Chris writes “You can save money on an expensive hard drive enclosure, by adding a connector for a cooling fan, replacing some LEDs, and lengthening a power cord. A relatively simple mod, it fixes almost everything that makes this cheap enclosure so cheap, using only materials found in a nerdy basement.” Link.
Unigamer writes “My dream has come true. Ever since last summer when I saw the Skype Video Payphone, I wanted to have a payphone hooked up to VOIP. Not long after I saw that article on Makezine, I put a “wanted” ad on Craigslist Sacramento for a Payphone. I said I wanted it for a project, didn’t have a lot of money I can spend on it, and it didn’t have to be working. I left it alone, never thinking I’d get a response from anyone.” Link. Hopefully, I’ll have time to accept real money in the MAKE payphone soon and have that converted to Skype credits…
Drew writes “If your vehicle was manufactured after 1996, it contains an On Board Diagnostic (OBD) computer that captures information about how it’s running. I’ve put together a basic HOWTO Guide for OBD-II so that you can get started playing with it. I use ScanTool‘s great hardware and GPL’d software for my setup. You can use it to save money by reading error codes without a trip to the mechanic when your “check engine” light is on, capture performance data about your car’s drivetrain in real-time, or log data as if it were an airplane’s “black box”.” Link.
Today is the drive from San Francisco from Seattle, as this happens I’ll upload photos every hour or so via a Kodak Wifi camera, an EVDO connection and a my own little wifi network. If you happen to need wireless and will be on I-5 for the next 13 hours, let me know – the network will be up and running the whole time :-] Here is the Flickr photo set if you want to tune in…Link. I would geo tag them, but you can’t use them with google maps/earth for now… I’m sure any day now Flickr is going to do geotagging with Yahoo maps since they have the super talented Dan from Geobloggers…
Here is this week’s “Cool stuff being made!” – “Karsten Manufacturing Corporation began in the 1950’s garage of Karsten Solheim, when he set out to build his own club to improve his golf game. What started with a custom line of putters has grown into a full line of drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, irons and putters. Today, Karsten Manufacturing is utilizing the latest alloys, aerodynamic technology and experiences of professional tour golfers to continually improve upon their design and make some of the best selling equipment in the world of golf.” Link.
Joelsprayberry has an Instructable that’s sad, cute, funny and clever – “Our dachshund hurt his back, so for rehab we made him swim a lot and i built this chair until he could use his back legs again.” Link.
Excellent project – “The digital hourglass is a German design project, developed by Susann Hamann and Fabian Hemmert from Germany. The project was created for two classes in the “Interface Design” course of study at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, supervised by Prof. Reto Wettach. Aiming to create a new alarm clock, Susann and Fabian focused on the amount of sleep, not on the time of waking up. Also, the interaction should be intuitive and close to what would be done with a real hourglass.” [via] Link. More here (German).
