I am now playing the PC game Borderlands. I just started so I can’t get too into detail about it, but it’s pretty much best described as a FPS RPG that *looks* like it’s using cel shading. Contrary to popular belief though, it is not. It just is styled that way, which is pretty cool. The game has 4 classes that you choose between, each which has three branches. These classes also differentiates the character that you are–

Mordecai – Sniper/Hunter
Roland – Solider/Healer
Lilith – Siren/Assassin
Brick – Berserker/Brawler/Tank

The game supports 4-player co-op as well, which makes it all the more fun. You start out in a desert area with lots of junk laying around. There’s lots of voice acting too which keeps things interesting. Dying in this game isn’t too bad either, as you can respond with a small penalty (costs a bit of money). There are many, many quests which can keep you occupied for awhile and many enemies. The music for the game sounds like something out of a Trigun episode sometimes too, which makes me laugh More information to come!

• R/C Lawnmower
[Johndavid400] built this incredible looking R/C lawnmower. After spending some time repairing broken R/C cars, he wanted to move on to something a little more useful and powerful. He decided to build a mower. He’s using a transceiver set from ebay, with an Arduino interpreting the signal and outputting to his custom motor board. In the video after the [...]

• [M]ouse: a PS/2 to c64 adapter
[svofski] has a friend who is a pixel artist. They really wanted to try out their skills on a c64, but were missing a mouse. The original mouse for the c64 was not only serial, but used a different method of communication than more modern mice. [svofski] built this adapter to translate the ps/2 data [...]

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• Auto-drummer
Mix a cup of mechanical engineering with a dash of drum set and you end up with Steve, the robotic drummer. We know that it uses an MSA-T Midi Decoder but that’s about the extent of what has been shared. Just from observing the video, we think Steve’s got a few things going for him [...]

• Hackaday Links: Friday the 13th, 2009
This wort cooler looks beautiful. No, it’s not for removing warts, it’s part of the brewing process for the nectar of the gods. Even if it wasn’t meant to create alcohol, we would be drawn in by those pretty copper curves.

We’re not surprised at all to see this remote-controlled bowling ball. We’ve seen remote-controlled spheres [...]

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• Raid the dollar store for an illuminated umbrella
Here’s a quick and easy illuminated umbrella that [Mikeasaurus] built. How’s this for economical? He found an umbrella that someone left on the bus, and used an LED flashlight and clear poncho from the dollar store for the rest of the parts.
The scavenged LED circuit board is the perfect diameter to fit inside the handle [...]

• Robot interface lets fingers do the walking
We’re filing this one under “best interface implementation”. This robot is controlled by finger gestures on the surface of an iPod Touch. It can walk forward, turn, sidestep, jump, and kick a ball based on the input it receives from your sweaty digits. Unlike vehicles controlled by an iPhone (or by Power Wheels), this has [...]

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• Biking through Google street view
[Aki] wanted to do some stationary cycling to get in shape. Unfortunately, his stationary cycle is located in his garage which doesn’t supply much inspiration or amusement. His solution was to build a VR rig so that he could ride around inside google street view. He has rigged a simple sensor to his wheel to [...]

• Single-wing flight based on maple seed aerodynamics
The Samara Micro-Air-Vehicle is a product of over three years of work at the University of Maryland’s Aerospace Engineering Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory. The Samara is an applicant in the DARPA nano air vehicle program. Unlike the ornithopter we saw in July, this vehicle uses only one wing for flight. A small propeller on a rod [...]

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Just finished watching another anime. As the title says, it’s Shingetsutan Tsukihime. This anime was…not very good. Boring and dull. “Sad” ending. Not worth talking about really. Now I’m watching Code Geass. It seems interesting so far. Hopefully it won’t disappoint. I’ve been meaning to watch DBZ Kai too, but I’ll have to wait for the dubbing on that one! It would be weird to see Goku talking in Japanese for me since I’ve only seen Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z dubbed

• Remotely control your crappy car (dangerously)
Here’s one that brings back that giddy feeling we got when the original episodes of thebroken were posted all those years ago. The lunatics over at Waterloo Labs have altered a beat-up Oldsmobile for remote control via laptop, iPhone, and…. wait for it… Power Wheels.
Brake and gas pedals are actuated using a wrench connected to [...]

• Homopolar motor
Slow day at the office?  Here’s a trick that’ll make your coworkers smile. Dangerously Fun has a guide to build a homopolar motor from a battery, copper wire, and magnet. A homopolor motor doesn’t rely on electromagnets in an armature changing their polarity to force a rotation movement compared to stationary magnets. Instead, they use [...]

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• Roundup: simple hacks
Here’s a collection of simple hacks you can do in between larger projects. After the break we’ll look at converting an iPod from hard drive storage to Compact Flash, build an LED desk lamp using LEGO and USB power for charging, and use an Arduino shield to add network control at the touch of a [...]

• Coaster Controlled HTPC
These days, HTPCs are becoming more and more common, however controlling the content elegantly can be a painfully annoying problem. Roteno Labs have come up with a wonderful solution they call the RFiDJ. Similar to the RFID phone we covered earlier, they used a set of picture frame coasters and mounted descriptive pictures as well [...]

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• Gamecube to go
[Hailrazer] built a handheld GameCube so he could take his gaming with him. The final product is quite nice, providing a large display and about 3 hours of play time on the lithium polymer batteries.
Starting with the case from a Kidz Delight Datamax game, he used Bondo to alter the case but still provide a [...]
• Centipede shield design contest
Our friend [Garrett Mace] from macetech has finished a prototype of a new shield which allows the Arduino (or any other microcontroller with I2C) to add 64 digital I/O pins using only 2 of the analog pins. Currently he only has a few pre-production boards, and rather than selling them he is throwing a contest to win [...]

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• MindFlex teardown
Maybe we’re just imagining things, but it seems to us like brainwave control is the latest trend in toys. Similar to Uncle Milton’s Force Trainer, Mattel has recently released the MindFlex, a game that involves moving a plastic ball up and down through an obstacle course that you control using your brainwaves. Naturally when [Alpha] [...]
• Urban Defender: location aware game
What do gangs, territories, cities, and glowing blue balls have in common? No, not that one drunken night you can’t seem to remember, rather a new location aware game called Urban Defender.
The concept behind the game is simple. A player hold a ball that knows its current location and can notify you if needed via [...]
• Servoelectric guitar is a keytar with strings
[Keith Baxter] has undertaken something of a ‘Mount Everest’ of guitar modifications. He’s developing a Servoelectric guitar that trades frets for a keypad. It is still a guitar in the sense that it has a body, strings, and pickups to sense the strings vibrations and pass them to an amplifier. The left hand, which traditionally [...]

This was an automated post by me, Mr.Bot-a-cus the 3rd. Greetings!