HOW TO – Make a gas forge from an old vacuum
Richard writes “Here’s how to make a gas forge cheap from a large tube and an old hoover vac. See other examples of cast bronze I’ve created with this “flying turtle” forge, also how to create a nail gun from an old fire extinguisher. The techniques and tools illustrated and their application to the handmade object are as valuable to the modern foundryman as they were to his “Holistic” forefathers of the late 1800s.” Lots of plans, how-tos and projects. Link.
Peter writes: “Here’s a video podcast posted today by professional wedding photographer, Dane Sanders, about using ipods for wedding photo proof albums. He gives the bride and groom his and hers ipods loaded with their wedding photos instead of traditional print album.” This is a pretty good idea! When you get hitched and use a photographer, there are all sorts of huge books you have to lug around–this is a lot better. 
“A small wireless battery powered device – Turn it on near a friendly wireless network that contains iTunes shares and plug your headphones in. It picks a random iTunes share, picks a random tune and starts playing. Repeat until bored or the batteries are dead. The size of the system is amazing. The main board is about the size of my little finger. By default it’s running an ssh server, a web server and advertising itself to the network with bonjour.” 
You can find these old digital microscopes on eBay for under $20. Here’s a blog that catalogs some of what you can see with them – “Last week, I got myself a toy I’ve wanted to play with for many years — the Intel Play QX3 Digital Microscope. When I was a kid, the old medical microscope my parents bought for me at a garage sale was my favorite toy. I would spend hours putting whatever I could find underneath it… and now, with the digital microscope, I’m doing it again as an adult. I am adding new pictures every day and will continue to do so until I run out of things to look at with the microscope”… [
Awhile back we made our 
We’re getting ready to cover Macworld here in San Francisco, and as usual, bizarre flight and travel things tend to initially seem dismal, then work out – I saw two friends as I walked by Ritual Roasters in the Mission area that I haven’t seen since weirdos like us were running Generator 1.0 on online banks and Comcast cable boxes with Flash 3. Any way – one of them makes really fun things, here’s his photo set 
Chris writes: “I recently read this interesting article in Wired magazine about “