Perhaps the most legendary piece of plastic in the hacker community is the humble "Cap'n Crunch" whistle. The free-in-cereal whistle was able to emit a piercing shriek at 2600Hz - the exact tone required to unlock the US phone network. So, because it's all I seem to do these days, I turned my my trusty RepRapPro and decided to see whether it was possible to 3D print a whistle which could…
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I've found (and disclosed) what I think is an interesting little security flaw in Facebook's Two-Factor Authentication usage. First thing's first, this isn't a show-stopping bug. It's more of a curiosity which shows how different providers treat the verification of Two-Factor Authentication. Details If you are a security conscious user, you should have set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). …
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This is a necropost - resurrected from the now defunct blog of a previous employer. I really loved the idea of geolocated ephemeral content. And I was a little disappointed that the business never saw the potential for it. Maybe I'll find a way to relaunch it in the future. I’ve been attending Mobile Monday London for years. It’s a great (free!) way to meet people in the mobile industry, to lea…
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I was wandering round The Henry Moore Foundation last Friday - thanks to the delightful wedding of my good friends Mike and Nikki. Looking at the abstract statues and carvings, I was struck not only by their beauty, but by how easy they would be to reproduce with a 3D printer. Ok - ok! I'm a little obsessed since building a RepRapPro for work - but hear me out. Wikipedia has been collecting…
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There are many aspects of modern business management which bother me. More than anything though, is the relentless invasion of idiotic myths which seems to pass for "inspirational leadership". I've sat in many classrooms - with many different employers - and I keep seeing the same lies being told to students. HR and training teams seem to incessantly buy into the slick and convincing…
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Earlier this week I tried my hand at printing fossils. The print didn't perfectly, but it was quite encouraging. Museum Victoria - an Australian institution - has released a 3D scanned trilobite on Thingiverse. I trimmed the model - to make the bed shallower and the sides neater - and hit print. I'm pretty impressed with the results: My remixed model is also available on Thingiverse…
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A couple of years ago, we had solar panels installed on our roof. We based our power generation estimates on the Europa Solar Calculator which estimated that they would generate around 2,700 kWh per year. Every few months we take a reading and see how the panels have been performing. Our meter reading for the end of May was 4,271kWh - our reading at the end of August was 5,791. That means…
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I've just discovered the amazing 3D Fossils site of the British Geological Survey. The GB3D Type Fossils Online project, funded by JISC, aims to develop a single database of the type specimens, held in British collections, of macrofossil species and subspecies found in the UK, including links to photographs (including 'anaglyph' stereo pairs) and a selection of 3D digital models. What that…
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As part of my quest to ensure I have a reasonable backup of all my social media data, I've been investigating ho easy it is to export photos from TwitPic. I've been using TwitPic since 2008 and have uploaded 1,200 images there. There's no official export function for TwitPic. The services which used to exist relied on their RSS feeds - which have since been killed off. This little Python…
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Late last week, I released an eBook copy of the Voynich Manuscript on Amazon. I sent a few tweets encouraging people to either download it for free from my website - or buy a copy from Amazon. Amazingly, given the choice, some people decided to throw a couple of quid my way! Once I saw that people were retweeting me, I rushed over to the Amazon stats page to see how I was doing. Holy cow!…
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Three years ago I promised to convert the Voynich Manuscript into an ebook. The recent news that it may have been deciphered spurred me to finish my project. So, here it is, the world famous mystery that is the Voynich Manuscript now in convenient eBook format. PDF - suitable for Kindle, nook, Kobo, Android, iOS and for most devices (60MB) CBZ - suitable for comic book readers,…
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The BBC is reporting that the Government is so afraid of prisoners having access to concealed mobile phones, they want to introduce a ban. UK officials are considering banning the sale of small mobile phones designed to resemble car key fobs. A government spokesman told the BBC that it was discussing the issue with the National Trading Standards Board and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. …
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