Working iPod Halloween Costume

Jrod1080 writes "I decided to be an iPod for Halloween this year. I didn't just want to be walking around in a box, so I made it a fully functional costume. I finally found a good use for a tablet PC, and used that for the display. A rewired USB mouse served as the 'Forward,' 'Reverse,' 'Play/Pause' buttons, and a bit of Java code played and displayed the MP3s. Some battery powered speakers provided the sound. It all worked out well, and I even won the costume contest!"

Idea for Apple?

[fembots]

Maybe Apple can place a couple of these iPod "kiosks" in shopping malls, what's the better way to experience iPod mini with a giant iPod?

On a more serious note though, a real scary Halloween custume is Death framed inside a blue-tinted Window.

With so many images on one page, this guy obviously didn't read the Do-Not-Slashdot ACT 1996 [interneh.com], here's a coral link [nyud.net] just in case.

coralized link is working

[blackburnrovers]

coralized link to eecs server is working [nyud.net].

i am amazed that the umich server went down. i was in ann arbor from 1996-2002, and the worst outage i ever saw was when the main data center caught on fire. university-wide, e-mail was down for about 15 minutes when the backup unix boxes kicked in and everyone began to breathe easy again. i would bet the eecs server will be back up shortly. they use the real-deal unix boxes, not linux on intel's.

Genius costume, idiotic web design.

[Spy der Mann]

Serious. Who taught web design to this moron? All his page is composed of HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES! No wonder it got slashdoted after the first 100 visits or so (wild guess). I'm reading the coral link.

Doesn't he know how to use thumbnails?
Perhaps we should add a guide to /.
Before posting:

I. Thou shalt not use high resolution images on your webpages.

II. If thou do and link them from /., thou shalt be damned.

I'll be the first to say it...

[Electroly]

NERD ALERT!

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[geekoid]

what, at Slashdot? say it ain't so.

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[cryptor3]

You think that's nerdy? Check out this picture I dug up of this guy I know. He went as a TI-85, back when they were "new."

TI-85 Front [ticalc.org]
TI-85 Back [ticalc.org]

ha! beat that!

Just for the record, my name is not Seth.
(original article) [ticalc.org]

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[ScrewMaster]

You're right ... that's pretty damn scary.

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[grammar nazi]

I agree with you. I hope somebody beat up that kid to teach him a lesson.

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[Simon Garlick]

You seem to be overlooking the fact that this guy's Ipod costume actually works.

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[cryptor3]

What's to say you couldn't ask Seth a math question and that he wouldn't give you an answer?

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[ziggy_zero]

Dude - my old high school [tjhsst.edu]'s mascot was a TI calculator. The costume gets passed down to the new seniors every year.

Re:I'll be the first to say it...

[js7a]

Dude, it's time to update the mascot. How about a new Treo 650 [palmone.com] running Tcl/Tk, or if you really want to stick with Texas, a new Dell Axim X50? I'd recommend the 520 MHz ASUS MyPal A730 [asus.com] (apparently comes with "engineering calculator [pocketmatrix.com]) running Tcl/Tk, for optimum number crunching and programing ability, but the Treo is doestic, which I imagine is important to Thomas Jefferson High. I think everyone in your metro area needs a break from Texas.

I like this one better...

[unwiredmatt]

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/ipod-costume-02455 5.php [gizmodo.com] I like this one better

Re:I like this one better...

[xanthines-R-yummy]

Yeah, but the submitted story guy's iPod costume actually works!

Re:I like this one better...

[eyeye]

Its just a big box essentially, not much to look at.

nice costume, but

[geekoid]

it seems to me you went as "Guy with Giant iPod around his neck.".

Re:nice costume, but

[anethema]

That or 'Knock me down and steal my candy (and my tablet PC)'

Re:nice costume, but

[EddydaSquige]

It looked to me like a lot of work for a pretty shity looking costume.

Re:nice costume, but

[hunterx11]

- I am made of jelly. Do you see?
- I think you will find you are just inside a jelly [jolt.co.uk].

Not only

[computerme]

Not only is this a surprisingly cool costume that uses technology in innvative ways...

But it still looks better any model from creative, virgin, ogg vorbis player, out there!

Re:Not only

[almeida]

I thought this was the virgin model.

why iPod costume?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wondered why that chick in the picture has her legs on the other dude, and not you????

Re:why iPod costume?

[peterprior]

I noticed that.. She's.. quite fit..

Re:why iPod costume?

[Anonymous Coward]

fit...but she knows it

Re:why iPod costume?

[agentkhaki]

Nice.

Re:why iPod costume?

[therevolution]

Ever wondered why that chick in the picture has her legs on the other dude, and not you????

I pity the fool.

Re:why iPod costume?

[ender1598]

Mod me down all you want, but it only illustrates your own self delusion.

Wouldn't you need to be modded up first?? :-)

Re:why iPod costume?

[bool morpheus()]

Shouldn't you be moving your cubicle down to Storage B about now? We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK? Thanks Milt.

Re:why iPod costume?

[StarKruzr]

You should continue to qualify that statement with "hot women," though. And it IS just a generalization.

Typically, the range of women presented to your average geek is:

sane, hot, intelligent, available, nice

Pick any four.

Not only that, but typically, girls who are hot just don't have to be nice. Or intelligent, or pursue any kind of intellectual pursuit. And the ones that are hot AND intelligent usually have something seriously wrong with them emotionally/mentally. Something about being attractive and knowing you're attractive, and being told you're attractive and getting your way because you're attractive for most of your life, drastically messes people up.

There are exceptions, of course, to these rules of thumb. But the exceptions always have boyfriends. Who aren't you, by the way.

Not much has happened in my 25 years of life to ever shake me from this analysis of the situation, but I'd be very interested in the opinions of anyone who thinks otherwise.

Re:why iPod costume?

[redJag]

eww... wait, that's not what you meant.

Re:why iPod costume?

[AllMightyPaul]

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills...

Re:why iPod costume?

[aled]

You memorized the AD&D manual? Wow... Er... I mean what I want to know is what do you mean with geeky and how did that guy to get out of his cubicle once a year.

Re:why iPod costume?

[metlin]

Well, I read it as the ADD manual.

Was wondering, "Wow, there's a manual for us ADD folks out there?".

Fortunately, I'm not that far gone. Yet.

Re:why iPod costume?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. Hot women are into guys who like to work out, spend their money on a hot car and spend their time in meat-market bars. Girls are not into you just because you can manage to get out of your cubicle once a year and wear a fancy GEEKY costume to a halloween party.

Damn, you're cynical. I went to a party a year ago as Dilbert. I was surprised to find myself going home with the phone number of a gorgeous, intelligent, caring girl. (The relationship didn't last much longer than a month, but I don't

Re:why iPod costume?

[Karma Farmer]

I was surprised to find myself going home with the phone number of a gorgeous, intelligent, caring girl.

Did you still respect it in the morning?

Where?

[comwiz56]

But where does he store the candy?

The RIAA wants royalties

[jlefeld]

They want royalties for playing their songs out in public. Oh sweet costume by the way.

Here comes the Apple...

[vwjeff]

lawyers in 3...2...1...

I guess it's not like he could get caught infringing on Apple's trademark. The only way he could get caught would be to post a description and links to pictures on a well known website. He shouldn't get in any troub...oh, nevermind. Good luck.

just bad

[Hellasboy]

how does this get on slashdot?

"I didn't just want to be walking around in a box, so I made it a fully functional costume"
great, so instead of making something that represents an ipod, you strapped a facsimile of an ipod as a necklace. big whoop

Re:just bad

[gl4ss]

well. at least he slapped a computer in there to make it output sound and show a display.

Hey baby...

[Bite-lover]

I could imagine someone saying: 'Hey baby, I can show you how to REALLY use the scroll wheel' Pretty cool idea though.

Extended Warranty

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope he has an extended warranty, because he is going to get the crap beaten out of him going out like that.

Mirror

[Rufus211]

As the site's dead and mirrordot hasn't pulled a copy of it, I managed to mirror it:
http://rufus.hackish.org/~rufus/www.eecs.umich.edu /~jwinick/Halloween2004/ [hackish.org]

Re:Mirror

[Monkeyman334]

I put up a tiny resized version of the finished project, since that was really all I wanted to see (and all I can afford to host). HERE [oswd.org]

Re:Mirror

[ajd1474]

Yes thankyou, that is also all i wanted to see (and no not the iPod).

Re:Mirror

[Rufus211]

I think I'm seeing some strange combination of KeepAlive and MaxClients. I jumped MaxClients to 1000, I'm pushing a good 1.1Mbytes/sec out, my server's at a load average of ~10 (but 90% idle), and I'm still seeing people getting locked out.

Re:Mirror

[Rufus211]

Well that would do it. The morron put up full-sized 4megapixel images then used "img size=" to resize it. Just resized the images down so I should be able to survive now.

Re:Mirror

[Rufus211]

My current server-status:

Current Time: Sunday, 31-Oct-2004 19:12:20 EST
Restart Time: Sunday, 31-Oct-2004 19:05:03 EST
Parent Server Generation: 4
Server uptime: 7 minutes 17 seconds
Total accesses: 2552 - Total Traffic: 218.1 MB
CPU Usage: u4.66 s2.99 cu.02 cs.01 - 1.76% CPU load
5.84 requests/sec - 511.0 kB/second - 87.5 kB/request
892 requests currently being processed, 14 idle servers

Clue Phone Is Ringing For You

[Anonymous Coward]

No one actually cares.

Re:Mirror

[Kenshin]

It's always hilarious when someone calls someone else a "moron", but can't actually spell the word.

I decided to be a web server this year

[The Wing Lover]

I decided to be a web server at University of Michigan for Hallowe'en this year. I didn't want to walk around in a cardboard box, so I used some smouldering rags to provide the smoke and flames effect.

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[peterprior]

lmfao.

Mod parent up.

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[taped2thedesk]

I was just trying to get to some project specs on www.eecs.umich.edu, and couldn't figure out why the server was down. Thanks Slashdot community - maybe this will give me a good reason to request an extension on our latest project.

I don't know why this guy didn't put this on his personal web space instead of the department's web space.

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[Juanvaldes]

even better excuse then the dog eating your homework.

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[the pickle]

Erm...that *is* his personal Web space at UMich, unless they've changed policies in the year that I've been gone.

p

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[taped2thedesk]

Technically, you're correct... that's his "personal" web space hosted through EECS Departmental Computing Organization (DCO). The EECS "personal" web space is shared with the rest of the EECS department's web site (as in the personal and normal web servers for the department are not on separate servers).

On the other hand, anybody with an active e-mail account (i.e. him) gets 1 GB of space on www-personal.umich.edu, a bank of servers dedicated to hosting personal space for the entire university (and could probably accomodate the load). He probably also gets the 200 MB offered through CAEN, the engineering computer network, hosted at www-personal.engin.umich.edu and also probably more than capable of handling the load.

For whatever reason, the EECS department doesn't seem to have a web server capable of serving very many people, and it's come down a couple times over the last few weeks under normal loads. To think it would be able to withstand a slashdotting is laughable. This infrastructure problems aren't his fault, but it'd seem much more logical to place the page on servers that are designed to handle uber loads, instead of posting it on a shared server that contains project specs and homework assignments that students need access to 24/7.

My comment was only meant to say that he either didn't realize that the EECS web server wasn't a piece of shit, or didn't care that he was going to crash a server that a lot of people need access to right now.

On the other hand, one would think that a major computer science/engineering deparment that is getting grants to research ways to withstand DOS attacks would be able to withstand a slashdotting... obviously that's wishful thinking.

Re:I decided to be a web server this year

[MNJavaGuy]

On the other hand, one would think that a major computer science/engineering deparment that is getting grants to research ways to withstand DOS attacks would be able to withstand a slashdotting...

Well, then we just provided them with quite a bit of data on DoS attacks, didn't we?

In other news...

[cuteseal]

"In other news, local man dressed as an iPod was found inebriated and trying to hump a boombox speaker, after a wild night at a halloween party. The man has been referred for counselling."

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw him P2Ping on someone's lawn.

I didn't want my homework anyway

[thedillybar]

Way to slashdot www.eecs.umich.edu...

I didn't want to do my homework today anyway. :-)

Re:I didn't want my homework anyway

[Punto]

I guess "slashdot effect" is the new "dog ate my homework"..

kiddy stuff

[Darthmalt]

/. umich.edu thats kiddy stuff The other week we made Georgia Tech's webserver unusable. With a story about an Xbox hacked to run Mac OS. GT has one of the fastest connections in the country and has the southeast region internet hub on campus.

Pictures? Same guy?

[DoorFrame]

The actual link is badly dead. Are these pictures [mac.com] from this guy's costume, or is this someone else?

Re:Pictures? Same guy?

[Tony Hoyle]

No, the guy in the article strapped a cardboard box around his neck, wrote 'ipod' on it plus some silver foil to represent the buttons, then proceeded to get his server slashdotted :)

*really* slow news day today... They don't come lamer than this.

Re:Pictures? Same guy?

[frankthechicken]

Damn, do they have the movie clip of where he fell over, struggled for a good five minutes trying to get up, then gave a fervent cry about why he could not have come as a walkman?

Obligatory Triumph Quote...

[Moridineas]

Which button calls your parents to come pick you up??

Re:Obligatory Triumph Quote...

[Moridineas]

You make a good point...for me to poop on.

Did you happen to notice my Subject line "Obligatory Triumph Quote" ?

"Finally" found a good use for a tablet PC

[Gothmolly]

..he made it into the 'display' of a costume. Of an Apple product. Finally, someone comes out and says that the Emperor has no clothes, that Microsoft's FUD machine can't spin something out of nothing, and that the tablet-PC-using-dork in Starbucks really is just that, a dork. Thank you, for pointing out the retardation of Tablet PCs.

Re:"Finally" found a good use for a tablet PC

[geekoid]

Sorry, but I've seen the tablet PC be used in real life better then laptops.
With far better ease of use. The person using it would hold it on there left and write onto it as if it wqere a clip board. Far easier the trying to jugle a laptop while walking around.
There are really only three things holding back mass adoption:
1) Cost of manufacturing - It cast almost the same to manufacture a tablet as it does a laptop. Mostly do to the fact that there hasn't been enough of them produced to begin refining the ma

Re:"Finally" found a good use for a tablet PC

[larryj]

"retardation"?

Um, why? Because it's a Microsoft OS? Have you used one?

My TabletPC has been very useful since I bought it in January of 2003. Have I been brainwashed, not realizing that I've actually been taking notes for almost 2 years on an Etch-A-Sketch? Powerful FUD indeed!

Needlessly Slashdotted

[ZackSchil]

The server may have survived longer if the images had been actually resized. Many are 500KB - 1MB each, html resized to 800x600. I'm trying to make a mirror of the mirror and use true resized images but I'm getting about 500 bytes/sec.

saint pauly girl should have won!

[that _evil _gleek]

Interesting, but I like the girls costume better ;-] RECOUNT!

whats so scary about an ipod?

[myowntrueself]

I mean its haloween so somehow arn't the costumes supposed to represent something scary?

Or am I missing something and lots of people in this persons neighborhood work for the RIAA?

I haven't

[jeffkjo1]

I haven't been keeping up with Foxtrot lately, is this what Jason is going as for Halloween this year?

Protection

[HedonismBot]

He'd better be careful; I've been hearing a lot about iPod killers lately.

iPod? Screw that

[Alcimedes]

After reading the article, I want to find out more about the St. Paulie girl.

I want a step by step about every part of her costume.

I dunno ...

[ScrewMaster]

A working iPod costume? Personally, I don't like strangers pushing my buttons.

iPod costume, eh?

[Brandon Hume]

I think Red Robot [dieselsweeties.com] might have beaten him out. (As opposed to merely beating him...)

Its a necklace, not a costume

[nurb432]

Now if he made it big enough to be IN the replica, then that would be cool.

This is, well.. sort of dull...

More cool costumes

[base_chakra]

To see more really cool, ingenious costumes, check out these gems made by Rob Cockerham [cockeyed.com] of cockeyed.com [cockeyed.com]:

Paparazzi costume [cockeyed.com]
Jenga costume [cockeyed.com]
Africa costume [cockeyed.com]
California costume [cockeyed.com]

you suck

[norkakn]

I need this box to do my project work and you submitted it to slashdot?!?!

Please don't ever put eecs up to the /.ers as it is much too small, put your shit onto caen's boxes

It would've been even cooler if he'd used Chicago.

[adrew]

Chicago is the font Apple uses on the iPod (but not on the iPod Mini). Back in the day it was the font for all the Mac's menus and dialog boxes, later replaced by Charcoal and--today--Lucida Grande, IIRC. Here is a scan [frontiernet.net] of my iPod's screen so you can see Chicago in all its glory.

There's more info about Apple's fonts on Wikipedia, but for some reason Slashdot won't let me link to it. Here's the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_fonts

Red Robot's ipod costume was better

[Bernie Fsckinner]

http://dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1082

Saw one myself

[Zenmonkeycat]

In a college town [vt.edu] in Virginia, I saw an iPod walking around. He had a huge iPod screen (with lovely blue backlight) with a nice big tinfoil Apple logo on his back. And music was playing from inside his costume, probably from a boom box or something.

That was one of the coolest costumes I've ever seen.

Best costume idea ever.

[WoBIX]

I was going to go as a Wireless router, but I couldn't get the doc to prescribe Viagra for antenna maintenance. :( Maybe next year.

*cough*

[andreyw]

After fellow Slashdotters are done, *someone* is going to have to do a lot of explaining to UMICH's IT department... and convincing as well to keep his account around.

Re:*cough*

[norkakn]

they brought the server back up but http is down. Only grad students have shell accounts to eecs. so all of us in the labs here are pissed as hell at him. If he'd put it on his engin space they would have just laughed at the spike, but eecs is a research server that's quite tiny (I don't know the specs off hand)

I'd say rm -rf ~/* under his name and delete the account. A whole lot of us are stuck up here working without access to course websites.

Looks like shit

[Refrag]

That just looks horrible. And that is what costumes are about. Looks.

Re:Corporate shill

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

apparently not, considering how the site is down.

it is now safe to take off your tin foil hat.

Re:Corporate shill

[tonsofpcs]

It was working about 5 minutes ago. One more slashdotted, by the way, your school's admins might be kinda pissed in the morning, try bringing them something to make up.

--
What would happen if /. felt the /. effect?

Re:Corporate shill

[belg4mit]

Hey numbnutz, there's nothing with his sentence.
They conjugate funny on the other side of the pond
is all.

Re:Down

[mrwonton]

The server actually belongs to the EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) department at the University of Michigan [umich.edu]. You would definitely think they'd be geeky enough to have a decent server. I'm actually a student there and rely on that server for school. I actually ended up on Slashdot when I couldn't get the spec on a project because the server was down.

Yep, Slashdot is destroying productivity as never before.

Re:Down

[dont_think_twice]

Considering that about half the replies to this thread are from Univ of Michigan Electrical Engineering students, it appears that most Michigan students (at least the EECS) have nothing better to do then read slashdot on the biggest college party night of the year.

It sure is a good thing that I stayed in to read slashdot, so that I could bring the rest of you this insightful comment. Anyone in bursley up for a game of UT2003?

Re:For my woman

[Anonymous Coward]

...and if she existed.

Re:For my woman

[G-funk]

Well if you could find the "play" button she'd be more likely to let you use her scroll wheel.

Re:Here's a tip. . . .

[dont_think_twice]

Don't post a comment to slashdot about idiots using home run web servers when the site is actually hosted on the University of Michigan Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department webserver. It makes you look like a tool.

Re:Please explain for us foreigners ...

[pdbogen]

The candy is supposed to be offerings to the spirits so that they won't terrorize the occupants of the home. As for the costumes, well.. It started as skeletons and ghosts, then went on to monsters (e.g., Frankenstein), and probably from there became just other people figures, and then just costumes.

Re:Please explain for us foreigners ...

[BetterThanCaesar]

And to think that all this time, I thought the candy was an indirect gift to dentists.

Re:Please explain for us foreigners ...

[aristotle-dude]

Halloween came after Samhain but the Celtic culture was wiped out by invading hordes attacking the british isles long before Halloween came into being.

What you posted is a commonly held myth. The only connection between the pagan rituals of europe and halloween is that christians dressed up as demons, ghosts out of fun and to mock the formerly held superstitions of Europeans. Some neo-pagans might think they are "reviving" old paganism but what they believe in bares little resemblance to old pagan religio

Re:Real Story: Why is his dorm room so nice?

[w1r3sp33d]

Let alone a tablet to go with his laptop...

-insert old guy rant mode-

Back when I was in school, before Windows and USB, we would have taken a trash 80's I/O port and a couple pieces of lamp cord along with some electrical tape and a really long extension cord...

-end old guy rant mode-