HOW TO – Make a Joule thief
“In the November 1999 issue of EPE (Everyday Practical Electronics), a small and intriguing circuit was published in the Ingenuity Unlimited section by Z. Kaparnik. It was a very small implementation of a typical transformer feedback single transistor invertor. The transformer was a standard ferrite bead with two windings wound on it and the circuit was using the high voltage pulse generated when the transistor turns off to light an LED from a single 1.5V battery. This page has two variations on the original design to use the simple circuit in a useful manner.” Link.
“This was built as an experiment to amuse secondary school pupils at “Make It In Scotland”, a careers event organised by Careers Scotland, which took place in Motherwell in February and March 2003. It uses a vacuum cleaner to suck a projectile up a long pipe. The intension is that the missile should then carry on out the end rather than being brought to a dead stop by the suction. To get the best results, both ends are blocked off with card, then the card at the back of the tube is removed quickly. The vacuum keeps the second card in place until it is knocked off by the projectile.” 
Big Blue Saw is a new site that lets you create parts out of metal or plastic. You use your favorite CAD program to design a part, then upload the design to their site to get a rendered 3D image, and a quote. From the site: “Big Blue Saw is a new concept which brings together the Internet with modern computer controlled rapid manufacturing. With Big Blue Saw, takes a design you have made on your computer, then turns that design into a objects using state of the art robotic machine tools. Your parts are delivered right to your door.” 
If you happen to have an Xbox 360 and a PSP you can indeed use them together. It’s pretty much what you’d expect, the PSP acts as a USB drive and the Xbox 360 can play / browse music and photos. Video isn’t supported yet, but it’s a start… [
If you can think of a project that uses 20 Blackberries, they can be yours – Bruno writes “I’ve got two boxes of Blackberries that must be at least 5 years old. They’re not stolen, they’re surpluss from the company I work for (got lost at the back of a storage room and forgotten). If you can think of anything fun to make out of them, they’re yours, just let me know.” Post in the comments if you’d like them and what your project is. I think the batteries, LCDs, chargers and keypads could be useful for a few things…
Pastelero has a great how to on controlling WinAmp via a serial port “Nowadays, winamp has full support to keyboard shortcuts. But some time, when winamp didn’t have this feature, I was thinking in some way to make a easy way to change music by simply pressing one button, it would make things faster and would help me to change music during games. So I decided to make a external control panel, to make it easier to change musics, volume up or down, toggle shuffle and many other features by pressing just one button. I found one winamp plugin that shows how to configure a external control using the Serial Port, being able to make 4 or 15 buttons control…” [
