A lot of these milestones are for features found on almost all major blog software, however remember that the software that runs geeksinside.com is all written by us. This allows us to do more and adapt quickly to make the site as dynamic as possible.
There are a number of big plans in place for geeksinside in 2007, so come back and visit us soon and tell any geeks you know that geeksinside can only be made better by support "from viewers like you" :-P
s1axter posted on Wed. December 20th 2006 at 06:27 PM PST
This was posted on Zedomax.com and I thought it was post worthy. Also had some fun destroying Geeksinside.com :-)
Some people might remember the old windows apps that allowed you to distroy the desktop with ants or a chaingun, this is a site that does the same type of thing but for any web site.
s1axter posted on Thu. December 14th 2006 at 08:31 PM PST
Today on http://www.embedded.com I read this article about the potential solution to a chip fabrication problem inherent in the physics of microelectronics. Gate leakage is current that is pulled between the gate and the channel in a transistor. As chips get smaller and smaller, the distance and amount of insulator between the gate and the channel is decreased and current drain between the gate and channel becomes more of a problem.
" "The biggest problem with going below 65 nanometers is gate leakage, and Mears appears to have a solution to it," said Morry Marshall, vice president of stategic technology at Semico Research Corp. (Phoenix)."
It seems that a small semiconductor startup company called Mears Technologies claims they have further hindered gate leakage. The process sounds doable since not only do they decrease the leakage but increase the channel mobility. Increasing the channel mobility decreases the Vgs and Vgd thus inherently decreasing leakage.
Since the article says the process can be applied to current fabrication techniques it will be quite interesting to see if it works and if it is adopted by the semiconductor industry.
Understanding gate leakage and other semiconductor properties is a core focus in VLSI courses found in higher university courses.
s1axter posted on Tue. December 12th 2006 at 10:48 PM PST
I was browsing around the net and these projects from http://www.excamera.com looked post worthy, that and you know how I love PLD projects.
Anyone who is interested in microcontrollers has undoubtedly found some NTSC (TV for the layman) driver code for a PIC or Stamp on the net. This guy took it a step further and did NTSC using an FPGA running at 80Mhz. When I loaded the page and saw the picture, the idea of a PWM for the shades of grey popped in my head. Well a PWM is exactly what this guy uses. The image is loaded in RAM then outputted to the TV. The entire setup only uses two resistors, and is definitely something anyone with a dev board could do. The VHDL for the FPGA is included on the page and is rather short. Lots of IF statements but I guess it works.
Also on the site is a parallel port interface circuit complete with PCB schematic and code for BSD. The PPT card is compact and just plugs right in to the port. Parallel is a great way to get started with hardware-software interfacing. I remember in High School I drove 8 LEDs direct from a PC using Basic. Oh man was that cool then. Rather than skirting disaster by attaching LEDs directly to the port, look into this since it has a octal DFF buffer you can pick up at Radio Shack.
s1axter posted on Tue. December 12th 2006 at 12:35 AM PST
So the guy(s) over at http://uchobby.com are giving away 20 B&W hobby LCDs for people who have hardware, electronics, embedded system sites and will add a link to the page. I personally enjoy uchobby and think it has good posts so far. A few days ago I added them to the quick links on the left. Got luck and I might get an LCD out of it.
So just a little heads up for all those who have hobby sites and want to play with an LCD. Should do something like this for Geeksinside. :-)
s1axter posted on Sat. December 9th 2006 at 10:37 PM PST
This was posted on hackedgadgets.com today and it's just too cool not to post here. We've been kinda obsessed with the Wii after seeing what it can do and this just makes me want one more!
It's an old school Nintendo Power Glove modified to hold a Wiimote. Looks like the guy attached some buttons to the fingers to provide the inputs for the buttons. I've actually looked into the Power Glove before for some projects. There are three digital bend sensors in the fingers of the glove that would make an even better interface over buttons. This would be a awesome thing to have for first person shooters. Oh man, I want one so bad. :-P
firewire posted on Sun. December 3rd 2006 at 07:38 PM PST
I know that everyone knows about the WII and that its nothing new but I have a little insight for everyone. I just got to play one of these things the other day. All I have to say is wow, and no I am not talking about the video game.
Hardware:
The design is ingenius. The movement is so smooth and fluid and the rumble pack does not distort the accelerometer's movements to any degree. The movement is precise and even your grandmother could use it. The "PowerPC CPU (code-named "Broadway"), made with a 90nm SOI CMOS process, jointly developed with and manufactured by IBM; GPU developed with ATI"(www.nintendo.com) is amazing with the way it processes all of the complicated algorythms and code that are held on this small console. The WII even has the ability to pull movies, pictures, and other video off of any sd card to be edited, viewed or played. Users create their own Wii characters that hold their user profiles, and adds a little fun to the creation of the typical boring user profile which this is not.
Software:
The UI on this thing is great. The WII does about everything. It has a mac like feel, and it offers so many options to all types of users. It doesnt purely focus on the gamers of the world but all users who want to be brought into the new tech age. Wii offers instant messaging, photo editing, news and other numerous tv like channels, the ability to play all the oldschool games and this can be done through a wireless connection to your router or other wireless access point. This is a system created for the family and gamer alike. The game load times are next to nothing and the graphics are fluid and have great detail.
I would kill to get one of these, but currently no one has any, its about as hard to get as a "tickle me elmo" was a few years ago. If you do manage to get ahold of one of these your place will be the new hot spot. With games catering to lots of players in a party like atmosphere you cannot go wrong. Go Wii or go home, because it without a doubt destroys every other system out there today. Not only does it cost less (retail) but it comes with 5 games. You dont see that kind of service anymore. This is one system you just cannot go wrong with.
Happy New Year!
S1axter's Tech Log of Crazy Stuff
Welcome to 2007 from Geeksinside.com!!
Here's a cool video from 
This was posted on Zedomax.com and I thought it was post worthy. Also had some fun destroying Geeksinside.com :-)
Today on 
I was browsing around the net and these projects from 
So the guy(s) over at 
This was posted on hackedgadgets.com today and it's just too cool not to post here. We've been kinda obsessed with the Wii after seeing what it can do and this just makes me want one more!
I know that everyone knows about the WII and that its nothing new but I have a little insight for everyone. I just got to play one of these things the other day. All I have to say is wow, and no I am not talking about the video game. 
