Tweet-a-Watt Using Ruby…

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• Tweet-a-Watt Using Ruby…
• AutoClipX Copies and Pastes Text With One Click of the Mouse [Downloads]
• Sr. Mistu for iPhone [Video]
• Are the People Who Call Radio Shows Actually Paid Actors? [EXposed]
• A Letter On Behalf of the World's PC Fixers
• Best All-Around PDF Tool: FoxIt [Hive Five Followup]
• This Custom Made Laser Gun Will Definitely Shoot Your Eye Out [Video]
• Make: Arduino — Replace and Re-Flash a Blown Microcontroller Chip
• FoodieRegistry.com Lets Newlyweds Eat Great Meals, Avoid Paper Towel Holders [In Brief]
• Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight

Tweet-a-Watt Using Ruby… Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PST rellik has a site and code if you want to run a Tweet-a-Watt using Ruby… I’ve ported the python library over to ruby, and used it in a small project to collect, graph, and publish the data. It’s on github, if anyone is interested. Tweet-A-Watt Power Monitor @ Make: Projects! We live in a rented apartment, so we don't have hacking access to a power meter or breaker panel. But we still wanted to measure our household power usage long-term, so we developed the Tweet-a-Watt. It uses plug-in electricity monitors at each outlet to wirelessly send readings to a base station, which assembles them into reports you can analyze and graph. It can also broadcast updates via Twitter. Building your own power monitor isn't too tough and can save money, but we're not fans of sticking our fingers into 120V wiring. Instead, we built on top of a P3 Kill A Watt power monitor, which we found at the local hardware store. To track usage room by room, for example "kitchen," "bedroom," "workbench," and "office," you can use a 6-outlet power strip in each room to feed all the room's devices through a shared monitor. Each Kill A Watt can measure up to 15 amps, or about 1,800 watts, which is plenty for any normal room. You can build each wireless outlet monitor for about $50 with a few easily available electronic parts and light soldering, and about the same for the receiver. No microcontroller programming or high voltage engineering is necessary!

AutoClipX Copies and Pastes Text With One Click of the Mouse [Downloads] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PST Windows only: Keyboard shortcuts are great, but copying and pasting text could be even faster than it is. Free app AutoClipX automatically adds any highlighted text to the clipboard, and pastes with a single click of the middle mouse button. More »

Sr. Mistu for iPhone [Video] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PST Poor Sr. Mistu, who happens to be blind, has run out of olives for his pizza! In this straightforward but beautiful, hand-drawn and -animated puzzle game, you have to help him collect his beloved olives while keeping him out of harm's way. More »

Are the People Who Call Radio Shows Actually Paid Actors? [EXposed] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:43 PM PST Tablet Magazine recently published a revealing report exposing the "real people" that call into radio shows. According to Tablet, those real people aren't real at all. Instead, they're paid actors. Hired guns. Fake. I knew those amazing stories that spur great conversation and make for awesome programming was too good to be true. More »

A Letter On Behalf of the World's PC Fixers Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:33 PM PST Barence writes "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong. 'Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying 'yes, OK' to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing,' Cassidy writes. 'It doesn't take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history. No, there is no neat and handy way I've been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licenses loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation."" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Best All-Around PDF Tool: FoxIt [Hive Five Followup] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:30 PM PST Last week we asked you to share your favorite overall PDF tool, then we rounded up your favorites for a vote. Now we're back with the most popular overall PDF tool among Lifehacker readers. More »

This Custom Made Laser Gun Will Definitely Shoot Your Eye Out [Video] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:20 PM PST There are laser guns, and then there are homemade laser guns that look like they belong in a stormtrooper's holster. This DIY, made-to-order pulse laser gun is the latter. More »

Make: Arduino — Replace and Re-Flash a Blown Microcontroller Chip Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST As part of our Make: Arduino project, Riley Porter shows you how easy it is to replace a blown Atmel chip (the microcontroller heart of the Arduino) and to flash the Arduino software onto the new chip. For a few bucks and about 15 minutes of work, you can have your Arduino board back in business. How to Replace and Re-Flash a Blown Arduino Microcontroller More: Make: Arduino landing page

FoodieRegistry.com Lets Newlyweds Eat Great Meals, Avoid Paper Towel Holders [In Brief] Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST These days, some couples getting married have lived together long enough to acquire most of what they want. So where do they direct wedding gift buyers? One good idea, especially if you live near Chicago or San Francisco: FoodieRegistry.com. It lets guests chip in or buy entire certificates to great, higher-end eateries around town, rather than pretend they're excited to buy you cream bath towels. FoodieRegistry is taking suggestions on eateries in other cities; we're wondering how one could piece together their own FoodieRegistry for their less-major cities. Ideas welcome in the comments. [FoodieRegistry.com via SlashFood] More »

Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST So this professor comes up with a new toilet cleaner that works by "eating" the dirt; or so he thinks. That's how the plot starts for Tasty Planet. You play the role of the toilet cleaner, but you're not really a toilet cleaner after all -- you're a blob of gray goo that can eat anything that's smaller than yourself. As you chomp away, you grow -- and as you grow, you can eat bigger and bigger stuff. The first level pits you against microscopic particles; by the time I stopped playing, I got all the way to eating cats and dogs. I know that sounds disturbing, but it's a really cute game, and there's no gore or anything like that. Supposedly you keep growing and growing until you're able to eat whole planets (hence the name). The challenge factor comes when you realize you can't touch any critter larger than yourself - you'll get "bitten" and become smaller. In the beginning you're so small, that a single touch can kill you. Later on, you're big enough that touching larger animals doesn't kill you on the spot, but it does reduce your size. Each level is timed, so if you're not large enough by the time your clock runs out, you need to start again. As long as you don't touch the larger animals, you should be fine. All in all, a fun, addictive little game. It's available for iOS, too. Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments

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