DIY Projects
If you have some old CPUs laying around, you can turn them in to great geeky keychains, perfect for holiday gifts. The process is pretty simple, drill a hole, get a keyring and that’s about it. 
HOW TO – Read 12 Digit UPC Barcodes
“Most barcodes are 12-digit UPC barcodes, with ten digits at the bottom of the code and one small number to each side. Impress your friends by asking them to select a random item from the kitchen with a removable label and cut the numbers off of the UPC barcode; you can then proceed to read the numbers encoded in the lines.” Link.
The Magnificent Drill Cart
Here’s a simple and clever way to build a motorized cart for kids: power it with two 18V cordless drills. The drills friction-drive the cart’s front wheels via two 3/4-inch sanding drums, and you drive and steer the thing by pulling the drills’ triggers, one with each hand. Two fully charged drill batteries will run the cart for about 45 minutes of play time. Thanks Paul! Link.
HOW TO – Make a wardriving box…
How to make a war driving box – “It’s very easy, but this is not a step by step HOWTO, only a guide to build your own box. To start, you need a small up and running OpenBSD System on an Intel based System. This Sytem can run on in VMWare or on a older PC System (I use a 500 Mhz Pentuim System with 4 GB HD and 128 MB Ram)” – Thanks Jason! Link.
HOW TO – “Stereo” from the air
John writes “Stereo From the Air – I just finished a short tutorial on how to take 3D stereo photographs from on board of an airplane and thought I’d share it with you guys. It’s a fun little project for when you’re pretty much bored out of your skull and stuck in a tiny seat at 33,000 feet.” Link. Here’s another how to I wrote awhile back on making 3D images too. Testing for cosmic rays also passes the time.
Build-it-yourself cell phones
Here’s more about the DIY cell phone project – ” Surj Patel is building his own cell phone, bit by soldered bit. It’s not easy. It starts with parts that cost around $400. Then Patel and his partner, Deva Seetharam, have to write code to run on the tiny Linux-based computer that he’s hoping will serve as the brains of his new phone. So why bother? After all, it’s not like cell phones are hard to find or terribly expensive.” [via] Link.
PocketMod: Make a disposable personal organizer
Rael had a great idea, use these PocketMods for Make for shopping lists and instructions for a project. “The PocketMod is a new way to keep yourself organized. Lets face it, PDAs are too expensive and cumbersome, and organizers are bulky and hard to carry around. Nothing beats a folded up piece of paper. That is until now. With the PocketMod, you can carry around the days notes, keep them organized in any way you wish, then easily transfer the notes to your PDA, spreadsheet, or planner.” Link.