Blog

Makers! Set your RadioSharks! This Friday (April 1st) I’ll be on the 2nd hour of NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow talking about DIY projects and lots of fun projects you can do with stuff around your house. More information about Science Friday can be found here as well a station locator with times with streaming info here.

Wow, two tobacco based projects in a row. Here’s a pretty cool site that shows you how to make a Cigar box guitar. Check out the Hall of Fame with mentions of Jimi Hendrix, Carl Perkins, Gov’t Mule, Albert King and Ted Nugent. I have an old Cigar box with bolts in it, once I work through those bolts- I think I’ll make one of these.

Amps, iPod chargers and mice made of Altoid tins, Atari 2600 cartridge getting a new life as flash drives- just about anything can be used a great project case. Even an empty pack of cigarettes. Here’s a neat example of an under $30 DIY pocket amp on an Archos 20 Gb mp3 player with open sourced Roxbox firmware, and Etymotic ER-6 headphones. The surgeon general has determined that this project is smokin’.

Smash’s World points out that the PSP will change colors based on what month it is. 12 colors in all, January = Grey, February = Dull-Yellow, March = Lime-Green, April = Pink, May = Dark-Green, June = Light-Purple, July = Tealish-Blue, August = Blue, September = Purple, October = Gold, November = Brown, December = Red. Here’s a quick video I shot of this (save this file to your local system and/or PSP in MP_Root/100MNV01 folder to view). Ideally we could add more parameters like changing color based on battery life, connection, time of day and full/empty status of the memory stick…

If you have your copy of MAKE, be sure to enter the MakeShift challenge (page 170). After a relaxing night of camping in the deep woods, you return to your car to find that it will not start. The battery is dead. “Someone” left the parking lights on overnight. You are 50 miles from the nearest road and have limited food and water. You try to call for help, but your cellphone is out of power and out of range. Snowy weather is scheduled to set in by late evening. The situation is serious. Makeshift winners will get a SWISSMEMORY
USB Victorinox 512MB device, as well as a Make T-shirt and 1-year subscription, if you win. This is your last chance to get in some last-minute entries before the deadline 3/31!

Make Flickr pool member drewish of Bicycle POV fame posted up a couple images of a minty cool mouse he made. Ingredients: One Altoids tin and one Logitech USB optical mouse. Not shown: Dremel, mini-hack saw, two-part epoxy, random plastic bits, 4 hours of my life.