed "White to move" and the other printed "Black to move." Just make a move and flip the label over for the next person to move.

Magnetic wall 

This weekend’s project was to paint the dining room wall and bedroom doors with magnetic paint (paint with an iron-dust mix-in). Actually, this was my wife's project while I fixed the bathroom sink — but that project was much less interesting to blog about. The dining room is shaping up to hold all the various birth & wedding announcements, plus magnetic poetry and probably some random wall games. The bedroom doors will be more personal expressions, and right now the guest room has tourist magnets from everyone who’s visited. Best of all, it's a great excuse for another order from our favorite magnet source!

Magnetic Primer	The start of our downstairs postboard...	...and poetry wall
Guest room door	Our daughter's (*PINK*) door	Our bedroom door

Calculating the Birthday Paradox 

For the last couple years I've been working on a program that generates a large number of essentially random ID strings (it's actually a replicated document storage system that uses the hash of a file's content as its ID, but the details don't matter). Since IDs are independently generated there will always be some chance that two different files will just happen to have the same ID assigned — so how long do I need to make my ID string before that probability is small enough that I can sleep at night?

This is essentially the Birthday Paradox, just with bigger numbers and in a different form. For those who haven't heard of it, the canonical form of the Birthday Paradox asks what the probability is that, out of a random group of 23 people, at least two in share the same birthday. (The "paradoxical" part is that the answer is just over 50%, much higher than most people's intuition would suggest.) My question just turns that around and asks "how many random N-bit IDs have to be generated before there is a one in a million chance of any two of them being identical?"

Rejiggering the formulas given in Wikipedia, here's the approximation:

n ≅ (-2 · S · ln(1 - P))^1/2

where:

• n is the number of entities required to reach the given probability
• P is the probability desired
• S is the size of the set of all possible entities

For example, the number of people you would need for a 50% chance that at least two of them have the same birthday is (-2 · 365 · ln(1/2))^1/2, or between 22 and 23 people. As a more practical example, you would only need to generate 77,163 PGP keys before having a 50% chance of a collision between their 8-character short-form fingerprints.

As for my one-in-a-million chance, you’d need to randomly generate roughly 2^{(N - 19)/2} N-bit strings before having a one-in-a-million chance of a collision, which means I would need to randomly generate around 2⁷⁰ of my 160-bit ID strings before there would be a one-in-a-million chance of having a collision. I think I can sleep at night.

iPhone fix: blow out the lint 

Here's a simple iPhone fix that others may appreciate. A few weeks ago my microphone started to cut out — I could listen to music over the headphones, but with both pairs of earbuds the microphone would cut out, and disconnecting and reconnecting them would cause the call to drop. I finally took it to the Genius Bar today and they immediately took out an otoscope and discovered that the hole where the headphone jack fits in was filled with pocket lint! One quick burst of compressed air later and it was working perfectly again! (Apparently they get this problem a lot, as they've got a special mini-jack attachment for their compressed air can.)

A nice side effect was he noticed the screen's hairline crack I'd gotten when the phone fell out of my pocket. From all I'd read on the Net I thought I'd have to pay $250 to have that repaired, but he said so long as it was just a single hairline crack and there was no damage to the case itself they could do a warranty replacement — five minutes later I was walking out of the store with a fresh-out-of-the-box iPhone.

"We didn't start the bubble" 

I'm probably biased living here in Silicon Valley, but this Here Comes Another Bubble by The Richter Scales is brilliant!

(Thanks to Nat for the link!)

Installing emacs23 with X11 support on Leopard 

For some reason Fink has not yet updated their version of GNU emacs. While there are several other options, including Aquamacs, xemacs from Fink and the terminal-only emacs that comes pre-installed on OSX, I missed my traditional GNU Emacs running over X11. Luckily, with a few tweaks to this guide, the process was pretty painless — assuming you've already got Fink installed, just do the following (all from the Terminal):

mkdir tmp
cd tmp
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/emacs co emacs
cd emacs
fink install libungif libjpeg libtiff
export LIBS="-lresolv"
./configure --without-carbon --with-x --prefix=/usr/local
make bootstrap
make
sudo make install
cd /usr/local/bin/
sudo ln -s emacs emacs23

Steampunk Chicken-Walker Mech Costume 

I have a long history of biting off more than I can chew when it comes to Halloween costumes. It's in that tradition that, when my friends suggested Star Wars as a theme for costumes this year, my first idea was to go as an AT-ST, the 2-man chicken-walker mech that the Ewoks beat up on in Return of the Jedi. After several design iterations I had left the Star Wars Universe behind in favor of a steampunk flavor, and thus was born the Steam Walker.

The idea is to make it looks like I'm sitting in a chair riding atop a steam-powered mech that walks on two robotic legs. In reality my seated legs are false, and my real legs power the robot's legs. This is basically a variant on the age-old circus-clown costume where someone looks like they're riding a horse, and is also inspired by Ben Hallert's APU costume and the paintball mech costume called Steel Dawn.

While not fast enough to keep up with 6-year-old trick-or-treaters as they went from house to house, I was still able to walk down the street and show off to passers by. The most common reaction was along the lines of "Wow! That's the coolest costume I've ever seen — what the heck are you?!? (Best answer so far: Luke Skywalker: The Later Years.) I also got little kids (and some older kids, who really should know better) asking me how the thing was powered, several adults admitting they couldn't figure out how the thing worked, and at least one little girl bursting into tears as she saw me ambling towards her. All in all, I'd say it was a big success :).

For more information on how I actually built the thing, take a look at my Instructable.

Voldemort is Harry's father?!? 

My friend Rawhide has hacked up a Firefox extension called Sneakoscope that will redact Harry Potter spoilers you might accidentally stumble across on the Web. (Like that subject line — and no, I haven't read it yet so don't tell me anything...)

Bingo Shooting Device 100 years old 

A Bingo Shooting Device going off

A lot of the traps my friend Jay and I design use little mousetrap-like devices that go bang when opened, usually sold under names like "exploding toilet seats," or as the main mechanism in exploding pens. It consists of a hinge that is closed over a spring-loaded hammer. When the hinge is allowed to open, the hammer is released and strikes a percussion cap, causing a loud bang. Not too long ago I discovered the history of this wonderful invention, which was originally called the Bingo Shooting Device and was invented exactly 100 years ago this year.

The inventor of the device was one Sam S. Adams, who in 1907 was trying to follow up on his previous year's successful invention of sneezing powder (a coal-tar product sold under the name "Cachoo"). Copy-cats were underselling his sneezing powder, and so he moved on with the Bingo Shooting Device, and installed the device in decks of cards, cigar boxes and "books with saucy titles" (to quote a 1941 article about Adams' success).

Adams went on to invent some of the best-known gags of the last century, including the Snake Jam Jar (a jam-jar in which a spring-loaded snake jumps out), Racket Wireless Message (an envelope that rattles when opened, now sold as "Rattlesnake Eggs"), the Dribble Glass, a telescope that gives the user a black eye, soap that stains your hands, and of course the world-famous Joy Buzzer — basically every well-known joke but the Whoopie Cushion. His company, now called S.S. Adams Company, still exists and sells novelty items to this day.

Lifesized Mouse Trap game at Maker Faire 

One of the big demos at last weekend's Maker Faire was a life-sized version of the 1963 board game Mouse Trap, with bowling balls instead of marbles and a two-ton safe dropped from a crane instead of a cup dropped on a plastic mouse. They tried running it six times over the weekend, before finally succeeding on their seventh and last attempt:

Lightweight equipment gives narcoleptic hikers newfound opportunities 

Portable mattress technology gives new-found freedom to narcoleptic hikers on a recent visit to Castle Rock State Park (DocBug Exclusive)

Maker contests at Instructables.com 

Instructables.com (a Squid-labs startup founded by friends of mine from MIT) has three contests going for the best handmade item plus accompanying instructions on how to make it, something like $15,000 in prize money (not to mention bragging rights):

• Win a BrightStar Laser Cutter Contest: Publish an Instructable on any subject before June 17th. Grand prize is a BrightStar LG3040 laser cutter worth over $6000.

• Sew Useful Contest: Three categories: most useful thing that helps others in need, the best combination of sewing and technology and best Instructable tutorial. Winners in each category get a Singer QUANTUM® 9940 computerized sewing machine.

• iRobot Create Challenge: Build a robot to do something interesting / useful using the iRobot Create Programmable Robot platform (based on the Roomba vacuuming robot). Don't have an iRobot Create kit already? iRobot Corp. is donating 15 Scholarship Robot packages to those with the most interesting proposals. If you build the robot and enter the contest with it you get to keep the robot, even if you don't win. First place in this contest is $5000, second place gets a set of iRobot home robots worth just under $1000.

Laser Trap 

I've finally posted a write-up on Jay's Laser Trap from this Christmas over in my traps gallery:

This is a strikingly beautiful trap. When placed in a darkened room, you can see a faint and ominous glow coming from the chest even before testing the latch. Opening the chest reveals faint laser lines criss-crossing back and forth across the mouth of the chest, lines that might be missed completely in a well-lit room but become bright if you blow smoke or mist into the box. Breaking a beam with your hand, or bump one of the carefully-positioned mirrors that bounces it from source to receiver and you trigger an alarm.

Check out the traps gallery for the full description.

Disarming "Under Glass" 

I just posted a few different methods for disarming the Under Glass trap over in my traps gallery:

There are several potential methods to disarm this kind of trap, though depending on the particular trap implementation some of them may be more or less effective. I've only actually used the first two methods, the others are suggestions I've heard that sound plausible but haven't been field-tested. Note that there are various destructive methods you could use to open this trap without setting it off, such as drilling a hole from the underside, but that's considered cheating: the idea is to get the "treasure" out of the box without setting off the trap and without damaging either the box or trap itself.

• Strong Magnet: Depending on the strength and position of the popper, placing a strong magnet against the glass (or box bottom) can keep it in closed position while you remove the dome. My earlier prototype with the popper stuck to the glass could be disarmed by simply placing a very strong rare earth magnet against the glass, and then whacking the box, dome and magnet down on the arm of the couch so that the popper would snap shut from the inertia. Once the popper was closed, the magnet was strong enough to keep it closed such that the dome, magnet and popper could all be removed without setting off the cap. (Unfortunately for Jay, the version I gave him was simply too powerful even for the four large rare earth magnets I had brought with me.)

• Rice: The second option is to fill the dome with a substance that can fit through the small crack between the box and glass but still interfere with the firing mechanism. I used grains of rice, which could be forced under the dome using a thin piece of spring steel. After I had a decent amount of rice inside the dome itself I was able to lift it out of the box without firing the cap. The hammer sprung down, but wound up with a single grain of rice between it and the unfired cap. Water would also probably work, though it might damage the box or contents. Note that evacuating the dome of oxygen (for example by using a wine preserver gas) does not seem to work — I'm guessing the caps provide their own oxygen source.

• Wax / glue: We haven't tried this, but it might be possible to carefully maneuver some sticky wax or glue through the crack in the side such that it holds the playing card to the underside of the glass dome, thus pulling the card up with the dome when it's removed from the box.

• Flexible shim: We haven't tried this yet either, but there exist metal shims that are extremely flexible, and such a shim might be able to actually bend through a crack between the glass and box side and get inside enough to block a popper from firing. This was essentially Jay's strategy using pipe cleaners, but they weren't quite flexible enough, and one of the poppers got free and went off.

Christmas Traps for 2006: Under Glass 

Remember back to your misspent youth (or recent adulthood) spent playing Dungeons and Dragons, and how your adventuring party sweated as your thief tried desperately to disarm all the traps before opening a treasure chest? It's in that spirit that my friend Jay and I have exchanged trapped presents every Christmas for the past sixteen or so years.

When people ask me how to disarm a trap I'm giving Jay I'll often joke that "I just design them, disarming them is his problem," but I actually like to know that I can get through it before I hand it off to Jay. This year's trap almost had me stumped, and I spent almost as long figuring out how to disarm my trap as I did designing it. The trap is even more maddening because there's nothing hidden about it — after you open the box you can plainly see all the trap mechanisms through a glass dome, just as plainly as you can see it'll be almost impossible to get any tools at them without setting it off.

I've just added a write up and video of the design, called Under Glass, to my traps gallery, and I'll be adding a write-up on Jay's trap (which was quite cool this year) in the coming week or so.

Cool after-image illusion 

This illusion is great — he's using an after-image to make a black-and-white photo look like it's in color. (via Mind Hacks.)

Update 6/12/06: He's now posted a tutorial on how to make these illusions yourself.

Diet Coke + Mentos Bellagio Fountains 

The mad scientists at EepyBird.com have a fabulous live video of their Mint-powered Bellagio Fountains. (By way of Aileen.)

Drums with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads 

My latest project: attach laser pointers to my dumbek drum so I get a mini-lightshow shinging on the drum head every beat. Total cost (with the exception of the dumbek) was about $5.

[Click for more...]

Fun with lasers 

At the Ambidexterous Magazine launch party last night, Chris Tacklind (of D2M, I think) was showing off his laser-diode glove. These things are lots of fun — I remember my group-mate Michael P. Johnson built one when I was at the Media Lab, and got good enough he could make little figure-8s with two fingers while the other dots circled around them.

Something I hadn't seen before and liked even better was a sound-display toy Chris was playing with, but I forgot to take a picture that one (eit!). It was just a small cardboard tube with a balloon stretched across one end, and a laser diode shining onto a small mirror stuck to the end of the balloon. You'd speak or sing into the tube and the sound vibrations would show up as little laser shows on the wall in front of you. Use it as a drum and you'd get even cooler effects. (Chris goes around teaching kids to make these things — the one he had was made by a 10-year old.)

Now I want to install something like that into the bottom of the little dumbek drum I have. Stretch a membrane across the bottom of the drum and attach a laser pointer to the inside of the drum shining onto a mirror on the membrane such that it reflects up onto the underside of the white translucent drumhead. Aligned correctly, I bet I could get some fun lasershow-style patterns on the drum head on every beat. (Might need to modify the design if the membrane changes the sound too much — we'll see.)

Micro Rhythm Orchestra 

There's a lot of great stuff at the Maker Faire (no doubt one of the more photoblogged events of the month), but one of the things I liked the most was this cute little "micro rhythm orchestra" by Jonathan Foote. [Quicktime, 520K]

Tags: makerfaire, makerfaire2006

DIY: How to make a brass "Fireball" hanging wall sculpture 

Shortly after I moved into my new house I was thinking about artwork for my walls and all of a sudden I had a vision of a sort of Van Goghesque fireball made out of brass or bronze as a wall hanging. It's been a long time coming, but I finally finished the piece a couple months ago. And since a project is never truly done until you've posted a do-it-yourself guide on the Web, I've just finished a summary and pictures of the project as well as a project page at instructables.com.

Robot Hazing 

From The Onion:

MIT Fraternity Accused Of Robot Hazing

CAMBRIDGE, MA—Several members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chapter of the Theta Tau fraternity are in campus-police custody today following a brutal hazing incident in which one robot remains missing and two others are in critical condition with extensive circuitry and servo-motor injuries, sources revealed Monday.

...

In protest, human-emotion-simulator robot Kismet, a respected member of the MIT community, announced that it will only display an expression of disapproval—refusing to smile, show fear, or raise a curious eyebrow—until those responsible receive appropriate punishment.

(Thanks to Jofish for the link!)

FoxTrot unfair to the compulsive 

For the record, I'd like to say that yesterday's FoxTrot comic was especially cruel to those of us who just don't know when to leave well enough alone and go to sleep.

I'm just saying...

Caltech cannon upgrades to better tech school 

Almost exactly 20 years ago, Students from Harvey Mudd College pulled one over on their rival Caltech by relocating a Spanish-American War cannon from Caltech's Fleming House to their own campus. Now the cannon has a new home: MIT hackers posing as the Howe & Ser Moving Company have relocated the cannon to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, MA. The cannon now also sports a giant gold-plated Brass Rat, the MIT class ring. A plaque dedicating the cannon notes that "In honor of its previous owners, the cannon points towards Pasadena, CA."

Custom stats at your fingertips 

Philip Lenssen at Google Blogscoped has a great little webform that lets you whack out seemingly-authoritative statistics-laden webpages like this one, just like the big boys do!

Build your own Eclipse Webcast Viewer 

On March 29, 2006 there will be a total solar eclipse, which is when the moon moves directly between the sun and the Earth. It won't be visible here in the U.S., but even if you don't live in Brazil, North Africa, Turkey or East Asia you can join in the fun! The San Francisco Exploratorium is hosting a big eclipse party starting at 9pm Pacific time, and they'll be hosting a webcast of the eclipse live from a Roman amphitheater in Turkey.

The most important thing to remember when viewing an eclipse is never view an eclipse with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope! That's because the sun will fry your eyeballs like a grape in the microwave. So to enjoy next week's eclipse webcast safely, just follow these simple instructions to build a pinhole eclipse webcast viewer.

[more]

DIY Mardi Gras masks 

Lately I've been experimenting with making hardened-leather face-masks. I'm making a bunch of butterfly-looking ones to adorn my wall, but with Mardi Gras just around the corner I figure people might enjoy a quick DIY guide:

	Start with vegetable-tanned (also known as saddle-skirt) leather. I picked mine up at a local Tandy Leather. Update 2/25/06: Get 5/7-weight leather (that is, between 5/64" and 7/64" thick). Thicker is OK, though you'll get more shrinkage (less soak-time may help that). Thinner won't harden as quickly, will be brittle and won't hold a shape very well.
	Cut a mask pattern, allowing for about 30% shrinkage.
	Soak leather in cool water for 10 minutes.
	Heat water to 180°F.
	Soak in hot water for around 90 seconds. The leather will shrink, curl and thicken, and then start to uncurl. The longer you soak it the stretchier it will be at the start and the smaller, harder, thicker and more brittle the end result will be.
	Once the leather comes out, you have about 5 minutes to stretch and shape it before it becomes stiff. For a good face-shape be sure to add bumps for the bridge of the nose, eyebrows and cheekbones. If you have any dangly bits they can be twisted or braided, and they will harden into whatever shape you set them. Over the next 10 minutes, give it a pinch every now and then to make sure it stays in the shape you want, then let it dry overnight. By morning, it should be hard as wood.
	If you decide now that you need to expand the eyeholes or change the outline you can use a drill or saw. Otherwise, you're ready to paint it, using a paint suitable for leather. I used several coats of "3D" fabric paint. Mardi Gras colors are green, purple and gold. Add ribbon-ties if you like. Have fun!

Update 2/25/06: More masks I've been making:

This guide can also be found on instructables.com.

Ceci n'est pas le prophète Muhammad. 

Exploding drawer trap 

I just posted another DIY-trap page, this one an exploding-cap trap for a drawer. This is what I'd call a third-level trap: it takes a bit of dexterity and knowledge to disarm, but anyone with a little experience shouldn't have any trouble getting past it. I never sent this one off to Jay; it just sits on my shelf to surprise visitors who haven't learned to be careful when opening boxes around my place.

You can browse through previous traps at my Traps Gallery (I've only posted a couple so far, but more will be coming).

Multishot pellet-gun trap 

For over fifteen years my friend Jay and I have exchange trapped presents at Christmas. When I say trapped I mean it in the classic Circle of Death game style — if you open the present carelessly a buzzer will sound or explosive cap will trigger.

I usually focus on making it difficult to find and disarm a simple explosive-cap trap, but this year I wanted to change things up a bit and focus on the effect itself. In particular, I wanted to make a box trap that would shoot darts out in all directions, machine-gun style. It had to be completely mechanical (what can I say, I like the style better), and had to be stable enough to ship through the mail without going off or getting jammed. After many attempts I landed on this rather elegant sprung-hammer design (click for video and construction notes).

It's what's for breakfast! 

Linux on Treo 650 

Here I've been complaining about simply unbranding my Treo, when somebody's managed to put Linux on a Treo 650.

(By way of Engadget, by way of Nerfduck.)

Unbranding an unlocked Cingular/AT&T Treo 650 

My Treo 600 has never had good voice quality and the past week or two has started crashing when wireless is used, so I picked up a 2-month-old Cingular/AT&T Treo 650 off of Craig's List. In the US, smart phones are mostly sold by carriers who are hellbent on locking their customers into their own revenue streams, which means most cellphones on the market are "locked" to a particular carrier and some of the functionality, like the ability to use the cellphone as a wireless modem over bluetooth, are deliberately crippled. [Update: apparently, both Cingular and Sprint have now uncrippled this feature — good for them.] The previous owner of my phone had already finagled an unlock code, so my phone can be used with any GSM carrier just by inserting a new SIM card, but it was still running the Cingular-branded ROM. This weekend's project has been to replace it with the generic unbranded Palm-OS ROM — which turned out to be much more difficult than I had expected. Below are some notes on the process, intended mostly for people searching Google after running into the same troubles I did.

Note: All the instruction sheets I've run into warn that trying to upgrade your firmware to the generic version can be difficult and may very well ruin your Treo completely. Attempt at your own risk.

I started by following the instructions at Uneasy Silence, with help from a description at Treonauts. The upgrade is a two-step process: first you need to upgrade to the beta version of the unbranded firmware & software (1.23 & 1.06), and then to the current 1.28/1.13 versions. That's because all versions since 1.23 now check to see if you've got a branded ROM already, and refuse to upgrade if you do.

The first attempt to upgrade to 1.23 ran through the steps but then ended with an error message, leaving me in an odd indeterminate state. My phone's firmware showed up as 1.23 and the software version showed "Treo650-1.06/2078-..." with the last part of the version not fitting onto the info screen. I think the missing part was ROW, the ID for the unbranded-Treo version of the OS, but the phone still showed the Cingular logo on reset. The phone was also somewhat flakey in this state, with hotsync not working from the cable and other attempts to upgrade to 1.28 resulting in the cryptic error ""Different partition detected. Hotsync installer cannot be used. To upgrade your device, use the SD installer." It took me a while to recognize that the upgrade had only partially succeeded and to redo the 1.23 upgrade process a second time, but once I did the phone showed the generic Treo logo on reset.

Upgrading to the 1.28 firmware and 1.13 software was harder, and I still have no idea what the problem was. If I were running Windows I'd just run an EXE file, but since I'm using Mac OSX the official instructions say to hotsync to load 44 files, at which point the upgrade program would run. I forgot to bring my hotsync cable with me for Thanksgiving break, so I tried hotsyncing via Bluetooth instead. Unfortunately, the phone continued to reboot in the middle of the hotsync, try running the update software with incomplete files, then complain "There is not enough memory available to complete this operation." (I suspect this error message is spurious — it came up in all sorts of situations.) Copying the 44 files onto an SD card, transferring them to the phone using Launcher X and then doing a soft reset led to the same error, as did transferring only the DB files over using the SD card and using the normal Bluetooth hotsync to transfer the program files. Running the "DeviceConfiguration" program directly from SD card gives an error about not being able to find its scenario files.

What eventually worked was this:

1. Copy the 44 files onto my SD card
2. Do a hard reset to the phone, thus erasing all files
3. Beamed Launcher X from my Treo 600 to my 650
4. Inserted the SD card into the 650, and used Launcher X to copy the 44 files from the SD card to RAM (handheld)
5. Without doing a soft reset or removing the SD card, I ran the program "D.C." which now showed up in the applications section
6. Plugged the phone into power, pressed OK and watched the upgrade (finally) go off without a hitch!

If this weren't a new phone, at this point I'd have used hotsync or BackupBuddy to restore all my data to the phone (you did make a backup before starting, right?).

I have no idea why this worked when nothing else did — for all I know the planets were just in alignment this time and my particular method didn't matter one bit. If this helps or works for you, great! Let me know in comments! If if doesn't work feel free to leave comments too — I won't be able to help, but I'll a least sympathize.

Update 11/26/05: After searching around a little more I see that Sprint and Cingular both used to cripple Dial-Up Networking (DUN), but apparently Cingular enabled it in February and Sprint enabled it in June.

Instructables.com 

The mad scientists over at Squid Labs have just launched instructables.com, a free collaboration site for posting step-by-step instructions for making interesting stuff, from bikes to food to protocols for biology research.

Magnet trap solution 

After being rightly chastised in the comments, I've updated last month's magnet trap post with my solution for setting and disarming the trap.

Drawer trap 

I rigged up a new trap a few weeks ago, designed to work with a pretty wooden drawer-box I found at the thrift store. It's not too hard to disarm, but I like the simple design (details below the fold).

1. Equipment: popper and caps, piece of spring steel, drawer (flash paper optional)

2. To the back of the box (the part the drawer fits in) about half-an-inch from the left-hand wall, I glued an "L" of spring steel so it sticks out. I drilled a hole in the back of the drawer at the same place such that the steel sticks into the drawer when it's closed.

3. To the left-hand side of the drawer (right next to the hole for the steel) I glued the popper with the mouth facing up.

4. The popper is made of a metal base (attached to the drawer) that's attached by a hinge to a lid. Halfway up the lid is a spring-loaded hammer, and at the end of the lid is a firing pin that holds a cap. Set the popper by inserting a cap on the firing pin, pulling the spring back and closing the bottom hinge so the hammer can't spring back. For extra effect you can stick a little sheet of flash paper between the cap and the firing pin. If the spring isn't too strong, the popper won't go off so long as the lid is completely closed and held horizontally (otherwise you'll have to hold it down with another piece of spring steel while you close the drawer.

5. When the drawer is closed, the spring steel will poke through the hole and keep the popper from releasing. Once closed, just tap on the side of the drawer so the lid of the popper rises just a bit, which gives it enough leverage that it will spring up completely when the steel withdraws as the drawer is opened again.

Here's how it looks when the drawer is opened (with and without flash paper):

Drawer trap (Quicktime, 588K)	Drawer trap with Flash Paper (Quicktime, 648KK)

Trapped Christmas Presents 

For over a decade my friend Jay and I have exchange trapped presents at Christmas. When I say trapped I mean it in the classic Circle of Death game style — if you open the present carelessly a buzzer will sound or explosive cap will trigger. It all started when we were designing traps for live-action role-playing games, but quickly became a challenge to one-up each other each year. These days we open all the other presents first and then settle down with our flashlights, dentist tools and wire clippers to work on opening each other's presents while the rest of the family eats pie and enjoy themselves making unhelpful comments.

Jay and I each have our own style of trap-making. Jay has become a master of secreting traps in places that you'd think he couldn't access. His high-point is probably the time he gave me a deck of gaming cards that he had somehow unsealed, hollowed out, rigged with a cap-popper trap, then resealed and reshrinkwrapped such that it looked like new again. (That's rivaled by two years ago, when he managed to plant an explosive inside a cut-then-resealed chocolate egg.) I'm always trying a new angle on things — my favorite is still the time I gave him a "special" version of Looking Glass' PC game System Shock, which included a specially-included candy red button in the second room of the game that when pressed would berate him for not checking closely for traps as it dropped powerful monsters on his head. (It always helps to know the programmers...)

This past Christmas I wanted to try a trap where the mechanism was plain to see but a puzzle to disarm. The result is the magnet trap shown bottom left. The metal plates at the bottom are sold in joke shops as Exploding Toilet Seat gags. They're spring-loaded to lift up and set off a cap, but in this case the magnets attached to the top of the popper are being pressed down by the magnets attached to the top of the lid. On one side is a north-polarity magnet being pushed down by another north-polarity magnet, on the other side is a south-polarity magnet pushed down by another south-polarity magnet. The whole system is quite stable — until you try to turn the lid to open the jar. Then the north and south magnets on the lid switch positions and pull the poppers up, setting off the caps. You can see the whole thing in action by clicking on the picture below. Jay tried using magnets underneath the jar to counteract the ones on the lid, but that wasn't enough force to fight both the magnets and the mechanical spring. I'll leave the right way to disarm the trap (and the way I originally set it) as an exercise to the reader (and will probably eventually put it in an update).

Jay had two traps this year — the first was a buzzer trap held down by a Borg Teddy Bear that he had gotten at the Star Trek Experience in Los Vegas. It was rigged so if I moved the bear or pulled the wrong wire first it would go off. Remembering my MacGyver lore, I pulled the red one (or was it black?) and disarmed it. The main trap, however, was the bear itself — he had taken it to a teddy-bear factory and had them sew in a voicebox that played his own message. I didn't set it off (I learned long ago never to press something from jay that says "press me" on it), but am still impressed. You can see it in action from the other movie linked below.

Magnet trap explained (Quicktime, 3.1M)	Borg Teddy-bear trap (Quicktime, 750K)

Update (7/24/05): explanation of how to disarm below the fold.

Honestly, leaving this as a riddle without giving everyone the benefit of being able to play with the trap itself is a little unfair. The key is that the magnets pushing down from the metal lid were not actually glued on, but were just stuck on using their own magnetic force. (They consisted of a magnet stuck to the lid, a bunch of steel nuts to give them the right length, and then another magnet at the end.)

To disarm the trap, you open the lid just a bit, then use a strong magnet to slide the magnet towers back to their original position through the lid. Keep opening it a little and sliding the towers back until the lid can be opened enough to stick a (nonmetallic) chopstick into the jar to hold down the poppers.

To set the trap, just reverse the procedure.

Trapped Christmas Presents 

For over a decade my friend Jay and I have exchange trapped presents at Christmas. When I say trapped I mean it in the classic Circle of Death game style — if you open the present carelessly a buzzer will sound or explosive cap will trigger. It all started when we were designing traps for live-action role-playing games, but quickly became a challenge to one-up each other each year. These days we open all the other presents first and then settle down with our flashlights, dentist tools and wire clippers to work on opening each other's presents while the rest of the family eats pie and enjoy themselves making unhelpful comments.

Jay and I each have our own style of trap-making. Jay has become a master of secreting traps in places that you'd think he couldn't access. His high-point is probably the time he gave me a deck of gaming cards that he had somehow unsealed, hollowed out, rigged with a cap-popper trap, then resealed and reshrinkwrapped such that it looked like new again. (That's rivaled by two years ago, when he managed to plant an explosive inside a cut-then-resealed chocolate egg.) I'm always trying a new angle on things — my favorite is still the time I gave him a "special" version of Looking Glass' PC game System Shock, which included a specially-included candy red button in the second room of the game that when pressed would berate him for not checking closely for traps as it dropped powerful monsters on his head. (It always helps to know the programmers...)

This past Christmas I wanted to try a trap where the mechanism was plain to see but a puzzle to disarm. The result is the magnet trap shown bottom left. The metal plates at the bottom are sold in joke shops as Exploding Toilet Seat gags. They're spring-loaded to lift up and set off a cap, but in this case the magnets attached to the top of the popper are being pressed down by the magnets attached to the top of the lid. On one side is a north-polarity magnet being pushed down by another north-polarity magnet, on the other side is a south-polarity magnet pushed down by another south-polarity magnet. The whole system is quite stable — until you try to turn the lid to open the jar. Then the north and south magnets on the lid switch positions and pull the poppers up, setting off the caps. You can see the whole thing in action by clicking on the picture below. Jay tried using magnets underneath the jar to counteract the ones on the lid, but that wasn't enough force to fight both the magnets and the mechanical spring. I'll leave the right way to disarm the trap (and the way I originally set it) as an exercise to the reader (and will probably eventually put it in an update).

Jay had two traps this year — the first was a buzzer trap held down by a Borg Teddy Bear that he had gotten at the Star Trek Experience in Los Vegas. It was rigged so if I moved the bear or pulled the wrong wire first it would go off. Remembering my MacGyver lore, I pulled the red one (or was it black?) and disarmed it. The main trap, however, was the bear itself — he had taken it to a teddy-bear factory and had them sew in a voicebox that played his own message. I didn't set it off (I learned long ago never to press something from jay that says "press me" on it), but am still impressed. You can see it in action from the other movie linked below.

Magnet trap explained (Quicktime, 3.1M)	Borg Teddy-bear trap (Quicktime, 750K)

Update (7/24/05): explanation of how to disarm below the fold.

Honestly, leaving this as a riddle without giving everyone the benefit of being able to play with the trap itself is a little unfair. The key is that the magnets pushing down from the metal lid were not actually glued on, but were just stuck on using their own magnetic force. (They consisted of a magnet stuck to the lid, a bunch of steel nuts to give them the right length, and then another magnet at the end.)

To disarm the trap, you open the lid just a bit, then use a strong magnet to slide the magnet towers back to their original position through the lid. Keep opening it a little and sliding the towers back until the lid can be opened enough to stick a (nonmetallic) chopstick into the jar to hold down the poppers.

To set the trap, just reverse the procedure.