Turn a calculator into a metal detector

I haven't tried it yet, but looks interesting (and easy).

http://www.instructables.com/id/HomeMade-Metal-Detector/

Migrating to Ubuntu Linux...

I have considered switching over my desktop environment from Windows XP to Linux for a few years now. This consideration has gone through my mind about three times now. Each time I have tried in the past, I have felt that the graphical Linux environment was not quite ready for the average desktop user. In the past I tried Mandrake Linux and Debian Linux with Gnome on top. I have definitely settled on Debian in general for non-graphical Linux servers I have built -- I find it the most intuitive and the apt package manager is so easy to use, I love it.

Well, I tried again last night by installing Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Desktop on my IBM Thinkpad Z61t which already had Windows XP Pro on it. In a word: amazed. The install was nearly flawless. I downloaded the ISO from the Ubuntu site, burned it to a blank CD, then booted off of the CD on my laptop. I should note that the CD is not only an installation CD, but it's also a Live CD -- meaning you can literally run the OS from the CD without even installing anything to your hard drive. It would be handy to have that CD with you when you travel just in case your main Windows or Linux installation decides to go belly up. Anyhow, after the Live CD has booted, a handy "Install" icon resides on the desktop. Clicking that launches the main Ubuntu install process to get Ubuntu onto your hard drive.

I started the install and it walked me through resizing my hard disk (120gb total) into two separate chunks without losing any data - one for the existing Windows XP install on an NTFS partition, and one for the upcoming Ubuntu install which would be formatted as ext3. I was amazed that my video, sound, touchpad, wifi, ALL worked fine out of the box. I had to tweak some sound settings to get my microphone to work. The only thing I have found that doesn't work out of the box is my integrated webcam, but I haven't researched that much yet to see if I can find drivers to make it work -- I'm hopeful.

The Gnome interface is very nice -- very "Mac OSX" like. You can turn on additional graphical effects for moving windows which are very cool. The OS came pre-loaded with TONS of apps, most everything that the average desktop user might need -- the OpenOffice suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, etc.), graphics apps, Internet apps, and much more. I then found a couple of other things online to install some other apps such as Wine, which lets me run Windows apps right there within Linux. You can literally click on a Windows .exe file to install something, it's amazing. That is a nice piece of mind because if there is a Windows app that I absolutely need to have, I can likely still run it while running Linux. It really makes the transition that much easier.

My next step is to do some testing on my desktop machine. The tricky part there is that I would need to install it on a RAID-1 setup which is running on a Promise RAID controller. I need to do more research to determine if resizing that partition will even work -- and if it does work, if I will be sure to not lose any data. I have very important things stored on that RAID, so I will definitely be backing that up before I try anything fancy on my main computer ;)

I definitely think that there is still a bit more work to be done to get the Linux desktop environment truly ready for the average non-techy computer user, but it's getting very close.

My days running Windows (and other Microsoft products fro that matter) are numbered...