Month: July 2005

I’ve always thought the Build-a-Bear stores in malls are kinda neat, the kids can build their own Teddy bears they way the want. I even made one once as a present. What I didn’t know- it seems it’s not so clear is what happens to the information the kids type in the computer terminal to get their bear birth certificates. The “opt in” preference apparently is pre-checked. The SF Chronicle has a story about this. The bears are cool, just watch the kids and don’t have them put their personal info at the end. Might be a good way to teach them about “opting out” [via] Link.

13 pounds of gummy bears, sorted out, melted, and layered into an empty tub of animal crackers. A day and a half of work. He used different colors so the gummy bear has stripes, as each layer of melted bear was poured in. [via] Link.

We blew out our amp this year and were planning on tossing the thing. I was looking at it and figured that it would probably be the perfect height for a monitor stand. The only real problem was that the thing weighed a ton. It was easy weight to get rid of though. Old electronics were a lot more serviceable than they are now. I took out five screws on the bottom and the whole thing slid out from the wooden case. It took about five minutes to remove all the knobs and the faceplate. Link. Flickr photos here.

A German designer calling himself Seppoman has built a Midibox control system into a sofa. If two people are sitting down, they can output three control values – left and right buttock weight and how far the person is leaning back. Obviously, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Previously, Seppoman built an incredibly cool rackmounted Commodore 64 SID synth. [via] Link.

“A hardware engineer has managed to sucessfully connect a full sized PC keyboard to the Sony PSP handheld. It looks as if the hardware mofication has done with several different xlink cable connectors and modified to interlink with each other. Obviously, the software side of things are not complete but this is still a very interesting modification.” [via] Link.

Digg user enjayenel wrote “I love using iTunes as a PDF library tool. I have hundreds of PDF manuals that I need organized access to. I just add them into the iTunes Library, edit the ID3 tags, create a smart playlist to group them together, and turn on the Browse feature (command-b) to get quick navigation to the PDF I am looking for based on title, product name (artist tag), and version (album tag). Double clicking the PDF opens it in your default PDF viewer”. [via] Get a FREE MAKE PDF in iTunes here- Link.

This Mini sure does drive…no pun intended. It’s a USB Flash Drive built into a Hot Wheels model of a Mini Cooper. I saw some various mods using USB drives, such as a PEZ and Lego drives. I think I remember reading something about someone who made a drive fit into a Hot Wheels car, but I don’t remember where. I saw this Mini sitting on my shelf, and figured, hey, I’m never gonna use it for anything anyways, so I might as well put it to use. Link.