Today is Earth Day!  Over at Hackszine.com, Jason has opened the comments up to any and all Earth Day hacks, links and activities.  He has also listed a number of Earth-friendly things that we can do on a daily basis to be kind to our Mother Earth.  Link.

Go out and enjoy the outdoors today! 

Built on the Arduino platform, this Etch A Sketch clock draws out the time and then erases itself every minute.  Link to video. Angela Yuan's website.

Hackers of the world unite!

Check out the projects that hackers are working on around the world. This is a collaborative, full-access, wiki-style map, so you can add yourself or any programming clubs and robotics groups by signing into Google maps and clicking the edit button.

Link.

I posted a fun little howto to hackszine today that you fellow geeks might enjoy. Using the Q virtual machine for OS X (it's a Cocoa port of QEMU), I was able to get Puppy Linux to run nicely on my Mac. If you haven't heard of it before, Puppy is a tiny desktop Linux distribution that's meant to run off of a bootable CD. It normally stores all of your files and save data to a file on a flash drive.

What's cool, though, is that you can virtualize the boot CD as well as a small virtual disk image. This lets you put the emulator application, the boot CD image, the virtual machine config, and the entire save state all on a single flash drive.

You can toss the QEMU Linux and Windows binaries on there as well, and have a private Linux box that fits in your pocket and will run on just about any desktop machine. Slick, no?

Running Puppy Linux inside OS X - Link

Jason wrote up a great follow-up article, Investment Spreadhsheet 2.0, to his original post, The FU Money Spreadsheet, over at Hackszine.  Some added features to the FU Money Calculator 2.0 are fields for accounting for your 401k contributions and a home loan. 
Jason describes 3 scenarios in which normal people like you and I can become "wealthy be being excessive in our frugality."

Previously:
The FU Money Spreadsheet (post on Blogcadre)

Update: Jason has made improvements to the spreadsheet, Investment Spreadsheet 2.0.  It now includes fields for home loans and 401(k) contributions.


Jason over @ Hackszine writes:

If you're a Cryptonomicon fan, you might recall uber-hacker Randy Waterouse's business partner, Avi, who had a spreadsheet which tracked a particularly interesting value.

The subject heading of Avi's first message is: ``Guideline 1.''
We look for places where the math is right. Meaning what? Meaning that pop. is about to explode---we can predict that just by looking at age histogram---and per capita income is about to take off the way it did in Nippon, Taiwan, Singapore. Multiply those two things together and you get the kind of exponential growth that should get us all into fuck-you money before we turn forty.

Jason over @ Hackszine writes:

Have you ever needed a D battery in a pinch, but could only find Cs? Since AAA, AA, C, and D batteries are all 1.5 volt cells, they are electronically interchangeable. They differ only in physical size and energy storage capacity. So, if you're in a pinch, you can cobble together an adapter with a few quarters or other suitable conductive material.

Even a 9-volt battery is made up of 6 1.5 volt cells, which are a bit smaller than a AAA (they are actually called AAAAs!). This could come in handy if all you can find is a 9 volt and you really need a AAA for your TV remote... You'll just have to spend some time cracking open the 9 volt case with a pair of pliers to get at the little cells inside.

Quick hack: The $1 C-to-D adapter -Link
9 volt to AAA conversion - Link

Here is a nifty trick on cooling down room temperature soda pop within 2 minutes.  All you need is a large bowl, ice, water and a hand full of salt.  Place the soda cans into the bowl full of ingredients and let sit for 2 minutes.  Your soda will instantly be 40 degrees cooler.

 Jason over at Hackszine writes:

According to the completely authoritative sources of youtube and metacafe, you can extend the range of your car remote by holding the remote to your head. It's easy enough to test, and if it works it could come in handy for finding your car in the parking lot. So far, I've found two videos demonstrating the hack, and both use a slightly different method.

In one method you simply touch the remote to your noggin - Link.

In the other video, a more sophisticated open mouth, below the chin technique is used - Link.

I'm guessing that your head is acting as a crude directional antenna, but if you know more about how this works, let us know in the comments.

Jason is working at the Hackszine booth this weekend promoting Hackszine.com.  Other Hackers showing off their hacking expertise are the authors of the O'Reilly Hacks series. 

[Pictured:  Jason Striegel and Chris Kohler, author of Retro Gaming Hacks]

Previously:
Electric Giraffe
Tim Hunkin, homemade arcade machines and simulators
We're heading to Maker Faire, San Francisco