Stephan Sokolow › Comments

I just bought a heat gun and shrink wrap from Harbor Freight, and I was totally blasted with the usefulness of shrink wrap. Here are just a few projects I came up with as far as my electronics workbench goes! I thought of a billion others, but they weren't necessarily relevant to my electronics revo... By: electricloser Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

"I think what they really mean is that it's the most brain-free way to get an arbitrary media file to play. (It's not "the tool for playing things best", it's "the best tool for playing just about any format on the first try") I know, as a Linux user, I never bother with it. (The bare MPlayer `-vo xv` output window is much lighter, does everything I need, has a far less complicated UI, and has less of a history of crashing or bugging out on me)" - Stephan Sokolow

"Eben Moglen had an interesting comment on that in one of his talks. (It think it was "Software and Community in the Early 21st Century") He said that "we don't want money, we just want compliance" was often a magic phrase when talking to companies. Apparently it's often a lot easier to get a company to cooperate without escalating to a full-blown lawsuit once they understand that you don't want monetary reparations for license violation, you just want what they should have been doing all along." - Stephan Sokolow

"Ahh. Phew. That means it's not being a cheapskate if people are too principled to listen to anything where they'd have to choose between paying and pirating." - Stephan Sokolow

This is a very easy instructable. It shows how to build, install and configure your own and secret NAS - System. It is cheap It is easy It is secret It is steampunk The idea behind this server was to hide it in a bokk or something similar. The basic system is a thin client wich ca... By: Horatius.Steam Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

Instructions on how to sharpen hedge shears, pruning shears and grass clippers using simple tools. Sharp tools make yard chores a lot faster and easier. This guide collects some of The Family Handyman's best tips on how to sharpen your tools at home. With our help, you'll get the edge you need fo... By: The Family Handyman Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

"So, am I a cheapskate because I prefer to get my music from legally-free sources like OCRemix and Jamendo? What if I spend most of my reading time on Fanfiction.net, spend most of my leisure time writing computer programs (also costs nothing)? What if I choose to boycott the RIAA, MPAA, and anyone who uses DRM (eg. Steam) and, when I do rarely spend the disposable portion of my university student budget income, I buy GOG.com games, used novels, and Arduino parts? So I think a song is worth 10¢ or less based on how much I spend playing it compared to other media I pay for. Sue me for my pocket lint." - Stephan Sokolow

A less potentially-patronizing alternative to How To Ask Questions the Smart Way. - Stephan Sokolow

"Latency, not throughput. Downloads were fast when I tried it a couple of years ago, but it could take up to a minute to start actually transferring when I clicked a link... even if that was the "next page" link for an index hosted within Freenet itself." - Stephan Sokolow

Reflow soldering using a toaster oven - Stephan Sokolow

"Last time I tried it, it was trickier to set up than other options and, since the indexes were stored within Freenet, the latency was horrendous even to just find things to download. ...not to mention the whole "critical mass" issue. When I tried it, it was mainly niche content and people using it for the novelty." - Stephan Sokolow

"Are you using an extension like RefControl? Did you follow the EFF's instructions for turning off the Referer header via about:config? Disqus is on a very short list of sites that break in confusing ways if the Referer header isn't EXACTLY what they expect. (99.999%+ of sites are fine if you set RefControl's default behaviour to Forge) If you do either of those things and want to fix Disqus without compromising elsewhere, make sure RefControl is installed and set an exception for "disqus.com"." - Stephan Sokolow

"I actually just figured out the problem. I use RefControl to forge referrer headers so things like Google Font Library and that copy of jQuery everyone loads off Google AJAX CDN can't track me. (It's defaulted to FORGE to requesting http://www.example.com/foo/bar... always gets http://www.example.com/ as its referrer) Setting an exception for "disqus.com" fixed it." - Stephan Sokolow

"If that's really true, then congrats. You're a freak of nature. Humans have two instinctive behaviours. For sharing property (scare things like toys and ice cream), we have to be taught. For sharing culture (eg. re-telling jokes, sharing gossip, singing songs with a group of friends, sharing recipes, etc.), we have a strong instinctive desire to do so and most people can't be trained OUT of it. When recordings and the like become duplicable at vanishingly small costs, our instincts start classing them as "culture" rather than "property" and sharing them becomes as much of a no-brainer as telling a joke to a friend without first phoning up the comedian and arranging to pay them a royalty." - Stephan Sokolow

"Any chance we could get a message informing users of RefControl that they need to whitelist "disqus.com" to get the comments to load? It took me several weeks of either missing comments or using alternate browsers before I thought to check that." - Stephan Sokolow

"...and apps which rely on no browser-specific standards actually have a chance of being installed on my system where Firefox is the dominant browser and Chrome is used only for testing my creations (and for Incognito Window while I wait for Firefox to be re-architected for single-window private browsing.) I think I'll stick to the common subset with things like HTML5 AppCache and wrappers which abstract away the difference between IndexedDB and WebSQL. (WebSQL is what WebKit implemented before it was decided that a standard shouldn't specifically require SQLite's implementation of SQL. IndexedDB is what was then switched to. According to caniuse.com, together, they cover every browser version with at least 0.93% market share except Opera Mini and IE versions prior to IE 10.)" - Stephan Sokolow

"Agreed. The damn piece of garbage is so fragile that I have to keep a copy of Opera around to read comments on TorrentFreak because Disqus (and nothing else I've ever run across) is broken by the tracking-protection and ad-blocking in my Firefox and Chrome setups." - Stephan Sokolow

Interesting looking tool for building and exploring digital logic circuits. - Stephan Sokolow

""Linux OS" has too many syllables to catch on, for the lay person, the "OS" part feels superfluous, and for geeks, it feels like they're losing an argument with Stallman of all people. Same reason "GNU/Linux" never catches. As far as most people are concerned, "Linux" is the word for all platforms which provide a glibc-compatible libc and X11 GUI... if you're lucky. Otherwise, they look at you funny when you insist it's not called "Ubuntu". Hell, it's hard enough getting laypeople to understand "Linux" when "Android" won't run "Ubuntu apps" but "Fedora" will." - Stephan Sokolow

Arduilay is an 8 channel AC relay box for use with Arduino, Max/MSP, Processing, etc.  I designed this system as an alternative to the USBDMX 4 channel relay option.  While DMX gives you dimming control, the setup is easily 5 times as expensive as this simple relay box. By: mbmosher Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

"If that's how you want to interpret things, feel free. This obviously isn't going to be a productive conversation, so I'm going to bow out now." - Stephan Sokolow

"Even if that were true (which it isn't), Harper keeps getting in because our elections system is broken. Last time, Harper won his majority government with roughly 30% of the popular vote because of how the ridings (electoral districts) are laid out (jerrymandered). Also, we don't have a two-party system, which complicates things. Up until the Progressive Conservative Party (what it says on the can) and the Reform (ultra-right corporatist/religious zealot) party merged into "The Conservative Party of Canada", they only won when the other parties got too corrupt and needed a kick in the pants. (Partly because the PC party actually had a sane approach to conservatism) Now, the left vote is split between the Liberals (center-left) and the NDP (further left) while the right-wing vote is unified." - Stephan Sokolow

An singular loudspeaker on the side of the road was enough to make me turn the car around, retrieve the treasure, and leave behind just the plywood "free" sign as I drove away with fixer-upper of vintage speaker. Three feet tall, and sporting four woofers, a port, and some mystery crossover/loudness... By: Robert Cohn Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

There are those times when the world is so luminous and beautiful, times when you find yourself mesmerized by the huge sky filled with stars, or the infinite universe in little pods and thistles. This ambient wall lamp is inspired by the beauty of nature and magic of light. It’s made with very comm... By: blissful2015 Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

Necessity is truly the mother of all inventions....and my case was no different.  About a year ago, I found myself with a dead battery for my Ryobi 18V cordless tools and no means of getting a new one as I was working overseas. So I came up with a setup to run my tools off AC (household current) saf... By: franco40 Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

Here's my instructable for a home build timelapse dolly. The pro rigs for this are pretty pricey, so I made my own :) Please vote if you like this project! By: rickadam Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

By: The King of Random Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

Finally a super project you will like when daylight goes by 6 and dark side captures. If you like or this helped you get into your shoes or inspired to do something similar or more creative than please don't feel shy to VOTE ! I will be contesting for LED contest which closes on 7th Jan 2013 so plea... By: samalert Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

My DIY column drill, which has been unbelievably in the top ten chart of most viewed Instructables of that month, deserved a good upgrade, what do I say, let's not be stingy, Top Ten deserves at least three great upgrades! So here they are: an addictional rail to easily shift up and down all the mec... By: andrea biffi Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow

In this instructable I will teach you how to make a modular Origami Slinky Designed by Jo Nakashima. All credit goes to him. This slinky can tumble down steps, but normal stairs are to big. It does work on smaller stairs. If you want, make a cool box out of cardboard or something, and give it as a g... By: nickcube4 Continue Reading » - Stephan Sokolow