Rebecca Spender´s KnitWit are smart needles that keep track of the number of stitches you’ve already done. Movement sensors in the ends record the movement of the needles. This data is streamed via RF to a remote base station which decodes the signal, looking for a specific series of movements which correlate to the formation of a stitch. When a “stitch” is recognised, the LCD counter increments. Link.

Computers donated from the developed world are both fuelling and feeding an appetite for computers in Africa where a new machine could cost more than a year’s wages. “The students are very happy and even the community comes to witness. It’s a big achievement for a school, and if it’s a school in one area you might find a migration of students from other schools without computers. Link.

The series was developed to provide a resource for the hobbiest, tinkerer, engineer, weekend mechanic, housewife, dentist, and poet. For you, I am doing this because I would like to help provide information that is not always readily available. The purpose of these articles is not only to help you repair your CD or VCR but more importantly, to educate. Therefore, they are not quite ‘FAQs’ but rather complete maintenance and repair guides. Link.

Here’s the video of MAKE’s Associate Editor Phillip Torrone on G4TV’s Attack of the Show. The show aired on Friday, July 15. We showed off some user submitted projects, hacks, mods and blew up stuff with a high powered green laser. At the end there’s the debut of an art project we’re doing too. CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO (QuickTime .MOV).

With a few spare parts, you can turn an old computer mouse into an amusing robot. On G4TV’s Attack of the Show we had mousey make a special appereance – anyone who watched the show could get the link to download the PDF from Volume 02 and build their own, and now you can too. I’m posted this to see if iTunes picks up the PDF so CLICK HERE and click SUBSCRIBE to get the PDF. Direct link here.

The fact is that it can and should (sometimes) be done… installing Windows 2000 on very old computers with only 32 megabytes (MB) of memory (RAM). I’ve seen 64 and 96 MB RAM computers struggling with Windows 2000 but if you configure the system correctly it can run fast and well. Note though that there is no “magic bullet”. Although your old computer can run faster it will never compete with modern hardware in terms of performance. This is a short guide to show you how to run Windows 2000 on such old computers and maintain a fast perfroming system. Link.

I work in an Orthopaedic surgery research laboratory and we have a lot of macs. We have three MDD Powermacs, one B&W 350 mHz Powermac, a Wallstreet PB, a 1 Ghz Ti PB, and a couple other miscellaneous old school macs. Before I even started at the lab the Ti Powerbook was having quite a few problems with the display. It seemed that every time the Powerbook got even slightly hot (I’m talking turned on for maybe 10 minutes with just web surfing), the display would become so garbled that it would be illegible and completely non-functional. The only way to fix the garbled mess was to raise the Powerbook on some metal blocks that we had and put a fan to the side of it to keep it cooled. Here’s how they fixed it! Link.