As I said before, I wanted to hook up my Arduino to work with XChat. I wrote a plug-in to raise a flag attached to my computer monitor when my nick is mentioned in the channel.
XChat away plugin
My computer pretty much stays connected to an IRC server. If I’m not in one of my favorite forums channels, I’m into something else.
If you do frequent IRC, you will want to register your nick with the nickserv so no one else steals your name. This is a great feature, but if your like me and registered two nick’s, you’ll have to identify with both every time. You might be wondering, “Two nicks? Why?” Well, I use one nick for my presence “techb” and “techb_away” when I’m not active. This may spark a new question, why not use the /away and /back commands? Well, I’m lazy, and for people who use a cli client like Irssi or rolled their own just cause, setting your nick to away might not show them your away. So, I use two nick’s to distinguish when I’m there and not.
Fun With MindFlex
For this valentines day, my wife got me a MindFlex from Mattel. I have been wanting one of these since they have been on the market. It is a really interesting game where you control a foam ball with your mind. The ball will rise with the more focused you are. Letting your mind wonder and as Morphius likes to say “free your mind”, the ball will lower.
New Years Ball Drop Replica
I was asked to build a replica ball drop for a friend. I had 3 days to get this thing working. It was a fun build, and took a lot of headaches to get it setup. In the end it worked out great.
Plasma Caster [UPDATE Sept. 24, 2010]
I finaly started working on a moc Plasma Caster like the one attached to the Predators shoulder.
Here are some pictures of the first setup. I plan to make changes.The range finder you see will judge the distance from my face, if I turn my head and it goes too far away, the servo will move in the direction I moved my head to get back in its original position; hence, it will follow my head looking where I look. Tilted head position will be judged from an accelerometer and mapped to the servos as well.
NetBot? IRC controlled air freshner
The idea struck me when my wife always complained about the house stinking when she got off of work. Well, my geek side kicked in and I can freshen the house from any computer connected to the internet via IRC (internet chat relay).