Maker Rich Gibson is welding up a neat looking chopper bike – on the MAKE flickr photo pool he writes “Chopper bike ‘complete.’ I am going to lower the seat some more. It is still basically unrideable by mere mortal. I’m going to make a new front fork that is shorter. Keep the original one for ‘special’ occaisions.” Link. In MAKE 03 we have a good welding primer from Mr. Jalopy if you’re looking to pimp your bike too.
Last week the free VMware player was released. It lets you run virtual machines, but not create them. Here’s a HOW TO for creating your own virtual machines. In this example, a usable VMware image using the VMware player and FreeDOS. I think one day I’d like to make an OS jukebox, you’d put in a quarter and it would “play” any OS you want and then you access the net, etc… Link.
The Dark Blade PC case was started in 2004, and it’s looking like it’s almost done. Made from milling a lot of metal, comes with 2 hydraulic pumps to keep it cool, it’s gorgeous. This is the type of PC case design you’ll see in some futuristic version of MoMa. [via] Link.
Andy Volk has a nice HOW TO for getting video on that spiffy new iPod video “Since I wanted to fill my new gadget as quickly as possible with video files found with Yahoo! Video Search, I realized that this would be a good time to mention that you can use the Media RSS feed from our Web Services API to easily pull in Yahoo! Video Search results as a video podcast with iTunes 6, and from there you can move them to your iPod. (So you can still use this feature with iTunes 6 even if your Video iPod hasn’t arrived yet).” [via] Link.
Front Row is a new media center application from Apple, it’s shipping on the new iMacs and you use it to manage movies, photos, music, DVDs and more from your couch – with a slick interface. No word if Apple will sell or distribute versions for that Mac you already have, but a couple folks have already hacked up a version of Front Row and have it working. Here’s a HOW TO of sorts via Digg and here’s a video over on TUAW + Flickr shots.
One of the hardest parts of sewing is making sure patterns fit to your body shape. Here’s an article online from Threads Magazine that shows four quick, easy, and cheap ways to make your own dress form. “With a few pins, some muslin, and 20 minutes, you can explore more pattern tweaks (and learn more about fitting) on a custom form than you could in hours of flat-pattern investigation on paper.” These DIY dress forms can be made out of duct tape (there are 2 ways!), molded paper-mache, or paper-tape. Link.
Old phone, with new cell guts, and functional. This project is a working cellular push-button telephone. The phone is an old telephone from my kitchen growing up that I modified into a working cellphone. The old bell ringer functions. You can talk and listen on the old handset. The phone is dialed with the buttons on its front. And it can be powered via a power cord spliced into the phone jack at the back. No text messaging, phone book, or camera phone junk. Smile. [via] Link.
