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About a year ago my pal Chris special ordered a bike with no brakes, and one gear. It’s called a fixed gear or track bicycle. When I saw it in person, it was a work of art. It’s only contains enough to be called a bicycle, nothing more. They’re popular with bicycle enthusiasts and now punk rock crowd. KATU news in Portland has a neat story about them. The weather here in Seattle has been so amazing, I am thinking of getting one. Anyone have some suggestions? I guess it’s possible to make one too.

Okay, this is what my friends call a “Torronesque” project. This is where I usually come up with something and build it, and it really has no purpose or usefulness- but on further inspection it’s kinda neat. This is the iPod shuffle hand charger, actually recharger. There are many “crank powered” accessories floating around, so I thought I’d try a few and figure out if the iPod shuffle can be recharged with one. Well, it can, sorta. Here it is in action! I am still working out the best voltage regulator and wiring, as I figure it out, I’ll post the details, I don’t what to screw up everyone’s shuffles. What I’d really like to do is add little power generating motors to more things. Imagine getting a little power charge everytime you press a key or open your or phone laptop, maybe it wouldn’t matter that much, but multiply that by a billion people and perhaps it would…

There’s a secret “stealth mode” which allows Prius owners to put their cars in all-electric mode. While it’s not functional in the USA, it does work in Japan and Europe. Some Prius hackers have already enabled the button and added an extra battery. There’s a bit about it here and you can order the kit here ($45). If you’re willing and able to do this on a 2004-2005 Prius, please let us know- we want to feature this in an upcoming issue of Make! email, AIM/iChat or Skype me.

I’ve had a web camera on top of whatever computer(s) for years, but until recently I really haven’t used them that often. Lately, more applications have me dusting off these cams and trying some stuff out. My favs on the Mac– Delicious Library and iStopMotion. On the PC side, I use TinCam on some of my XP based robots running around the house. And, while this isn’t out yet, I really like this way to cheat at jigsaw puzzles using a webcam and Python. I don’t have the EyeToy for PS2, but it apparently works well as a web cam on a PC. As a project for the magazine, I’m looking in to looping the last 10 seconds of video from my iSight and projecting that on to a wall as a time delayed mirror. When you try on clothes you can see what you look like from behind. So, if you have a web cam- what are the apps you use? Or what would you like to have webcams do that they do not now? Post up in the comments.

I love reading stories like this one on NewScientist. Nils Schneider reverse engineered the iPod’s firmware to access the LCD, clickwheel and hard drive. We use a Linux’ed iPod for MAKE:audio to do most of our recordings in 96khz. Reading about some of the history as well as the details of this remarkable example in creative problem solving is a treat. Speaking of iPodLinux if you use Apple’s latest update on your 3G iPod you’ll lose your Linux boot up ability, but don’t fret- according to everythingdigital.org you can re-install it. I’ve yet to update mine, so this is good news.

design*sponge had some type of DIY contest and the results are in. The categories included furniture, product jewelry, graphic/paper and other. You can check out the winner page, as well as a bunch of photos on their Flickr site. I like the vinyl bowls the best, I’ll need to make some of these.

Ezra Daly doesn’t buy instruments, he makes them out of motorcycle parts. UCBerkley news has a great story about Daly’s desire to create a slap bass and eventually engineering a Moto Guzzi gasoline tank to jam on. His site WreckandRoll.com has more information and some great photos. I want to learn how to play bass just so I would have a reason to buy this one, it even has headlights that flash to the beat.