[Simon Aubury] owns a cat. Or perhaps it is the other way around, we can never really tell. One morning around 6AM, the cat — we don’t know its name — heard a low-flying aircraft …

It used to be homebrew ham gear meant something simple. A couple of active devices that could send CW. Maybe a receiver with a VFO. But only the most advanced builders could tackle a wide range SSB…

We love a good deep-dive on a specialized piece of technology, the more obscure the better. You’re getting a sneak peek into a world that, by rights, you were never meant to know even existed…

In our “Mechanisms” series, we’ve featured the fascinating bits and pieces that go into making our mechanical world work. From simple machines such as screws and levers, from spri…

Just in case you thought your eyes were playing tricks on you, we’d like to confirm right from the start that what you are looking at is a loaf of bread with internal LED lighting. Why has th…

It’s nearly summer, and that means we’re right at the start of conference season, at least for the tech and netsec crowd. Conferences, if you’re not aware, are a conspiracy for th…

Old cars are great. For the nostalgia-obsessed like myself, getting into an old car is like sitting in a living, breathing representation of another time. They also happen to come with their fair s…

The ATtiny85 is an incredible piece of engineering. In just eight pins, you get a microcontroller with just enough oomph to do some really heavy lifting. You get an Open Source toolchain, and if yo…

Telemetric devices for vehicles, better known as black boxes, cracked the consumer scene 25 years ago with the premiere of OnStar. These days, you can get one for free from your insurance company i…

When it comes to radio frequency oscillators, crystal controlled is the way to go when you want frequency precision. But not every slab of quartz in a tiny silver case is created equal, so crystals…

As the cost of high-resolution images sensors gets lower, and the availability of small and cheap single board computers skyrockets, we are starting to see more astrophotography projects than ever …

Who doesn’t want a pocket protector projector? Nothing will impress a date more than being able to whip out a PowerPoint presentation of your latest trip to the comic book convention. The key…

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is one of the foundations of the internet. It’s how the big routers that shift data around the Internet talk to each other, passing info on where they can se…

It has been an exciting time to be a retro computer enthusiast in recent years, and the availability of affordable single board computers, systems-on-chip, and FPGAs have meant that retro hardware …

Biohacking is the new frontier. In just a few years, millions of people will have implanted RFID chips under the skin between their thumb and index finger. Already, thousands of people in Sweden ha…

Carl Sagan once said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In other words, the term “scratch” is really a relative sort of th…

The UNIX Way™ is to cobble together different, single-purpose programs to get the effect you want, for instance in a Bash script that you run by typing its name into the command line. But sometimes…

FM synthesis is the sound of the 1980s, it’s the sound of shopping malls and Macintosh Plus. It’s the sound of the Motorola DynaTAC, busts of Helios, and the sound of ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ　サ閲ユ. The…

Pools have come a long way. It used to be you had a pump and if you were lucky it had a mechanical timer switch on it. That was it. Now you have digital controllers and spa jets and heaters. You ca…

In an age of smartwatches, an analog watch might seem a little old-fashioned. Whether it’s powered by springs or a battery, though, the machinery that spins those little hands is pretty fasci…