Holidays are coming ! ( Somehow I cannot pronounce that scentence without thinking of the legendary Coca Cola add with the noisy trucks that splurge into a quiet little town, forcing them to drink soda) So we all know what that means : Some free time off work, and lots of family around the house. An ideal point to go sit upstairs .. alone and start an awesome geeky project of your own. Seriously, when you should find yourself bored into a comatosed state by cousin Joey trying to explain to you how Baseball works while the entire family huddles around the tv, you catch yourself thinking ‘I must have SOMETHING better to do ? ‘ We have come to save you with some nice possible suggestions.
Geek project 1 : Build your own fileserver. Time to setup a beige box upstairs to store all your files.
Requirements :
- An old PC and some hard drives
- Nas4Free operating system
- KW405 podcast to explain
- Nas4Free documentation Wiki
Result : Kickass File server.
Geek project 2: Build your own Home server. Want to step it up ? Try Amahi : A full blown home server with a fileserver, webserver, mediastreaming, vpn acces and one click apps.
Requirements :
- A beige box with some ram and a hard drive.
- Amahi operating system
- KW0054 podcast to explain
- The Amahi tutorial
Result : Awesome central machine for tons of point and click functionalities.
Geek project 3 : Build your own arcade machine. Tired of those 764 frames per second shooters with infinite resolution ? Why not step back into pure nostalgia and run a plethora of 8 bit games from your own home.
Requirements.
- Beige box (or a Virtual Machine for all I care) with some ram.
- Mame
- Mame quickstart guide (32 bit Windows Tutorial)
- Tm’s guide on building your own arcade system (Requires understanding spouse AT LEAST)
Result : Instant friendship with all your neighbours. (Since you have just built your very own arcade system)
Geek project 4 : Build your own internet radio station : Tired of listening to adds on Spotify ? Have you recently assaulted a co-worker with his/her transistor radio while trying to point out he/she has no taste ? Unable to take your favorite collections with you ? Weep no more. Build your own Icecast and stream the music from the comfort of your own home.
Requirements.
- Beige Box, Virtual machine or some CPU cycles on one of your machines at home.
- A music collection
- Icecast
- This tutorial for Ubuntu
- This tutorial for Windows users
Result : Global musical domination. (if you have a big enough pipe) If not : The ability to listen to your music EVERYWHERE.
So .. what are YOU planning to do for the holidays ? What geek projects have we missed that are essential to getting through these dark days ? Impress us with your geek-fullness in the comments section. We dare ya !