HOW TO – Make a Shoebox Crankie
Russellh writes “This post shows you how to make a crankie, a story-telling device, from a shoebox, fax paper, and coat-hanger parts. Neat doings for this obscure art form. (History) – The SF Weekly describes a cranky as a primitive, miniature theater in a box: a roll of paper painted with pictures that tell a story, cranked by hand past an open frame. (The person doing the cranking often narrates and provides sound effects too). Though the parts can change, canvas instead of paper for example, this is an apt description.” Link.
Chris writes in with a great site from Yamaha that has all sorts of fun papercrafts to download, print and make “This has a range of papercraft projects including Yamaha motorcycles, rare animals and some very cool seasonal themed projects like a jack-o-lantern… and for Japanese festivals.” 
“A laser harp is basically a big frame resembling a real harp. There are no strings. Instead, beams of laser light are projected from the bottom of the harp. These beams strike light sensors at the top of the frame. When something (a hand, foot, etc.) blocks the beam, a note is triggered on a synthesizer or some type of tone generator. Theoretically the harp could control anything but I’m interested in its musical possibilities.” Here’s how to make one! [
Winners of the Olympus BioScape contest are in, first place – rat eyes “If the key to the inner self is visible by looking deeply into someone’s eyes, rats must be among nature’s most glorious creatures – for a stunning, brilliantly hued and richly patterned photograph showing the inside of an aging rat’s eye has been chosen as the first prize winner in the 2005 Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition.” See the entire gallery here… 
Coming soon, edible MAKE? Mmmm, roboty… “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it dinner? At Chicago’s trendy Moto restaurant, it is: a 20-course tasting menu can begin with “sushi” made of paper that has been printed with images of maki and wrapped around vinegared rice and conclude with a mint-flavored picture of a candy cane. Should you fail to finish a course, Homaro Cantu, Moto’s executive chef, will emerge from the kitchen with a refund: a phony dollar bill flavored to taste like a cheeseburger and fries.” [
Meet the Cubatron, it’s not Castro on a light cycle, it’s the world’s largest true 3D color graphics display. Assuierupe has a very cool Flickr photo set “The coolness of this display hack is difficult to convey via static images, but check out the project page for a couple of videos of the device in action. The device was built by Mark Lottor for Burning Man, and now takes up a corner of his Menlo Park living room.” 
Ray and Cape write “We thought it’d be sweet to make shot glasses out of ice. There are some bars in Europe and Australia which are made completely out of ice and kept below freezing, we didn’t go that far but these are pretty cool (no pun intended), check it out. We used Dixie cups. They come in several different sizes. You will need two different sizes, we used 9 oz and 3 oz cups…” 