November 8, 2005

There were 3 posts published on November 8, 2005 (this is page 1 of 1).

Combating Graffiti

I met a friend for lunch today at NeoMonde off of Hillsborough Street and Method Road. For some reason, probably its proximity to The University, the West Raleigh area has a bad problem with graffiti. As I exited the Beltline, I saw a road sign had been marked by some stupid gang. Stuff like just makes the place look trashy.

Luckily, the City of Raleigh has gotten serious about graffiti, setting up a team to deal with it. By contacting the graffiti team citizens can help clean up their neighborhoods.

I had plugged their number (831-6001) into my cellphone, so I decided to try it out. After one ring, a cheerful voice answered “City of Raleigh graffiti hotline.”

Pretty cool. I then gave her the location of the graffiti and she told me a crew would be sent out.

If more people report the graffiti they find, perhaps the taggers will move on. It certainly isn’t worth painting something if you know that it could be gone a day later. I’m hoping that by cleaning up the city, people can take more pride in where they live.

Bookmark This Site: Hack-A-Day

My search for a hack for the Odessey’s navigation system led me to an amazing site: Hack-A-Day. It’s a site which features imaginative uses for everyday tools – things people have dreamed up. It’s a dream website for geeks like me!

Look at the stories on today’s homepage: calculating bullet speed using Audacity (a sound editor app), a dj record cleaner, a mini camera flash coil launcher, a force-feedback turntable for “scratching” MP3s, and an opentracker aprs transmitter, among others.

I love websites that give me ideas for new products and new technologies. This one’s going on the blogroll this very minute.

Check it out, y’all!

Hacking The Honda

We recently bought a Honda Odessey minivan (more on that in a moment) with a Honda Navigation system installed. I’ve been highly impressed with the system – the user interface, the accuracy, and the speed are all top-notch. While the system is close to perfect, the hacker in me can’t resist wondering what else could be done with it.

I did some searches and sure enough, there are tools out there that can modify the software. Tricks that can be done include putting new “skins” on the display, getting rid of the “nag screen” at startup, and changing the background image to any picture you’d like. Pretty cool in itself, but what if you want more? The system runs Windows CE on a SH-4 processor, just like the Sega Dreamcast. Linux has been ported to the Dreamcast, and I own one of them. Theoretically, I have all the tools I need to port Linux to the navigation system!

Why would I, you ask? Potential uses would be to create a navigation app more tailored to my needs – there are a few good Linux-based map tools out there. I could get a better handle on the data the GPS is sending: more detailed travel statistics than I currently have. Other, more entertaining uses would be to put an MPEG4 or MPEG2 player on the system – allowing you to watch video on the dashboard console. The only limit is the hardware itself – how many ports are available, how much memory is installed, etc. And if I decide to go back to the original software, its easy to reset things back to the default software.

I’m not ready to muck around with our newly-purchased car just yet, but I’m sure having fun thinking about it!