Hacks

In the first part we created a list of things we want to block on occasion. The point of this part is to make it easy to switch from full access to limited access. Enter, OpenWrt.

The dilemma

This semester I had a handful of exams rather late in the year, weeks after classes ended. Now, the Internets are a pretty interesting place and I find it extremely difficult to not glance at the feed reader and all the other gizmos rather often, when in front of the screen. I saw three possible solutions:

a) Work analog. (Pretty unrealistic, and think of the poor trees…)

b) Force yourself to not get distracted. (Sounds as likely as most New Year's resolutions.)

c) Turn off only the distractions, or at least minimize them.

If you have an amplifier (or something similar) with a remote and your computer attached to it, there are probably several buttons that don't do anything in this configuration. In my case, it's the buttons available to control a CD or tape deck. Wouldn't it be neat to repurpose those?

The end of the semester is finally inching closer and one course in particular ended with a quite successful final presentation for our team of 3. The objective was to use several crates of Lego Mindstorms material to build a working model of two atm machines.

Rebooting ATM image is CC BY-NC-NA from n2b. Our ATM not quite identical to original.