How awesome would it be to launch a Linux powered balloon with a digital camera on board?!

Come on, admit it. That’s cool.

It’s already considered old school to do the undetectable noscope monitor hack (heh!) in Counter-Strike. But writing on my monitor with a permanent marker doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. So based on a suggestion from someone in #cplug the other night, here’s my offering…

Background: In games like Counter-Strike source, most standard weapons display a crosshair at the center of the screen/HUD. In an effort to make gameplay more “realistic” (relatively speaking), sniper rifles do not display a crosshair unless you zoom in with the scope. However, zooming in dramatically reduces your field of view and makes you move slower…

And thus was the low-tech no-scope hack born!

Step 1: Get a pack of those self-adhesive page reinforcers.

Step 2: Start up Counter-Strike and select a weapon that displays a crosshair (e.g. the default pistol). Make sure you are aligned with your monitor like you normally are while playing, and stick the page reinforcer right over the crosshair.

Step 3: Select any of the sniper rifles, and blast away. At reasonably close distances, your shots will all land within the diameter of the page reinforcer.

w00t!

Update: Obviously, this only really helps if you are relatively close to your target. For long distance shots, you’ll still need to zoom in.

Digg: Like it? Digg it!

Quoth the Django blog:

This is one of the coolest Django hacks ever.

Marxy writes that he’s gotten Django running on a Windows Mobile 5 PDA.

Heh!

Titus Brown has a script that will notify you when new email arrives via Jabber. It uses PyXMPP.

See also: HOWTO: Connect to Google Talk with Bitlbee

Clinton De Young has some fun with the office printers with the help of Python.

Heh.

I’m posting this using a short Python script and the WordpressLibrary module. If you can see this, it worked.

Update: Looks like it worked! That’s pretty cool, considering how easy it was. If you want to try it out, take a look at the WordPress Library website. Link via Bio.

More: Sam is doing some cool stuff with the library.