Wooden quadcopter body

[Greasetattoo] shares the process of building his wooden quadcopter body that won 2nd place in the Minnesota state fair.  His plans were purchased as a kit back in 1999, but he never got around to actually building them. The original plans called for a foam board body, but he felt that a wooden piece of art would be much nicer. This build isn’t focusing on the electronics, they’re just a kit from Mikrokopter. Instead, it is a log of the entire process of making the beautiful wooden body. He really put some nice detail in there from the layered and nicely finished dome to the little oak sleeves for his motors. Great job [Greasetattoo].

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Super Brite LED Sneakers

[i am jen] needed to spice up some shoes, and what better way to do that, than to spike them out in LEDs controlled by a micro controller. In order to make the LED strips, an inventive use of Velcro is applied. One half of the strip is secured to the shoes, while the other half gets a sheet of electrical tape on the sticky side. Small holes are then punched though the strip and the LEDs are then soldered.
Electronicswise the shoes are using a pair of 6 volt batteries, with no readily available holder, a “AA” battery holder is chopped to size and glued back together. Patterns are controlled by a Really Bare Bones Board Arduino, (which, even if your not an Arduino fan, is a cool little AVR breakout board for 28 pin chips) and cycles through different patterns using magnets and reed switches on the inside edges of the shoes.
Even if its not your style, check it out for a few good hacks and join us after the break for a short video.

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Screamer doll prank toy

While it is only the middle of February, it might be a good time to start thinking about your plans for April Fool’s day. [Dino's] Screamer Doll is his submission to the upcoming 555 Contest.  This fun little circuit can be used to easily annoy your cube or house mates and is perfect for all of the April Fool’s day pranksters out there. He fit all the components into a small plastic toy, replacing the eyes and mouth of the doll with three photo cells, and swapping the nose out for a bright LED. When light hits the photo cells, a loud high-pitched squeal is emitted, and the LED blinks furiously until the light source is removed. Shielding the device from light will cause both the sound and LED to slow down, but the brightness of the LED ensures that the toy still makes noise when covered.
It would be great to see a version of this project that is completely silent in the dark, allowing it to be hidden at night, greeting its victims come morning.
If you want to see video of the device in action, read on – just be sure to keep your speaker volume at a reasonable level!

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I can't sign in. What should I do?

The first thing you should do is go to http://blogger.com/forgot.g, where you'll find tools that should help you sign in. If you're still unable to sign in after this process, please see the alternate solutions below.
Select your problem from the list below:

• Password recovery email not received
• Forgotten email address
• Continual prompting to sign in, or 'Session Expired' messages
• Last resorts

Password recovery email not received

• Check your Spam/Junk/Bulk Mail folder to see if the message was misrouted.
• Try entering several email addresses in case you didn't use your primary one for Blogger.
• Try recovering your username instead of your password. You may have misremembered your username and could be sending password recovery emails to another user. (We recommend trying this, even if you think you're sure of your username.)

Forgotten email address
If you can't remember which email address you used when you created your account, start by making a list of all your addresses (including old ones that you might have used when you signed up). Then, enter each address, one by one, into the username recovery form. Most will give you an error, until you enter the one that you actually used, in which case you'll see a message indicating that your username has been sent.
Continual prompting to sign in, or 'Session Expired' messages
If you repeatedly get bounced back to the sign-in screen, with no message about an incorrect username or password, this is caused by your browser not retaining your sign-in information correctly. You may also see 'Session Expired' messages in these cases. To fix this you need to troubleshoot your browser, so try the following:

• Clear your cache.
• Delete your Blogger cookie.
• Check your cookie settings.
• Check your JavaScript settings.
• Quit your browser and restart it.
• Use another browser like Chrome or Firefox.
  Browse Happy—all the cool kids are doing it.

Note that if you have a firewall, you should check its cookie settings as well and make sure it will allow Blogger's cookies to be set. Check the manual or documentation for the firewall for information on this.
Last resorts

• Restart your computer.
• Try a different computer.
• Try a different Internet connection.
• Take a deep breath -- the world isn't ending -- write us for help. Be sure to give us as much information as you can about your account and the problems you're experiencing.

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Cookies
Your browser needs to accept cookies. Many browsers have a simple choice in the Options or Preferences that will let you choose to either accept or reject cookies. In Internet Explorer, it is a little different. If you go to Tools > Internet Options >, you'll find a sliding scale. If it is set to High or Block All, Blogger won't be able to set the cookies it needs to signyou in. A setting of Medium-High or lower will work. This is what it looks like:
JavaScript
Blogger also needs to have JavaScript enabled in order to function properly. Again, many programs have this as a simple option in the Preferences, but it's a bit trickier in Internet Explorer. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security and click the Custom Level button. Scroll down until you see the Scripting section and make sure that 'Active scripting' is enabled. Then click OK to all the windows until you're back at your browser.

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Creating 'After the jump' summaries

After the Jump is a feature which lets you create expandable post summaries in your blog posts, so longer posts appear as an intro with a link to Read More
Creating jump breaks in your blog posts can be easily done right from the post editor, without the need for any HTML changes. First, decide where in the post you want to create the jump break, and place your cursor in that position:


Once your mouse cursor is placed at the jump point, simply click the Insert Jump Break toolbar icon:


Clicking the icon will insert a grey bar at the cursor point, illustrating where in the post your break will appear. The bar can be dragged though, so you can always re-position it after insertion.

If you don't use the new post editor, you can still insert a jump break in Edit HTML mode by adding where you want to position the jump break.


Once you are set on the jump break's location within the post, you are ready to publish your post. After publishing, you will notice that the Read More link is placed where you set the jump break:


Clicking on the Read More link will then display the full text of the post:


If you feel like changing the Read More text to your own custom phrase, you can easily do this from the Layout | Page Elements tab. Click Edit on the Blog Post widget, and then change the Post page link text to whatever you'd like.



One more note, the Jump Break feature does not change how your post appears in your feed. You can configure post feed options by going to Settings | Basic | Site Feed, and editing Allow Blog Feeds.

Note:For those using a customized third-party template, you will have to add a snippet of code to make Jump Breaks work.
To do this, access your blog's Layout | Edit HTML tab, and first backup your template by clicking the Download Full Template link at the top of the page. This will download an XML version of your template which you can upload later at any time if you need to.
After backing up your template, then click the Expand Widget Templates checkbox, and scan your HTML for the following snippet:

<data:post.body/>
Once you've located that code, paste the following snippet directly below it:

<b:if cond='data:post.hasJumpLink'>
<div class='jump-link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"'><data:post.jumpText/></a>
</div>
</b:if >

After you've pasted in the code, click Save and then you're done!

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How to submit a gadget to Blogger

How to build your own Blogger gadget
At Google, gadgets are simple HTML and JavaScript applications that can be embedded in web pages and other apps, including Blogger.
Every Blogger blog is a gadget container. Moreover, every blog is an OpenSocial gadget container powered by Friend Connect. That means as a gadget developer you can leverage social APIs to build engaging tools for bloggers and their audience.
When you build a gadget for Blogger, it becomes available to millions of active bloggers. Just submit your gadget to us, and it will immediately surface in Blogger.com where users can easily browse, configure, and add your gadget to their blog's sidebar.
So now that you know Blogger is a great distribution platform for your gadget, what are you waiting for? Get started building gadgets for Blogger now! Find out how to build your own Blogger gadget here!
Once you've throughougly tested your gadget, and followed Blogger's Best UI Practices, you're ready to submit your gadget.

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Can I edit the HTML of my blog's layout?

Yes, just go to the >Layout tab and click the Edit HTML sub-tab. Keep in mind that Blogger's Layouts feature makes it easy for anyone to customize the look of their blog with little or no technical knowledge.
The first thing on the Edit HTML page is an option to download a copy of your template to a text file on your hard drive. We highly recommend doing this if you've made any interesting customizations to your design at all. Then, if you make a mistake editing your template, or if you just don't like the way it comes out, you can revert easily by uploading the same file again.
Next comes the actual code for your template. You'll notice it looks somewhat like regular HTML and CSS, but also includes lots of custom tags that make it compatible with our drag-and-drop layout editor, and with the font and color picker. If you want to make extensive changes to your code, you'll want to read up on these tags first:

• Page Element Tags
• Fonts and Colors Tags

You'll also see an option to 'Expand Widget Templates.' By default, each page element is shown in the code as a one-line placeholder, whose options can be set in the graphical interface on the Page Elements tab. Turning this option on will show the complete data and template for each element. The code is simpler the first way, but you have more control the second way, so use whichever option you prefer. Learn more by reading this help article:

• Widget Template Tags

Below the code, you'll see three buttons for Clear Edits, Preview, and Save Template, which do what you'd expect them to.
There are also two links referring to your 'classic template.' If you converted your blog from the older style of Blogger templates to the new Layouts version, then your classic template is the last template you used in the old system, with all your customizations. If your blog was created on the new system and has always used Layouts, then your classic template is a default, classic version of the original design you chose when you created the blog, without any customizations. The View link will show you the code, in case you just want to check up on something, or copy a piece of it for your new design. The Revert link will erase all the customizations you made in the Layouts feature and set your blog to use the old-style Blogger template again. Note that you won't be able to use the graphical Layouts interface in this mode (though you can convert back to Layouts again later).

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