Get better gas mileage at MaxMPG…
MAKE subscriber John writes “I started this site because of the importance, to ma at least, of vehicles that get good mileage. You don’t necessarily need an overly complicated hybrid (though I’m a fan of hybrids) to get good mileage. My goal is to get at least 40 mpg out of my Nissan pickup simply by making the engine more efficient and improving the aerdynamics while not taking away from its utility. This is important to me because of the environmental impact of cars and because of national security. We are all impacted by the environment but I’m in the Navy, have been deployed to the Middle East four times and so have a keen interest in our nation weening itself from oil as much as possible.” Link.
Edward writes “The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 by Popular Mechanics. Offered thru Project Gutenberg. 700 Things for Boys to Do. This book was my first intro to making things when I was a kid. Published in 1913. The PDF version is richly illustrated.” 
MAKE will be covering ABC’s American Inventor’s auditions November 17th at 8am in San Francisco. If you’re going, 
I saw the start of Fabienne Serriere’s awesome project at the 
The “Spiral Rainbow Island” created by Richie Sowa is an island is anchored off the coast of Mexico, close to Cancun. The island is made from over 250,000 recycled plastic bottles, packed into netting. 
Chris sent this how-to in from Grynx contributor Dan “This box will house my proprietary Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio unit and set as a client, a 2.4ghz 500mw HyperLink Amplifier connected to a Linksys WRT54G with a third party firmware and set as an access point, the Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio will be the main link back to my base radio. The whole idea of this enclosure is to be as “modular” as possible, i.e. if the PSU blows-up I can simply remove the PSU and replace it, OR if I need to relocate the whole box, I can simply unscrew all the antenna and take it away with me.” 
Here’s a step-by-step guide to converting any external hard drive enclosure (USB, Firewire, SCSI, etc) into an external SATA enclosure that meets the SATA standard.