Pinewood derby car with camera…
Awesome derby car mod – “I wanted to show you all the cool car my son Matthew and I made for his cub scouts pinewood derby. We wanted to do something entirely different and decided on mounting a very small camera to it along with an LED in the back to look like a jet engine. It was powered by a 9V battery which also served as the car’s weight. The car broadcast wirelessly to a receiver which we recorded on mini-DV. We won 7 prizes and finished 4th in the races.” [via] Link.
Phil writes “Spare time projects of engineers. Some wierd, some wonderful. It’s a regular feature of Design News magazine, and always gets passed around here in the lab – Design News celebrates the third anniversary of the Gadget Freak files. This popular column, sponsored by Allied Electronics, profiles the sometimes useful and always entertaining inventions that Design News readers come up with in their spare time.” 
John writes “Here’s how to make a device that is useful for visualizing the movement of small particles and for demonstrating slip planes, dislocations, defect holes, and the three states of matter. If you would rather not create your own, you can buy one for $50, but this DIY version costs about $8”. 
Devin writes “These pages are a nice guide to making high voltage items (toys?) out of trash! These two pages show how to make a Tesla Coil out of trash, and how to hook up TV flyback ransformers for all sorts of fun HV stuff (arcs, jacob’s ladders, capacitor-bank charging, coin-shrinking, etc.)” 
Frank writes “Here are some projects, plans, rural skills, renewable energy, home CNC machine building, home/hobby metal casting, dry humor, tons of pictures…Since 1999 theworkshop.ca has evolved from a general interest hobby site to become an international Small Foundry resource…2005 marks the entry into the “Art-Casting” and “Industrial Proto-Typing” markets…Industrial Proto-Typing is a service that caters to the manufacturing sector through to inventors that want a single part or series of parts cast for a “Proof-of-Concept” application.” 
Geo’s Super-slim, cool-lookin, EMI-shielding wallet – “Ever get tired of carrying around a huge honkin’ leather wallet? Want to impress your hipster friends with your wacky style? Worried about your credit cards getting erased by all those stray electromagnetic fields you’ve been hearing about? Then this is the wallet for you.” 
Hans Schepker’s mathematically correct glass and sculpture site is an excellent read – “All my stained glass work is based on geometry. Yes, it is math I am talking about! The following lines are a short explanation of the shapes I work with and a bit of theory around them.” Thanks 
