I have an old laptop. It’s a PIII 733Mhz Dell Inspiron 5000, which you may recall weighs about as much as a small Yugo. This laptop is old enough that I don’t use it, but good enough for some use. So I’ve decided to attempt the creation of a Linux based LCD picture frame. I’m not the first to attempt this and this guy has some good guidance.

So far, I’ve managed successful disassembly, and the bits and pieces still boot. The system is currently running Fedora Core 5 off an IBM Travelstar HD.

Considerations for the future are:

1. Should I boot off some solid state media instead, and if so, where should pics be stored?

2. Can I run this PIII without a fan if it’s a sufficiently open case?

3. Do I want to try to remount the trackpad and keyboard, or just go with auto-networking and remote management?

4. Software details: auto-login, scripts to start the pictures, poll the usb port and add pics, FTP access to pics directory

5. Mounting and framing.

I’ll keep the geeks up to date on the project, especially when I need some help.

I was going to mention this yesterday but I didn’t get to it. I had to recently get my credit card renewed due to fraudulent activity by two online outfits: CCBILLEU and EUROCG.com. Both for smaller amounts and supposedly for subscription services. As I was talking to Visa, they realized that those are fraudulent operations and that my credit card had been compromised. So, while I am waiting for a new card, I just wanted to alert all of you to the fact. It pays to check those statements every once in a while. Unfortunately, I have no further information on how this happend and how many people are affected by it. Just be on the lookout.

Someone is using your wireless connection? You want them to stop? You could set up WEP/WPA, some MAC filtering, VPN or something. Or, you could redirect all their web requests to kittens or make all their webpages render upside down! Here’s how.

Just read a horrible book review (the review itself was bad, the book — who knows) on Slashdot. Buried in the discussion was a link to a pretty cool article where someone made a camera from an inexpensive flatbed scanner.

http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/alumni/02-04/michael/ScannerCamera/index.html