MAKE Instructable group member Radiorental made a really nice laptop bag from 1/4″ thick antistatic workbench rubber mats – “Materials are irrelevent. I wanted a slightliy durable material and opted for this 1/4″ thick antistatic workbench rubber mat. Some neoprene for the parts of the bag that will directly cover the laptop to provide some shock absorbsion and a combination velcro & tarp snap for fastning.” Nice work! Link.
Handy how to on making printed circuit boards, Incepinar writes – “I spent a lot of time to find an easy to use PCB drawing program and failed. (Believe there should be lots of but it’s just me can’t find it!) All of them I came across were either so professional or hard to handle. So, in admiration of the AMIGA’s Deluxe Paint, I decided to use Windows’s Paint program to create my own PCBs. All I needed was it’s copy and paste functionality. Thus any other drawing editor on any Operating System may be utilized for the following work style that I currently (and will continue to) use.” Link.
Old Professor Bear writes “This place is 2 blocks from my home. I pass by it every so often, but at night when it’s closed. But it looks like it would be of much Maker interest. Building Junior Makers, or something like that … Anyway, FWIW, have a look – Build-It-Yourself has developed a creative robotics program in collaboration with MIT that inspires, engages and guides kids to build in a unique global laboratory of the future. Build-It-Yourself seeks corporate partners who can bring our program to 20 million+ kids in the after-school market.” Link.
We’re fans of PVC here at MAKE, from marshmallow shooters to our gift guide, we find uses for PVC for just about everything. PVC is a little like LEGOs for adults depending on how you use them I suppose…Imarunner2 just posted up a great Instructable on how to make a simple, cheap bike rack using PVC. Link.
Rob solved a phone ringing problem in cubicle land “I work in an office of several cubicles. Often someone is on the other side of the room, and a phone rings. Who’s phone is it? All the phones sound the same, and the cubicle walls block line-of-sight to the indicator light on the phone. That is, unless it’s remotely located in a picture of a deer, up where I can see it. Now, with Caller Eye Deer, I know whether or not to run across the room.” Link.
Want a robotic voice to read the news from Google on your music player? Here’s how. Jeremy english writes – “This document explains the step used to create a podcast of google news. A bunch of standard unix tools are used to get the job done. You can get a copy of the scripts here. All of the work is done on my local machine then uploaded. The host, where my website sits, does not let me use my own executables. I will be skipping the process of uploading the files since that is unique to my webserver.” Link.
This is a great, use an old Palm to control your PC’s music. JT writes “After using several mp3 player thin-clients and other Palm-based Winamp interfaces, I decided to write my own. Basic requirements: Must not require using (and losing) a stylus – Edits playlist order with a single touch/drag – Direct searching Winamp media library and server directory browsing.” Link.
