Gloriously pointless, yet frightfully well carried out.
Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
131–140 of 168 posts
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#132Haha. Tangentially - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_Me_to_Heaven - "developed by Carrot Pop which measures the vertical distance that a mobile phone is thrown. Players compete against each other by seeking to throw their phones higher than others, often at the risk of damaging their phones."
Also: Smackbook - https://stevenbock.me/Smackbook-Yosemite/ (more modern recreation or the original) A way to switch virtual desktops on macbooks with a hard drive by slapping them on the side.
Also iAlertU. It used the sudden motion sensor to make a loud noise like a car alarm. The fun part was that you could use the remote to turn it off and that kept up with the theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4XZpU1zzWs&pp=ygUHaWFsZXJ0d...
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#133Haha. Tangentially - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_Me_to_Heaven - "developed by Carrot Pop which measures the vertical distance that a mobile phone is thrown. Players compete against each other by seeking to throw their phones higher than others, often at the risk of damaging their phones."
My first phone was a RugGear RG930. If you think Nokia’s 3310 was built like a brick, then this thing may as well have been a rubberised titanium brick. It was so solid I used to play ‘catch the phone’ with friends, and it ended up face down on concrete more times than I can count, but I don’t think it ever sustained so much as a scratch. If the RG930 ran Android, I reckon I could go for the high score.
I had a rugged android phone from Blackview that was deemed to survive terrible stuff...I managed to drop it into the ocean.
Bought another one for my significant other after changing the screen of her samsung smartphone 3 times. She has used it for more than a year, it slipped from her jacket once from my motorbike. Someone found it 1h later in the middle of a roundabout face down with tire marks on the case. He saw it only because I was calling it and it has some notification lights at the back. Not a single scratch on the screen! Her only complaints is the quality of the photos taken with the camera.
I wish they were supported by alternative roms like lineageos or /e/os.
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#134Reminds me of knock-age, a perl script to send commands by "nudging" your thinkpad (hitting it not too strong).
The original link was at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/l-knock... but it's gone and archive.org doesn't seem to have a copy anymore :(
There's a fork at https://github.com/esantoro/knockage it seems
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#135Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson had a subplot where a main character used morse code on his keyboard, or some other layered encoding on top of the keyboard, to write software and communicate surreptitiously even while his screen was being recorded.
Came across that book just recently in one of those free book libraries, tell me, was it a good read?
I have read and can recommend everything by the author between and not including 'The Big U' and 'REAMDE'.
REAMDE disappointed me so much, that I haven't touched his later novels.
'Snow Crash' reads like a graphic novel, 'Anathem' is just unique and maybe in my fav top 10 (not considering 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' :), 'Cryptonomicon' + 'The Baroque Cycle' are slow but very rewarding.
'The Diamond Age', what can I say, do yourself a favour and start reading it now.
Sure I forgot one or two, it's been a long time.
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came across that book just recently in one of those free book libraries, tell me, was it a good read?
A lot of my guy friends have a crush on a lead character in it (not Elias or Elon, but a similar name?) and praise it extensively. I apparently read it one time and remember nothing about it, so YMMV but if you’re into hacker guys, you’ll apparently love it!
Enoch Root?
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's an amazing book. But skip the last 20 pages, they're deeply unsatisfying writing.
The Neal Stephenson experience. That, and the 20-page grad-level dissertation on some esoteric subject randomly in the middle of the book. The man’s truly one of the best out there, and I’m convinced a more aggressive editor would ruin him, but it wouldn’t be a Stephenson without some real head scratching authorial decisions.
Don't forget the cereals!
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#138This is how you destroy your hinge.
Not the Thinkpad in the video though
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#139Just what I've been looking for
Re: Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut
#140This reminds me of that section in the book Cryptonomicon, where our hero is programming on a laptop that he knows is being spied upon using Tempest and probably more, and is using clandestine input via morse code on the shift (?) key. I really enjoyed that book.
At risk of derailing the conversation, I finished Cryptonomicon earlier this year and really enjoyed it. Any recommendations for similar books?
I thought Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir had a similar "feel", though it's more future-looking rather than past looking.
Daemon and Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez is another book (printed as two books, because reasons) that is ~1K pages but I've read 3 times (like Cryptonomicon).
Others in this thread have recommended The Baroque Cycle, but I just couldn't get into it. Ditto with Anathem. Maybe I should give them another try. However, I do love Diamond Age and Snowcrash.