More repairing goodness, Radiorental writes in describing tips for scoring super cheap iPods – “There’s usually half a dozen 10GB or 15GB broken ipods on ebay at any point in time. Usually either the battery or HD is stuffed. Most go for under $35, new battery is ~$10, HDs are around $100 for a 40G. $140 total for a 40G 3rd gen Ipod thank you very muchness.” Link.
If laser cutting your Powerbook isn’t your thing, here’s a HOW-TO on replacing the glowing white Apple logo with the old school rainbow colored Apple. The tricky part is taking off the back case, but they have some pretty good tips on getting it off without damage. The logo was replaced by multicolored “Roscolux” gels. [via] Link.
Rachel Metz at Wired has a great article about using store-bought toys as raw material for your own one-of-a-kind designs – “Remote-control cars are so over. If you really want to be on the edge of holiday hipness this season, try a home-hacked version that drives itself. Artist Federico Muelas is a remote-control-car-hacking expert. He cracks open the remote, then connects it to an external chip, which in turn is connected to a computer. Through the computer, he reprograms the remote so, for example, cars can automatically zoom through an obstacle course.” Link.
Ever wonder why some of the ice cubes in your ice tray have little spikes? Here’s why and here’s how to make your own spikey ice cubes “With ideal conditions (distilled water, a fan promoting evaporation and rapid cooling, -7 degree C temperature, an empty freezer) about half the cubes in an ice-cube tray will form spikes” [via] Link.
New Instructable on how to convert a computer power supply into a power supply for a lab bench, mat_the_w writes “I started into my main electronics classes, and needed a good power supply for working on lab projects at home in my room. My roommate Adam told me about somebody online who had converted a spare ATX computer power supply into a lab bench power supply, so I decided to do the same thing.” Link.
The MAKE team is pleased to announced that we’ve teamed up with Instructables! What’s Instructables? It’s a convenient system for documenting any how-to project, it’s Wiki + Flickr + step-by-step collaboration. You can use images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. Read all about it here. Ready to start? Head on over, grab a free account and join the MAKE group. Link. We’ll be looking for cool MAKE projects and will have some giveaways soon, so start adding your projects!
Heres how to take super-close photos, using a Pringles potato chip can – “So you want to take pictures of things up close, do you? You have gone tired of all the regular ways of doing so? Ready for bellows and reversing rings, but can’t afford them? Have no fear, there is a far cheaper way to get a reasonably good result!” Thanks Digitaler Lumpensammler! Link.
