Scenario: There is a bomb with an electronic counter and detonation system set to explode in just over a minute and a half. You have a few tools at your disposal such as volt meters, serial interface, debug interface, etc. Your Mission (should you choose to accept it), is to use those tools to backdoor the bomb and neutralize it, all while managing to keep all of your limbs attached.
This is one of the many reverse engineering scenarios you will get to play through in Ruckingenur II, the latest in a series of games from the Zachtronics “games for engineers” section. The game is designed around the spirit of reverse engineering. With video sequences, realistic electronic systems and datasheets, this free game delivers in excitement and a curiosity. It’s a little heavy at around 38mb, but well worth the gruesome 2 minutes it will cost you to download and install it. Also be sure and stop by Zachtronics Industries website for many other cool applicationa.
If you should find yourself bored at the office, and need to kill an hour or so, PaperGuitar.com has a rather large collection of papercraft guitar templates to help spice up your desktop. Not quite as good as the real thing, but hey, they look cool.
Even if you already owned a shotblasting gun, you would still need some kind of enclosure to do your work in. Instructables user, kington99 has come up with quite a concept for sand blasting cabinet project that you can do on a minimum of supplies and tools. Check it out here…
For those who are not faint of heart, thobson has an extremely detailed and informative tutorial on creating a custom stereo tube amp. The instructable contains a plethora of pictures, diagrams and links to aid you. Link to instructable…
DIY site Instructables has just recently had a nice run of killer tutorials. First in line is this very well put together and informative tutorial by Instructables user drums787 which is a very informative guide to tuning your drum set. A must see for drummers. Check out the instructable here….
Picked up this great tip from hackszine the other day. Apparently NBCOlympics.com has only made available the more popular, U.S. Olympic events to the internet, yet there are many folks out there who are interested in the many other events, but cannot view this material as it is location restricted. Not to worry. Hackszine has come up with a great solution to this by using a proxy that is located in a country which has not restricted the desired content. Read on for a brief explanation.
First, check out the CCTV Internet rights holders for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games site and find a country that you think may host the event you wish to see. This site contains a list of all rights holders to the 2008 Olympics and their respective URL addresses, however if you try to access one of the URLs, you will most likely get a message telling you something like your country is restricted to this content, or possibly nothing at all. To access these sites, we must trick these URLs into thinking we are accessing them from another non-restricted country. Do this by configuring a proxy server in Firefox from the specific country who’s URL we are trying to access. For example lets use Japan’s server at http://gorin.jp which does not even come up at all for me.
Note that not all proxies are free so the kind of proxy server we are looking for is typically referred to as an “Open Proxy”. You can do this by either doing some good old fashioned google searching for open proxy servers in “*desired country*”, or check out xroxy.com where they maintain a nice list of free proxies from all over the world.
Searching through xroxy, I find about 5 or so Japanese proxy servers. Lets use 58.80.207.41 on port 3128. Now select “Tools”, “Options” in your Firefox file menu.
Once the options window comes up, click the “advanced” icon in the upper right, then the “Network” tab just below to the left, and then the “settings” button to the right.
Now the “connections settings” window will pop up. First select “Manual Proxy Configuration”. Now we can begin entering in the proxy information. Take note that the proxy we will be using from xroxy is listed as an “SSL” server. Under “SSL Proxy” type in the address “58.80.207.41″ and for the port type in “3128″. Hit “ok” at the bottom of the connections settings windows and then “ok” on the options windows to exit and save.
Now lets give that URL another try.
BAM! There ya go, works like a champ!
Make sure you note that not all proxy servers will be SSL servers and those that are not will simply go under “http proxy server” in Firefox’s Proxy Configuration window.
Mad props to Hackszine for conjuring up this great little trick.
Normaly a site such as Mygazines.com, who encourages users to “upload, share, and archive”, would have some serious issues with copyright laws. You can be most certain the law is pecking away at such a site however, Mygazines.com has an exception. They have registered their domain abroad and have kept their servers outside of the U.S. hence standing just outside the fire of United States copyright laws. Mygazines has some 16,000 users and about 1,200 magazine issues all available for free viewing or should you choose to sign up for an account, you may even download the full magazine. Link to Mygazines.com…
Here is another great how-to from wired magazine’s how to wiki. This article is a brief, illustrated walk through on how to hot wire your car should you one day find yourself totally screwed and key-less. Link to article.
Here is a great step-by-step tutorial by instructables user jonboytang, on how to make tonepad.com’s Tube Screamer Clone stomp pedal. The tutorial is done up very well with a ton of pictures to accompany it. Check it out here.
This is a cool and informative video I picked up at Hackaday on how to trip a parking garage’s proximity sensor for getting in and out of the garage. Materials needed are one car and a soda can. Hackaday also mentions that a magnet from a hard drive may work just as well, if not better in some situations. Check out the video below.
Here is an awesome video I came across at Make Magazine’s blog the other day. The video shows a bolt of lightning touching down in super slow motion. Check out the flash and intensity of the bolt when it first finds ground. It is nothing shy of pure bad-ass.
Wired has published a good old fashioned guide on the ancient art of setting up a wiretap. If you have never taped a phone line before, you will find that it is quite easy and rather inexpensive to do. Check out the article from Wired’s how-to Wiki
Despite the many flashlight hacks around these days, which often seem to pack tons of candles in a very small package, I have always remained a fan of the Maglite and its doubled use as both a light, and a weapon. If that wasn’t enough for you already, look into this tutorial video by Instructables user jayandersons in which he will show you how to pack a little extra punch to your ol’ Maglite. About 10X more punch to be fair.
In this latest bar trick from scam school, you will set your victims up with a very intriguing and seemingly impossible puzzle that’s sure to pique their curiosity and draw them in. The solution is so clever, the spectator will never see it coming. Watch the video below or stop by Scam School’s video channel.
Scenario: There is a bomb with an electronic counter and detonation system set to explode in just over a minute and a half. You have a few tools at your disposal such as volt meters, serial interface, debug interface, etc. Your Mission (should you choose to accept it), is to use those tools to backdoor the bomb and neutralize it, all while managing to keep all of your limbs attached.
