Systm: Wardriving in 60 seconds, AK-47 vs. HD, EL noise
Systm: Wardriving in 60 seconds, AK-47 vs. HD, EL noise
36:55

Systm: Wardriving in 60 seconds, AK-47 vs. HD, EL noise

Culture
[ Sound effects ] ^M00:00:04 >> Patrick: Today's Systm is sponsored by the United States Air Force, Netflix, and GoDaddy.com. Wardriving in 60 seconds, let's take an episode to address some of your questions on today's Systm. ^M00:00:15 [ Music ] ^M00:00:38 >> David: Welcome to Systm, I'm Patrick Norton. >> Patrick: And I'm David Culkins, wait, scratch that, reverse it. There is one thing we need to get out of the way. >> David: What's that? >> Patrick: Other than our identities; this is for Justin's sake. Like you he's a regular viewer, unlike you he sent us a lot of email or more accurately he sent us the same email a lot of times. >> David: We'll talk about all the other stuff we have for this episode in 2 minutes, but right now we want to keep Justin placated. He keeps emailing us every week, without fail, I don't know if he's got a little thing set up in Mac or something, "You should do an episode of Systm on Wardriving." Wardriving, as Wikipedia calls it, is the act of searching for WiFi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle using a portable computer or PDA. We've seen it with cars, bikes, scooters, planes, trains, walking. >> Patrick: Sitting on a mountainside. >> David: Yeah, you get the idea. So, for Justin, we present Wardriving in 60 seconds, 3, 2, 1, go. >> Patrick: Grab a notebook with onboard WiFi, better yet, plug in a PC card with USB WiFi adapter that accepts external antennas, connect that external antenna and the a GPS receiver if you want to map the locations. Two; install Net Stumbler if you're running Windows or KisMac of you're running OS10. Three; find somebody else to drive and beg, borrow, or steal a power inverter large enough to fill your NoteBook. Four; install your antennas on the car, plug in your inverter, connect all the cables and plant your ass to driver's seat, whoops, sorry, scratch that, passenger's seat and make sure you secure your seatbelt. Five; fire up your software and drive around populated areas and see who's left their wireless access points unprotected, tah dah, you're Wardriving. >> David: Which does beg the question, is using someone else's WiFi access legal? This is where I say, IANAL, I am not a lawyer. >> Patrick: Yeah, I mean -- >> David: It's probably not depending on which municipality and or city and or state you live in -- >> Patrick: Right >> David: or country, because we do have lots of international viewers. >> Patrick: But if you're sitting at somebody's house and your glowing screen is there and they walk out and they ask you to get off of their WiFi, it's probably a good idea to get off their WiFi before they call the cops. >> David: Or give you a wet wily. >> Patrick: Or worse. >> David: Ya know, they probably should have locked down their network anyways like I do. The biggest problem I have when I'm like stealing somebody else's WiFi is I always end up getting a worm and a virus, I mean, I swear to God. I think, well we, my wife and I just moved, we couldn't get Internet right away, ya know. >> Patrick: So you borrowed a cup of WiFi from the neighbors. >> David: So, borrowed one of the open WiFi nodes, which is course called Default, it's always called a default, and like within 2 days my computer was just filled with worms and adware and everything, I was like ughhh! We finally got our own installation of, ya know, Internet access and I got my router back up, which had a Firewall, I know it's crazy, but, ya know, a Firewall and now my computer is, once again, virus free, thank you. >> Patrick: Do you have to like scan it to remove the worms and viruses? >> David: Oh my God, yeah, it was like a week or so -- >> Patrick: That's when you came in you were like, my machine has syphilis. >> David: Yeah, I really want you to do a Tekzilla episode specifically on my machine because I had installed permanently, ya know, anti-spamware, anti-adware, all these other things and the software that I had didn't see anything. I knew something was there because all of a sudden, ya know, like my normally ripping fast computer went down to like negligible speed. I installed 4 different packages before Malwarebytes, and so this is my big plug for Malwarebytes, found it, the other, the one package that I had, which was Prevx CSI, didn't see anything ever, I installed 3 more packages, which you had recommended 2 of them to me, didn't see anything, Malwarebytes found it, found it like deep in the registry -- >> Patrick: You've have some frightening crud on your system too; I don't know what a person >> David: Oh, it was >> Patrick: is like doing at their house but. >> David: I don't know either but, I mean you could not use Netscape, Netscape became completely unusable because -- >> Patrick: Maybe we'll do a semantic research. >> David: But anyways, so, that's my plug for Malwarebytes and for Firewalls and for not Wardriving because you don't, I mean, you know, it's kind of like bar-hopping with no condoms, you never know what you're gonna end up with. >> Patrick: Speaking of variables and Wardriving, say if the software we recommended doesn't work with your WiFi card or you've got antenna options galore, go to 3 dBi Omni for urban environments 5 dBi is better for suburban rural flat places a directional antenna's great if you want to set it on a hillside and poach, or if you want to use a Nintendo DS, Sony, PS, or iPhone there are applications available for Wardriving on those. We're gonna leave you the joy of sorting this out Justin with the help of our links in the show notes. >> David: Speaking of WiFi antennas, what's with you getting all these emails about cantennas? Case in point, Patrick from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin says, "Since you're looking for ideas how about making a DIY cantenna, you know, the Pringle's type can used to help retrieve long-ranch WiFi signals? It's not a robot or 3D laser but it would be cool to see it created and used in the wild. Patrick from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin." >> Patrick: Alright, I have a checkered past for WiFi antennas, our concern back when WiFi antennas got cheap I spent a lot of time puttering with them. Now, for Patrick's question I built cantennas out of coffee cans in the past and I've moved on, I recommend avoiding the Pringle's cantennas you've mentioned, it's too much work for what you get in terms of the performance, but I really suggest you check out episode 45 of Systm, practically free WiFi antennas when we built 3 antennas. Okay, well, we built a 6 dBi Omni directional out of a single end connector, a bi-quad directional from a sardine can and some copper house wiring and a pair of easy 12 [inaudible] reflectors for your WiFi router or access point. Basically, they're easy, they're cheap, they're fun, and I'll hit the cantenna thing again if you guys want me to but it's just there's so many amazing like 1620 dBi directional antennas that are so cheap now. >> David: DIY is very cool most of the time yet sometimes it's literally cheaper to buy it pre-built, done, ready to go than it is to like do it yourself, you know, I mean, and, ya know, it works, well, theoretically it works -- >> Patrick: Most of the time. >> David: Most of the time it works because you're buying, ya know, somebody else's product, so, ya know, in the beginning of WiFi the cantennas were a good idea because there was not such, ya know, item available. >> Patrick: Well, if you could you might be spending several hundred dollars for a decent directional antenna now you can get one you just have to find like, ya know, 7 dBi, 5 dBi antennas in your local computer store. >> David: I will say from personal experience though that most of these WiFi adapters tend to be very much Windows oriented and I have a friend who has a Mac and he's bought a couple different antennas, none of which has worked with his Mac, for like WiFi boosters. >> Patrick: That's scientifically improbable even though -- >> David: Improbable but, well, it's basically the Mac refused to recognize the USB thing. >> Patrick: Oh, well that's different. >> David: That's different. >> Patrick: They actually talk about that in the, actually in the -- >> David: In episode 45? >> Patrick: no, not in episode 45. >> David: Any future episodes? >> Patrick: Well, basically, don't even get me started. >> David: So any ways. >> Patrick: If you've got a Mac make sure you actually have Mac support for your device. Let's take a moment to thank one of our sponsors, GoDaddy.com. If you want to make an impact on-line GoDaddy.com has what you need starting at less than $5.00 a month Deb Dot Web Hosting that includes 99 point 9% up-time, 24/7 support and free access to the GoDaddy Hosted connection. The place to quickly install over 50 free applications like [inaudible], [inaudible], [inaudible], OS Commerce and quite a few more. GoDaddy.com makes it easy to customize your own virtual dedicated server, choose from one of three popular plans or select your own Minutes or Windows server with all the plan options you need. Now, you want to get a discount, enter in the code SYS5, that's S, Y, S, 5 when you check out and you'll save an additional $10.00 off any order of $40.00 or more, some restrictions do apply please see the site for details. Do us a favor here at Systm get your piece of the Internet at GoDaddy.com, support us by supporting them. >> Patrick: You up for a robot question? >> David: I'd love a robot question. >> Patrick: Nick has an email about episode 40 the DIY Combat Robot, he says, "I liked that you built a robot frame out of scrap parts from tools, can you send me a wiring diagram with everything on it to make that robot? It would be nice if you could also do an episode on wiring the robot with everything including the transmitter and receiver, I have a team, we're just starting, we'd like to go to RoboGames, thanks, Nick." >> David: So, Nick, the short answer, did you watch that episode, I mean, basically, it's just the wiring is very, very simple, it's, basically, you have a battery pack, which then goes to your speed controller and that goes to your motor and it's just really a pair of wires going from one to the next. But just because a lot of people were very interested in our Combat Robot episode we're gonna be doing a 3 or 4 episode series in the future building a full heavy-weight 220 pound Combat Robot. We're gonna show ya -- we're gonna put a flame thrower on it but we're also gonna leave it up to the -- our audience as to what kind of weapon we want to build. Of course this depends on how much money I can sucker out of Roger 'cause, ya know, he still hasn't figured out that we have his credit card number, so so good idea. >> Patrick: What would be some -- you've watched quite a bit of Combat Robot activity, what do you recommend for just the most mayhem inducing, violence, fight winning -- >> David: The best driving, honestly, I mean it sounds cheesy and it sounds totally non-sequitter and it sounds like I'm avoiding the question, the single greatest common denominator of winning Combat Robot's is driving ability. If you have the mostest kickest ass weapon in the whole world that you spend 5,000, $10,000 on, it's all pure titanium, ya know, with all these, ya know, amazing 48 bullet power packs behind them and you can't put that weapon in front of the other guy, it's worthless, okay? And I've seen this time and time and time and time and time again, so much so that it is actually a cliche that -- >> Patrick: Weapons don't win. >> David: weapons don't win drivers win. It's just like NASCAR if you're -- if you got the best, mostest, awesomest Ferrari in NASCAR and, ya know, Roger's driving, you ain't gonna win, you know? I mean, if you've got the crappiest Chevy and Patrick's driving, you've got a pretty good chance of winning. >> Patrick: As long as I finish. >> David: But anyways, getting back to the real question at hand as far as the wiring diagram, it's really just that simple, it's battery to speed controller, speed controller to motor, it's really, it's not much different than hooking up speakers to an amplifier. >> Patrick: What about the little remote control thingy's? >> David: It's color-coded. >> Patrick: Really? >> David: It's -- you can't -- and with most speed controllers you literally can't even put it in backwards, it's the same 3 wire cable that we were using in last week's episode with the RIFD controllers and it's that same cable and most speed controllers have a little divot on it so that you have to put it in the proper polarized way, so. >> Patrick: I tried, hey, more recently we did an episode on destroying hard drives or more accurately destroying the data on hard drives. We had a lot of responses to this one; let's start out with Michael's. >> David: Michael says, "I love the episode you did on permanently wiping hard drives but I had a few questions I hope you could answer. Number one, would drilling a few holes in the platter eliminate access to the data? Number two, does reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows wipe the drive sufficiently? Thank, Michael. Now, if you're not being hunted by the National Security Agency, yeah drilling a few holes in the platter will be more than enough to stop most folks from getting the data off of your hard drive. >> Patrick: That said, formatting the drive, though even if you reinstalled Windows, isn't very secure especially if you run a quick format, which essentially wipes the record of where data is located on your drive without actually removing the drives themselves, which basically means any space on the hard drive that isn't overwritten by your installation of Windows, if somebody for some reason decides to search that drive for files, maybe they lose a file and they're gonna search around for that file, they'll discover all of your files that weren't overwritten that can be kind of scary. >> David: Case in point, and this should be added even to the point of using the trash, ya know, the Recycle Bin, just because your throwing something in the Recycling Bin and clicking, ya know, Empty Recycle Bin; this literally doesn't wipe it off your hard drive it's analogous to -- >> Patrick: Taking down the sign. >> David: tearing down the sign that says, "Here I am." Now, -- >> Patrick: Or tearing down the sign that says, "New York is over there." >> David: Yeah, if somebody -- >> Patrick: New York's still there. >> David: looking for New York and they don't see that sign, if it's your grandmother, they might be confused, if it's somebody who really wants to find New York they can still find New York. You have to nuke New York to get rid of it, okay? So, that's the thing with any kind of data elimination. There's several software programs out there that will actually let you zero your hard drive, and when I say zero your hard drive that means that all of the ones and the zeros, little bits all over your hard drive, they're just literally rezeroing -- >> Patrick: [whispering] The entire platter we talked about a bunch in the episode. >> David: Well, I'm a redundant guy, everybody says that I like to repeat you so, I'm just, ya know, playing to type. >> Patrick: Any how, definitely run some wiring. [Inaudible] booting new some of our personal favorites I think. Did you like that one? >> David: I did. >> Patrick: Was it good for you? >> David: Uh, ya know, builds character. >> Patrick: Rod adds, "Hey Patrick, after watching episode 74 Systm I thought I'd remind you of the best most entertaining way to destroy hard drives." ^M00:13:49 [ Gun Shots ] ^M00:14:02 [ Silence ] ^M00:14:14 >> Patrick: Feel free to use this video to your heart's content. >> David: That's a fine example of the second amendment in action and a fine collection of weapons. >> Patrick: We need an AK-47. >> David: We do -- >> Patrick: And some shotguns. >> David: And, ya know, has Roger been misbehaving again? >> Patrick: No >> David: The tennis ball shooter isn't good enough? >> Patrick: No >> David: Why? >> Patrick: I'll show you later. Did you ever see what a [inaudible] round could from like -- >> David: Yes >> Patrick: a mile away? >> David: Yes I have. >> Patrick: You telling me you don't want that? Alright, obviously I miss you, I love the second amendment it's my friend it's next to the first amendment for a reason. "Hi, this might be an interesting read before you consider any non-free hard drive wiping, go to 16systms.com slash 0Mike." Mike's raised a legit question, a very legitimate question. Is all this data wiping fura overkill? He sent us a link to the 16Systms.com Great 0 Challenge. "A challenge to confirm whether or not a professional established data recovery firm can recover data from a hard drive that has been overwritten with zero's a single time. Once, once round, one single round of puking zero's onto the drive and it's interesting. >> David: Or, as the folks from 16Systms put it, lots of good usable hard drives are ruined permanently because, "Many people believe that in order to permanently delete data from a modern hard drive that multiple overrides with random data, mechanical grinding, degaussing, incinerating must be used." We actually agree with the folks at 16Systms, not just because of the name similarity but because most folks, a basic wipe is more than enough to protect their data. That means you just wipe it out with zeros once and then you can sell the hard drive, you can reuse the hard drive, whatever you need. It's interesting that as far as we know no data recovery firms will pick up the challenge, so that's a good point, this challenge, basically, like 16Systms will give anybody a whole bunch of money if they can prove that they can get the data off of a hard drive platter after a single zeroing. So, skip the gutman stuff and run a quick erase on Boot and nuke you should be safe. >> Patrick: Alright, Danny writes in from East Bourne, United Kingdom, "Why does the EL emit that high pitched noise? Isn't there a way to get rid of it, it would just drive me crazy?" Love the show. Thank you Danny, and Danny's from the United Kingdom the lovely East Bourne. >> David: What emits that [sound effect]? So, there's two different things that can emit it but the most common reason for the high-pitch frequency is because you're going from DC to AC and when there's AC current it, basically, is vibrating a plate in its alternating state and the plate inside actually becomes a speaker, becomes a ribbon driver. >> Patrick: But most of the time, sometimes you can hear it if you press your ear up against -- >> David: Yeah >> Patrick: any kind of decent NoteBook power spot, you usually can't hear it unless you basically jam your ear up near it and listen very quietly. >> David: But if, for example, you've got like a Mac, ya know, the Mac's got the little apple on the back? If you put your head real close to that you can actually -- it does exist and it's just one of those unfortunate things with AC current, and that's what you're doing. In order to get EL to work it has to be AC it can't work on DC, at least so much as I know. >> Patrick: So sorry. Hey, what'd you think about Andrew's idea, we had an email from Andrew who wants to cover an entire MacBook with a sheet of Electroluminescent material? Glowing the MacBook. >> David: Sound a little crazy but I really, really like the idea, so the thing to do if you're going to cover your entire NoteBook front with EL Sheet it is, I would say two things, number one, be creative don't just put an EL Sheet there, I would make sure that you're running it through some sort of, ya know, laser printer or something like that so that you have some sort of negative on top of it so that it's showing something through, ya know, some dragon design or something cool. If it's just EL you're, wow, you're lighting up the room -- >> Patrick: So you're not big on subtle is what you're saying. >> David: Yeah, ya know, I want something; you should have something cool there. And like we've showed with, ya know, the overlays, ya know, so you can do that. Secondly you probably don't want to kill your laptop so if you're gonna do this make sure that the EL, not only the sheet itself but all the wires and the transformer, are very well and good insulated there's a very simple way to do that. For the EL Sheet itself all you have to do is use some very thin, I would say Lexan [assumed spelling] polycarbonate is the -- Lexan is the trade name from GE it's also sold by Bear Company [assumed spelling] as Macrolon [assumed spelling] but the generic is called polycarbonate. I would get some very thin polycarbonate as thin as you can buy, it does not in any way need to be thick because it doesn't need to be bullet proof, what it does need to do is insulate and it needs to bend a little bit. And polycarbonate is gonna bend much better without tearing or breaking than acrylic, if you use acrylic it's gonna break, don't even bother wasting your money with acrylic. So, you're gonna use polycarbonate and you're gonna cover it, now the real question is are you putting this plate on top of your existing back cover or are you peeling off the back cover and replacing that? If you're peeling off the whole back cover -- >> Patrick: I choose option A. >> David: Yeah >> Patrick: It's messy. >> David: Definitely, if you're peeling off the back cover there's a good chance that you're gonna end up shorting out your screen and really destroying your laptop and to say that this is out of warranty is a gross understatement. >> Patrick: Because the lids on those are actual more structural members of the MacBook, leave the lid on. >> David: Yeah, so you really want to wrap it around, but beyond that there's no reason you can't do that. There's even no reason that you shouldn't be able to run that off your USB adapter as far as the transformer. There should be enough current, it's kind of iffy depending on how big of a EL Sheet you're using. And again, the larger the sheet the more amperage it takes so you have to consider carefully how much, ya know, you want to put on. I would say the way to do it is to test it, simply put, without putting it on, get a USB adapter, put that against one of the very small transformers -- you shop around on the Internet the ones we used on our episode were actually the medium sized transformers, you can get them as small as about your thumb, like this big, so you can get something that small, which would probably charge a smaller sheet probably about this big maybe not as big as like a whole NoteBook and then run it that way. Just as long as, again, you're insulating everything, there should be no exposed metallic wires, if you've got exposed insulated wires that's okay, but make sure you're soldering everything tight, that you're using shrink tubing, things like that, and the EL itself is encapsulated in polycarbonate. >> Patrick: Good to know. Router questions. >> David: And if you do this Andrew I really, really, want to see the final shot, take a photo or video or something like that and send it to us 'cause I really want to see what it's gonna look like. [sound effect] It's time now for our Netflix sponsor Movie Pick of the Week. This week, Amazon Women on the Moon; this is one of my all time favorite movies. If you like gags, in jokes, non-stop satire then you're finally ready for Amazon Women of the Moon. It's like watching, ya know, I grew up watching really bad black and white TV, ya know, like PBS stuff and stuff like this and like they'd always break the film like right in the middle of it and this plays off that. It's an anthology grouping 21 different comedy skits in the movie that parodies through a team of late-night surfing TV and trying to watch and old movie that kept snapping. Ostensibly the night feature is about Amazon Women on the Moon, which never actually plays correctly and then goes to commercial breaks and gets switched between, ya know, remote control stuff, bad reruns, general TV nuttiness. I [inaudible] appearances by such early 80's celebrities such as Arsenio Hall, Carrie Fischer, [inaudible]; this is great; Cybil Danning [assumed spelling] and David Allen Grier. Amazon Women on the Moon promises to be a fun romp through late-night TV land so put it in your Netflix queue today, no really and don't forget the other 100,000 plus titles available including Blu-ray movies you're bound to find any movie or TV show you're looking for and with 40 shipping centers almost all deliveries happen in just one business day and you don't have to pay a thing for the shipping. Plans start at $4.99 but you're a Systm viewer so we've got the hook-up for ya, you can get a free that's FREE trial today by signing up at WWW.Netflix.com slash SYSTM, SYSTM. [sound effect] Looking forward we wanted to share some of the odder requests we've gotten. >> Patrick: Not just requests. >> David: Fiendish requests and what I like about this request is it shows that we don't just speak to the geeks out there or the robot people we really have a wide selection of viewers. >> Patrick: Geeks, and geeks that smoke pot. >> David: So, this letter begins, "I don't know if you guys are against this but would you teach us how to grow weed indoors ala a California Grow Law using a guide like this but modifying it with a Linux controlled heat lamp, air controlled system with cool console stations?" >> Patrick: Somebody's done this with one of our [inaudible] controller already, I'm sure. >> David: I have no doubt. "Further, how to hide this room in a house via vault doors and locks, to add monitors and sensors and how to do this on the cheap would all be an amazing show." But wait, "Make a frig and a TV system in there with its own private VPN and make it a nerd hideout with ability to grow lots of pot. Sincerely, Brandon." So Brandon, yeah, -- >> Patrick: We've got a relatively limited budget for parts on this episode and between the two of us we've scrapped up pretty much the knowledge that hydroponics involves plants, roots, and no dirt, so we're gonna -- and Lord knows there are experts in the field, probably within a few hundred yards of where we're recording right now, we're gonna see what we can do about learning how to do hydroponics and we'll get back to you. >> David: Although, we've covered the refrigerator. >> Patrick: That's -- you can do an RFID lock, I've actually been in a house that had a vault door configured. >> David: What do they call those? What's the -- panic rooms? >> Patrick: This wasn't a panic room this was a -- it's a sort of -- >> David: There's a show though, we definitely need the whole, we take the RFID refrigerator one step further and we have the bookcase hidden room thing where basically you take your standard door frame, so pick your household room, whatever, let's put a bookcase in there and show people how to turn the bookcase into a -- we have to do that, it'd be cool. >> Patrick: Okay, we'll work on that. We'll get back to you Brandon, we got some ideas there. >> David: Yeah, thanks Brandon, it's not the -- ya know, there's no moral judgments here it's just that, ya know, I get emails all the time about like, hi, I want to build a robot that will like serve me beer and clean my house and I have $50.00 to do it. I don't know the full hydroponics setup with the vault and TV and Linux controls can really be done for less than, ya know, $300.00 I just don't think that's -- >> Patrick: I think it's probably a lot more than that. >> David: I just don't. >> Patrick: I know, I'm still gazing on the idea of like, we're gonna build a vault, we're gonna take a bank vault, we're gonna transfer it to a house, we're gonna put an RFID lock, we're gonna hide it behind a bookcase. The DIY hydroponics question beat out our second favorite question, "Is it possible to make an ultimate TV antenna out of a metal flagpole by mounting it?" By Jonathan, AKA creepy number one. I got to be honest with you, the simplest mode would be to bolt a properly designed television antenna to the top of it some of the vintage ones that look like sort of over controlled Arrow fishing lures, they're like 6 feet long by 4 feet wide and they had a motorized device that would allow you to point it towards your, basically, wherever your various and sundry antennas were, 'cause outside of San Francisco they tend to be located in more than one place if you have more than one network. I can't imagine what you -- you'd actually have to cut off part of it and -- >> David: Yeah, it's really not gonna work that well, sadly, and I don't want to get into details but I forgotten more about RF than most people will ever know mostly because I used to work for a TLA in the 13MIC, if anybody knows what that means, and, yeah, so, in all sincerity though, antennas are actually, and most people don't understand this, the antenna length is a factor of the frequency being received by said antenna. So, even on your cars and things like that, what's happening is the antenna where it ends there's a little coil in there and actually that coil gets shifted depending on which radio station you're turning to to change the net length of the antenna, okay? Now, what's an interesting point about antennas like, even on our RFID antennas you can see them circling around and around and around, what does matter is the net length from start to finish linearly. What doesn't matter is how physically tall the actual antenna is so in essence if you're attaching like a radio or a TV to a flag pole just because it's taller you could get the same effect by measuring the height of the flag pole, let's say the height of the flag pole was actually within that factor of whatever frequency you were listening to, and using the same wire and just wrapping it around in a circle so long as at no point in time did the end of the circle touch any other part of the circle. >> Patrick: There are line of sight situations where getting an antenna to the top of a flag pole would be highly useful that's why radio towers tend to be higher. >> David: Correct >> Patrick: So, we're not gonna get into the [inaudible] fact which basically says your line of sight on an RF connection has to basically disrupted by the earth or a building or a forest or something. >> David: And then you can use things like Log Periodic antennas, which used to be very, very common on people's houses and then you see almost -- I haven't seen one in 10, 20 years. An LPA it's basically all those V's and there's these concentric V's which slowly get smaller and smaller and smaller as they go in. Anyways, the real answer is that it's really not gonna do that much for you, it -- >> Patrick: If something -- >> David: It's line of sight, if the tippy top of the antenna has a view over like a hill that you wouldn't have otherwise it might be a little bit -- >> Patrick: If any of the ham maniacs out there, and I say maniacs with love and affection, have an idea for modding a flag pole antenna into something that will actually boost or enhance the reception of a television signal kick us an email, Systm@revision3.com. Because I'm curious, I think you're curious but generally speaking turning a long vertical metal stick into a television antenna is not going to work very well. >> David: It's one of those things where if you haven't ever studied radio frequency it's an easy thing to think that that would help and so I really don't want to belittle the question, it's just that it wouldn't. I understand why you would think that but it's not the case. >> Patrick: I think -- he's like he's got this big aluminum stick out in the yard, can he use it -- >> David: Size matters. [sound effect] We'd like to take a moment now for a short message from the United States Air Force. >> I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Wagner, United States Air Force, I'm the Commander of the 45th Launch Support Squadron. Ya know, I've always wanted to be a part of the Space Program and the Air Force is an exciting place to do just that. Most people don't realize the Air Force Space Program is equivalent to NASA in size and scope and most cases larger. The Shuttle launches about once a month and I've got three launches here in the next 30 days so if you want to be in the Space Program the Air Force is great way to do it. [sound effect] >> Patrick: We got a question that got David a little excited. Thomas wrote in, "Hi everybody, I'd like to see Systm build a custom light saver that show off the different technologies highlighting advantages and disadvantages of each one." At this point I was giggling but Dave was getting very serious. "I'm especially interested in the modular [inaudible] system found in the custom [inaudible] shop; this is something that I've been interested in doing for some time but have yet to commit to doing, so especially since I've been teaching English in China from 2006 to the present." Which is probably a pretty cool experience. "For example, he says, there's Lexion [assumed spelling] K2, or K3, there's also EL savers and some other methods also making the blade and putting certain types of film in the blade that have different effects and the final result. Thank you, Thomas." >> David: So for those of you who care about such things like Lukes initial light saver was a Graphlex 3 cell and if you watch old movie, ya know, like Marilyn Monroe's like trotting down and they've got the big clicking things with the big -- >> Patrick: Yeah, light bulb. >> David: light bulbs, then you change out that single light bulb. Well, that tube is called a flash cell or flash gun and will connect to the side of a medium format camera and the original [inaudible] I think made them really cool was because it was a budget movie and so they couldn't fab everything to make it they just dubbed through junk and scrounged. And so actually I have the sad pathetic encyclopedia knowledge of just about every part that was used in Star Wars. My wife now, sadly, also has this encyclopedic knowledge but I can tell you that R2D2's hollow projectors were actually reading lights off old viscount three prop aircraft, I can tell you that Obie Won's [assumed spelling] light saver was in fact not a flash gun but was three parts, one was the grip from a flash gun, one was the top and the bottom was -- the top was an aerator from a British sink and the bottom was a knob from that same British sink and then the middle part was a World War I air grenade attachment which was actually a grenade launcher that you'd attach to the top of an M1 Grand and then launch and so that's where all those concentric circles were from. So, actually when Patrick brought this up I was like -- oh let me raid my garage and no really, [inaudible] including and it doesn't just get that bad I mean we have, I have all of Storm Trooper blasters and Hans Solo's blaster. >> Patrick: Actually you have Storm Trooper armor that you made, you have a full size replica R2D2. >> David: 2 full size replica R2D2. >> Patrick: Two >> David: So, bringing all this back down to stop annoying Roger about our constant segs, is is that we would love to do this I've actually played with -- the reason I actually knew about the electroluminescent for the electroluminescent episode was because about 10 years ago I tried to make an EL tube for one of my light savers, which didn't workout too well mostly because the EL technology hadn't advanced enough at that point and time but we would be happy to do this so I think on a future episode we will in fact be showing you how to make your own light savers, but the original ones were made from. I had never heard of the, ya know, interchangeable light saver system, I looked it up after, ya know, got this, we got this email, it's a really cool thing I mean, I wish I had that when I was young 'cause man it would have made my -- >> Patrick: You can actually sell all of the parts you use to combine into your light savers and probably retire at this point. >> David: As a gift, a wedding present actually I built a Graphlex because on eBay now, I mean back 10 years ago they were selling for 350, 400 bucks for the right ones. The wrong flash guns would sell for like 10 bucks to photo buffs, the right flash guns eventually the photo industry, the people in the photo industry knew about this, minimum 350 bucks, now a days they probably sell for like several thousand just because the hardcore geeks have bought them. But I will say, ya know, I'm not affiliated with them, the stuff that masterpiece replica does, I was very, I didn't think that they were gonna be any good, I reviewed their stuff, It's as good as like the stuff that I've used to replicate it. I mean, there's minor little tweaky things like if you have a real Graphlex, there's a little piece of silver tape over it but you could still make out Graphlex underneath it, which masterpiece replicas doesn't do, so that's sort of one of the key -- everything else is just dead spot on so. >> Patrick: This is also really cool to get into if you want to make steam punk costumes, if you want to make replica weapons because you're getting a Halloween thing on or costumes for some events; this can be really, or if you're getting ready to go to [inaudible]; this can be a really cool introduction basically how to look at a pile of parts and turn them into something that looks like it does something. >> David: Really in the beginning of Star Wars they had just no budget for most of their parts so they just went out to junkyards and things like the scrap yards and they would grab stuff like the hollow projector from R2D2's head is actually used all over the movies as are different flash guns, I mean, it looks cockpit and is an Xwing, you can actually see a different version of a flash gun along a rail and then you see R2D2's hollow projector mounted upside down looking up at him and all this other stuff. And I know I shouldn't know this but I do. >> Patrick: It's what makes you so much fun. >> David: Anyways, let's wrap this up. >> Patrick: One thing before we go, we got a bunch of DIY projects coming up in December, these will be fabulous for your holiday gifting purposes a colloid headphone amp, one of my personal favorite projects is going to be one of the first ones, it's a little pile of parts make your headphones sound amazing it's not gonna cost a lot of money. We're gonna talk about the various mounting choices with it, high-end compositors and all that good stuff in that episode. >> David: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Systm we know that we didn't build anything but we really wanted to address a lot of your questions just to let you guys know that we do pay attention and we do listen to what you say, but we figure that a lot of people don't ask the questions that other people are asking but are interested in the answers, so that's why we did this. We will be back next week with -- >> Patrick: David's gonna walk on the ceiling with a pair of magnetic boots we built, at least if his cook guy controller circuit works so that the boots don't let go and cause him to fall on his brains. >> David: I really don't want to explain that to my wife. >> Patrick: That's understandable. If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, for example, how David might explain what's gonna happen next week to the Mrs., please email us at Systm@Revision3.com and don't forget to visit the forums at Revision3.com slash forum and visit our archives at Revision3.com slash Systm. >> David: That's it for this episode of Systm, I'm hope you enjoyed it. >> Patrick: I'm Patrick Norton. >> David: And I'm Dave Culkins. >> Patrick: We'll see you next week. ^M00:36:08 [ Music ] ^M00:36:25 [ Inaudible conversation ] ^E00:36:55

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