HOW TO – The Magic Phone: Number Pad Matrix Decoding
I saw the start of Fabienne Serriere’s awesome project at the Maker fair – here’s the how-to! She writes “This How-To is the first in a series of construction instructions for a project titled The Magic Phone. I was inspired by the Port-O-Rotary from Spark Fun but wanted to take the project to the next level and with hardware I already had on hand. You may be able to extrapolate these instructions to different models of telephones, different telephony protocols, and even different projects.” Link.
The “Spiral Rainbow Island” created by Richie Sowa is an island is anchored off the coast of Mexico, close to Cancun. The island is made from over 250,000 recycled plastic bottles, packed into netting. 
Chris sent this how-to in from Grynx contributor Dan “This box will house my proprietary Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio unit and set as a client, a 2.4ghz 500mw HyperLink Amplifier connected to a Linksys WRT54G with a third party firmware and set as an access point, the Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio will be the main link back to my base radio. The whole idea of this enclosure is to be as “modular” as possible, i.e. if the PSU blows-up I can simply remove the PSU and replace it, OR if I need to relocate the whole box, I can simply unscrew all the antenna and take it away with me.” 
Here’s a step-by-step guide to converting any external hard drive enclosure (USB, Firewire, SCSI, etc) into an external SATA enclosure that meets the SATA standard. 
Good overview of the Machinima film fest and making films in the virtual world, the entries are great! – “Machinima is film-making using video game engines, hybridizing traditional film, animation, and game development. Lots of fun…A full list of festival winners, nominees and presenters are up on the festival site. Big ups to Machinima Man Paul Marino and everyone who put it together. Already looking forward to next year’s fest which will have two full days of machinima.” 
Matt writes “I have put together some free plans for building a spider rifle. This is a device which I designed and built from pvc & cpvc pipe that uses compressed air to suck up and kill household spiders.” I don’t think you have the kill the little fellows, so this could just be used to capture and release. 
“The Musical Instrument Makers Forum, an interactive forum for the discussion of musical instrument construction, design and repair – Acoustic guitar building, electric guitar making, archtop guitar building, violin making, dulcimer making, mandolin building, banjo building, or any other type of lutherie; pickup winding and rewinding; drum making; flute and recorder making and repair; brass instrument building and repair; and more. For makers of all instruments at any skill level from expert to wannabe.” Thanks Dave! 
