Tao of motion control…
I met Bruce from “The Tao of motion control” he makes incredible X,Y machines “The purpose of this site is to suggest that motion control is also an emerging medium for artistic expression. Despite the universal use of motion control in industrial settings, its use by artists has been hampered by the enormous cost of commercial equipment. Because access to the tools of this medium is crucial for its exploration, one strategy open to motivated artists is building their own equipment from scrapped components flowing out of industrial sources.” This one moves a metal ball over sand to make a zen garden. Link.
Mark writes “I have a lot of different interests and I love to figure out how to make things myself.” Here are his project, lots to check out! – DIY Electrostatic Loudspeaker Construction, Tree House, Loft Bed Made From PVC Water Pipe, Stroboscopic Microscope Illuminator, Stereo Amplifier Based On LM3886 Chips, Stretched Membrane Mirror – a work in progress, DIY Full Suspension Carbon Fiber Recumbent Bicycle, DIY Binaural Microphone, Insect Photos and an Allied Radio SX-190 Short Wave Radio Receiver 
MAKE Flickr photo pool member MH2 made an Apple Newton MP3 player, he writes “I download carefully prepared mp3 files to my outdated Newton MP 2100… I set up the 2100 to shut down after 10 minutes. Ten minutes each night, then I sleep. Of course the 2100 is no iPod. Music can’t be cut up as conveniently in two minute pieces as large audio book files, but above 900 KB (which is approx. 3,5 min @ 22050 Hz mono 32 kbps) transfer to the Newton gets complicated. Of course the internal speaker has only poor audio quality compared to an iPod. Or any other decent mp3 player, that is.” 
Marc Powell gave an AMAZING talk (and made hacked up dessert for over 100 people at his Food Hacker’s Guide to Molecular Gastronomy at Dorkbot SF. Mark has a hacker’s skill and tinkering mindset with organic chemistry and enthusiastically uses liquid nitrogen, low cost materials and centrifuges for his kitchen. He showed how to use “meat glue”, make powdered yogurt and reveled all the crazy things restaurants are doing. Marc is a hacker chef based out of San Francisco’s only hacker bed and breakfast, 
Sid on the Hacks site writes up a good simple how to/tip – “My LCD display wouldn’t come on, it would just flicker. The LED on its external power supply was steady on when it wasn’t plugged into the monitor. When I did plug it in, the LED blinked at the rate of 2x per second. Measuring the power coming out of this supply using my multimeter, I saw that the power level wasn’t steady — it was pulsing slightly (about 2x per second). This was while unplugged from the monitor. Found a new power supply on eBay, and now everything’s fine.” 
Brian McConnell on the 
Zerocool60544 in the AutoIT forums writes about a PC control project using a browser or cell phone “I use lego mindstorms’ motors, they don’t a lot of torque but I geared them down to be a little slower but stronger. The water bottles are the counter weights so their is always tension on the line. There are two motors on either side. (one near the closed position and one near the open position).” [