The Long Now Orrery clock
Stunning photos of the Orrery clock from Make pal Jacob Appelbaum. The Orrery is a ten foot tall planet tracking display. The lower half is a mechanical binary calculation engine. Each layer is calculating the orbit if one of the six human eye visible planets (Mercury through Saturn) to 28 bits of accuracy. The Orrery is primarily made of monel (a nickel copper alloy), and stainless steel. The planet spheres are ground from natural stones that resemble each planet they represent. [via] Link. More information about the clock here.
We’ve covered a lot of the R2-D2 droid building, in MAKE and Makezine.com – so, here’s a wonderful site with all you need to make your own Dalek. “We were the very first site devoted to the building of the Dalek, and it is still our intent to supply all the information you’ll need to produce an accurate full size working Dalek as seen in the long running BBC TV series Dr Who.” Thanks Rick! 
Rick writes “How to make ultra light weight boats and canoes. Plans are available but there are enough details on the web site for you to go from there.” From the site: What is Geodesic Airolite Construction? It is a simple, inexpensive, low-tech, forgiving system utilizing some exotic materials. The sequence consists of building a simple rugged wood framework, braced with triangulated KEVLAR® roving strands. This tough basket-like frame is then covered with Dacron. This is a first cousin to sail cloth; except it heat shrinks. It is a super-weight, airplane wing covering type of fabric, used on crop dusters. 
Nice tutorial from Jake “Apple’s AAC format allows podcasters to create “enhanced podcasts” complete with embedded photos at publisher defined points throughout the podcast. These files are only compatible with iTunes and iPods, leaving a large universe of listeners out of the picture. Microsoft’s Photo Story could easily create something similar, with a voice track narrating beneath a series of images, but the WMV file created in Photo Story isn’t compatible with most portable music players. One alternative that bridges the gap and maximizes compatibility is to create a script enhanced WMA file, These WMA files with embedded scripts play just like a normal WMA anywhere scripting isn’t supported.” 
We cover a lot of the new Voice over IP services (and gear) here, but you might wonder how secure these services are. The folks over at Skype announced “work is now complete and you can download the full report from Skype security center (PGP signature). There’s also an executive summary available” [
I was looking for an interesting cookbook for project ideas with non-food items, and oddly enough spotted a link to one on Robert Scoble’s site – it’s extremely well done. Autumn Omakase is an electronic/PDF cookbook available for free download. The two books we’ve published electronically are pretty unique as the quality is comparable to what you’d see at a bookstore, but its available for free on the net. Call it a pleasant side-effect of a labor of love. [
Redbluefire posted some photos on Flickr of his experiences riding out hurricane Wilma – his power went out and with the phones only working he used the phone line to charge up the Walkie Talkie watch gadgets “…the two lines in the phone that supply power, Red was positive, but to my suprise the ground was not black, but GREEN! After that, it was all a matter of opening the watch, checking the pinout, and twisting the wires to hold onto the jack inside. I need to communicate, and sometimes a laptop just isnt worth wasting for idle communication.”