HOW TO – Make a Shoebox Crankie
Russellh writes “This post shows you how to make a crankie, a story-telling device, from a shoebox, fax paper, and coat-hanger parts. Neat doings for this obscure art form. (History) – The SF Weekly describes a cranky as a primitive, miniature theater in a box: a roll of paper painted with pictures that tell a story, cranked by hand past an open frame. (The person doing the cranking often narrates and provides sound effects too). Though the parts can change, canvas instead of paper for example, this is an apt description.” Link.
Chris writes in with a great site from Yamaha that has all sorts of fun papercrafts to download, print and make “This has a range of papercraft projects including Yamaha motorcycles, rare animals and some very cool seasonal themed projects like a jack-o-lantern… and for Japanese festivals.” 
Wow, this is awful, the Samsung phone from T-mobile only plays DRM’d ringtones, you can’t make your own – “The new slim 
Here’s how to emulate the telezapper by using SIT tones on your answering machine or voice mail messages…“Predictive Dialers are used by telemarketing firms to gain more ‘dialing efficiency’. About 75% of junk calls are made with a predictive dialer (PD). One thing a PD does, is monitor what happens when the phone is answered. The Telezapper can emit a ‘disconnect’ tone when your phone line goes off-hook. The tone it transmits is either a single ‘ultra-modulated’ tone or an actual set of 3 ‘Special Information Tones’ (S.I.T.) common to the telecommunications industry: depending on the setting you seletct. It works… now… in some situations. You can get a set of all three Special Information Tones from Private Citizen. Just record the tones at the beginning of your answering machine message and put your greeting right after it.” 
Nice mod, adding Bluetooth to laptop with an extra USB port…TomTheGeek writes “This weekend I added internal bluetooth to my Dell CPx laptop. These laptops have a two port USB hub in them but only one is available on the outside. The other one is only used if you have a docking station. Since I don’t have a docking station I found the traces for the unused USB port and placed my USB bluetooth module internally. These are the connections I had to add to the main board in order to use the USB port…” 
“A laser harp is basically a big frame resembling a real harp. There are no strings. Instead, beams of laser light are projected from the bottom of the harp. These beams strike light sensors at the top of the frame. When something (a hand, foot, etc.) blocks the beam, a note is triggered on a synthesizer or some type of tone generator. Theoretically the harp could control anything but I’m interested in its musical possibilities.” Here’s how to make one! [