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Although this is a pretty old hack, we still like it because of its simplicity. This maker decided to put IKEA furniture to good use and build a PC mod out of a glass-top coffee table. Also check out the chair with a console embedded inside at the link below.

make your own ikea video game furniture

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These days, we are deluged with data, and as a result we’re confusing noise with information, and information with useful information. But what many companies fail to realize is that what matters is what you do with that data — and as a result, they are missing out on a tremendous opportunity.

Following Mininova and The Pirate Bay, isoHunt is now the third BitTorrent site to enter the list of top 100 most visited websites on the Internet. Together the three sites generate more than a billion pageviews a month and they continue to grow.

Welcome to my new blog on .NET software architecture.

I set it up as a journal for my work on a book I plan on making architecting or modelling .NET software easier. For the past 2-3 years I developed a small system or method or view on how I think developers should approach planning and implementing the structure of a software. Sure, there are already many guidelines as to how one should design software - but still developers feel uneasy when standing in front of a blank flipchart. At least that´s what I experience again and again when consulting with clients.

How should they start with an architecture? How to map an architecture to tangible artifacts? How can they keep an architecture in sync with the code? These and many more questions make it difficult for them to feel comfortable with the task of architecting a software.

Unfortunately OOA/D, OOP, UML, DDD, architectural patterns like N-Tier Applications, or SOA don´t help much. Although they are all valuable, something is missing. Some glue, some big picture within which all this makes sense. That´s what I want to provide. A big picture of software and a clear roadmap for how to get from a bunch of requirements to deployable code.

I´ve blogged about my ideas before in my other English blog and in my German blog. But for a book I need to pull all this material together and add some new stuff. That´s what this blog is for. Plus, I want to give the whole story a provocative twist by claiming: software architecture needs to fit on the back of a napkin in order to stay understandable. As soon as architectural drawings can´t be sketched on a napkin anymore, they are too complex and will hamper discussion and implementation.

My credo thus is: As a .NET software architect strive for visualizing your ideas on the back of a napkin! Management as well as developers will love you for this.

If you like, stay tuned. I´d love to discuss my ideas with you.

Ralf Westphal, www.ralfw.de

Matt writes -

Hi! This is a little project I’ve been working on for a couple weeks. It’s a quad-core tower made from 5 Arduino’s (1 to act as a command dispatcher, and 4 that do the central processing).

He’s also made the configuration available as a kit. Interesting - anyone have ideas for putting this setup to good use? - Quad core Arduino tower

Related:

“Dual Core” Arduino

In the Maker Shed:

ProtoShield for Arduino Kit

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Franco sent in this article detailing his new method for affordable cooling -

The construction was fairly simple. It only took me a few hours. I used a 20 litre plastic container to house the heat exchanger and also hold the cooling medium which is ice-water in this case. I made the heat exchanger roughly 7 mm (0.7 cm) wide and 20 cm high to promote a high rate of cooling, and also to compensate for a shorter flow length than was used in the previous version. To prevent leakage the gaps were sealed with silicone (which happens to be DAP 100% silicone for this particular project - great stuff and it cures fast!).

- Homemade Air Conditioner Version 4

Related:

Homemade air conditioner

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Jim writes in with his version of MAKE 14’s Living Room Baja Buggies -

I took issue #14’s cover project and made my own version using the MINDSTORMS NXT - I have one NXT tribot and another NXT I use a remote control. I bought the goggles recommended and already owned the wireless camera, so now I can control my MINDSTORM devices remotely!

Related:


Living Room Baja Buggies - With wireless cameras on board, these radio-controlled racers give you virtual reality telepresence. Read this article in MAKE: 14: Optics, Page 96.

To get MAKE, subscribe or purchase single volumes visit the Maker Shed. Subscribers—read this article now in your digital edition (non-subscribers can preview).

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When you’re away from your Mac or Windows desktop and you want some nice eye candy or you want to display some information that you would like to glance at every once in a while then the best way to do this is with a screensaver.

Status Screen Saver is a screensaver that allows you to […]

So I stayed up until 2am (will post at 8am) to answer these questions… I got a bit cranky and short I am sure. Out of the 100 questions asked about 20 were repeats and 5 were just stupid.
Brian asks:
What is the biggest reason that people are not successful in making money […]

On the heels of yesterday’s 17 links, there’s 11 today, and at least one other hidden away. I’ve got posts by Rob Houwelng, Andrew Brown, Ashish Shetty(2), Joe Stegman, Jeff Paries, Pete Brown, LeeOnTech, Darren Mart, Adam Kinney, Koen Swikstra, and Jesse Liberty.