[Sderby] Various things

[Mike]

On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 07:05:36PM -0500, Andy (Beta) wrote:
> Firstly, I thought it would be cool to have a Linux projector.  We
> were having a presentation in our Church the other day and half way
> through, "Oh, my computer's decided to overload and shut itself down,
> hang on while I start it up again..."  (No guesses as to which OS that
> was!).  That got me thinking - why don't we just run the presentation
> directly from the projector?  There would be no unnecessary background
> processes, the components and setup and everything could be perfectly
> tailored to running presentations and videos and all that.  Just stick
> in the CD or plug in the memory stick and click "play presentation".
> Simple.
> 
> However I don't have the money to buy a projector.  Anybody fancy
> playing around with this?

I don't have the money for a projector either.  I think this goes under the heading of
"cool idea, no really practical."  The easiest way is bodge a mini-ITX board into the
projector and do some Linux customisation.  The problem is that projectors run *very* hot
and you'll probably fry your miniITX board or your projector or more likely, both.  I
guess your best bet is it build an embeded system but that really is hardwork.

> The second thing is a bit of a hacker's thing really and doesn't have
> much point to it apart from the fact that it would be cool.  At work
> we have these microwaves, and when they've finished cooking, the word
> "End" blinks on the digital display.  With a little creative
> soldering, I reckon it would be possible to make it display a
> different word.  Something like "EAt", "FOOd", or even "LOVE" should
> be possible...  It should be possible to get a smiley out of it I
> reckon; like "|-]", except obviously on a digital display the bar
> would be broken in the middle, making it look more like eyes.
> 
> Any hackers out there who want to give this a try?

Another not terribly easy job.  The firmware will produce the message that is sent to the
LCD screen.  As all the messages come from the same chip, you can't really do anything
about it without rejigging the firmware and I bet the chip is write once.  Nevertheless, I
know a group who'd be up for the challenge.  When can you deliver the microwave to me?

> Then there are a couple of technical things for which I was too lazy
> to create another email:
> 
> 1) How do I sign up to the projects mailing list?  The email address
> for majordomo given on the page
> http://www.sderby.lug.org.uk/projects/projects.html doesn't seem to
> work (even after changing .ork.uk into .org.uk).

Don't both with the project mailing list, I'm on it and haven't received any mail from it
in over 3 years!

> 2) On the page http://www.sderby.lug.org.uk/mail/mail.html there is
> reference to the Leicester LUG's jargon file.  The link points to a
> .php3 file, but Firefox 1.5.0.9 doesn't seem to like that and displays
> it as plain text (and it's a redirect anyway).  Changing the extension
> to .php makes it all fine and rosy.

This sounds more like a server side problem.  Unfortunatly Blackcat seems to be routing
lug.org.uk into /dev/null!

> That's all for now.  Teach y'all to be too quiet for too long!
> 
> Andy.

Mike.