Last weekend brought an interesting challenge: to create a remote-controlled, small-sized dry ice “fog” dispenser for a company event. In the end it wasn’t used, but I had a lot of fun building it anyway. Here is how it was done:

Judging by how much of my life I spent reading manga, watching anime and tokusastu, playing Pokémon on Nintendo, eating tempura, yakisoba and mochi, learning kanji, and so on, it just had to happen: Bani and I went to Japan!

After a daunting half-day flight and timezone shift, we spent a couple days in Osaka, followed by a 9-day travel package that took us to Koyasan, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Hakone, and finally Tokyo - where we had five more days of hectic fun.

Our adventures included a sleepover on a Buddhist monastery, volcano-boiled eggs, giant robots, purification rituals, a deer-populated sacred island, bullet trains, psychedelic dances, a manga museum and - why not - ear channel violation.

Even though you can plug a Raspberry Pi to any modern TV/monitor, its diminutive size screams for a smaller screen, ideally a touch-sensitive one. PiScreen was one of the first (relatively) inexpensive screens like that. Excited by the video below, I backed its KickStarter in April, received it in October and just found the time to build it.

I had some fun, and I will still do some interesting stuff with it. Some projects are more suited for it than others, so you may want to check my experience and decide whether it suits your needs.

I just had to:

• Connect the Atari antenna output to a Coaxial (F-type) to Female RCA adapter;
• Plug that in the antenna input of a the VCR;
• Use 3 RCA cables to feed the VCR A/V output into an AV-to-HDMI adapter;
• Connect the adapter HDMI output to the monitor;
• Configure the Atari to the “Channel 3” position;
• Select channel 3 on the VCR.

Easy, right? :-P Now I can play my homebrew (2048 2600) on the real thing.

By the way, if you want to buy a physical 2048 2600 cart, Good Deal Games sells them. I have no participation in that (other than coding the open-source game and pestering Jenn Harrison into drawing the cool cartridge front art), but I’m really happy to have my game on a real cart!

I got pretty excited when I first read about Soylent. Don’t get me wrong: I do like food (otherwise I’d not need to track everything I eat to mantain my weight), and I also understand its social aspect. But having to decide what to eat, preparing/going after it burns a time I’d rather spend on more fun things.

Unfortunately, Soylent doesn’t deliver in Canada (yet). But I found an alternative in Space Nutrients Station 100% Food. It is a mix of different foods that, just like its creppy-sci-fi-named competitor, claims to offer all the nutrients you need on a single meal. After a quick exchange of emails, I purchased an 8-bottle sampler kit with PayPal and had it here in about a week.

Shellshock is a serious server security issue that was made public yesterday. The best fix is to apply security updates from your Linux distribution, as they become available.

If that is not possible for any reason (e.g., unsupported distros, like the Ubuntu 13.04 boxes we have not killed yet), you will need to compile bash from the source (including all the patches) - which may be confusing if you are not used to build C/C++ software “by hand”.

There are some scripts that compile and install a new bash (like shellshocker.net’s curl https://shellshocker.net/fixbash | sh), but they assume you are ok with the latest bash version (4.3), and I needed to stay with 4.2. Here is how I did it:

rePLAY: Symphony of Heroes features an orchestra interpreting an unusual (but increasing popular) genre: video game music. Between a great previous experience with Video Games Live and a nice Groupon offer, we could not miss it when it came to Toronto.

A Hack is Born

You never know what you’ll find at Active Surplus - a must-go Mecca for electronics enthusiasts in Toronto (pics†). Last week, I stumbled upon a box full of PC gamepads - at $2.50 each!

They used an old connector (see below) that would require an USB adapter, but I had a better idea: connecting them to a Raspberry Pi. Bought one (discounted to $2) and hacking ensued.

An untrained observer would infer I’d spend this Canada Day† lazily reading comics. That isn’t true: to honor the spirit of the day, I’ve been lazily reading Canada-related comic books (by author or subject).

In Portuguese, the word “copa” isn’t just a reference to the FIFA World Cup, or any generic cup. It is also often used to designate a pantry, or a small dining room inside a kitchen - some people even use the term interchangeably with “cozinha”, the word for “kitchen”.

Netflix Brazil used this in a smart commercial that dribbles FIFA’s Orwellian (and borderline unconstitutional) countrywide media ban on expressions (which includes things like “Christmas 2014”). The spot showcases the freedom of not watching any important soccer match (a non-trivial luxury in Brazil, trust me) by playing entirely as a double entendre. Here is a rough translation:

Guy: “You know what? I’m gonna watch Netflix on the [copa].” (grabs a tablet)

Girl: “Oh, you and this [copa], [copa], ewww.”

Guy 2: “Yeah, why not on the living room?”

Guy 3: “…or the office, the bedroom, the porch…”

Guy (walking to the “copa”): “I watch Netflix WHEREVER I WANT. And I want it ON THE [copa].”

Guy 2: “So I can watch movies… on the [copa]?”

Guy 3: “…pausing and returning on the [copa]?”

Guy 4: “Watch exclusive series… on the [copa]?”

Guy: “See? Netflix changes everything!”

Narrator: “Netflix on the [copa]? Why not? Movies and series for you to watch whenever and however you want. Subscribe now.”