Here’s a really good example of what you could do with an old Apple Mac G4 cube – build an aquarium inside of it! This project was inspired by this one (one of the first cube aquariums) and has some good info on making your own. You can also make a great fish home from a Classic too! [via] Link.
Onyxfrog wants you! “I work at a Home Depot and over the holiday shopping season we have a ‘santas workshop’ setup and I get to run all sorts of demos and classes. It’s lots of fun and I keep all my issues of Make with me for ideas but I would really like to hear and cool How-To’s you guys have that can be done with products primarily from Home Depot. I actually made a cigar box guitar last weekend. So far I haven’t been able to convince them to let me make a spud-gun but I’ve made plenty of mini-marshmallow guns =) If it wasn’t so darn cold out I would love to do a Kite Aerial Photography demo. So if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them!” Link. I think the $14 video camera stabilizer from MAKE 01 is a good one. Post your ideas in the comments!
Daniel on CNET has a great article about the excellent Altoids contest that just wrapped up “If you happen to find yourself looking to remake your leftover Altoids tins, the company that makes the mints says the creative bar is a whole lot higher than an ashtray or a trinket box. Earlier this year, Altoids invited customers to enter its Tin Million Uses competition. The idea? Challenge people to come up with the most innovative way to reuse the ubiquitous tins.” Link. Many of the projects can be found in the pages of MAKE if you want to build your own too!
Omegas writes in about the DIY Minimoog – “If you want to get started with analog synth building but Minimoog seems too complicated, see the instructions at Music From Outer Space on how to build your first synth. The Weird Sound Generator, as it’s called, familiarizes you with the basics of analog sound generation and creates wicked sounds too.” See previous.
This is an update to the underwater ROV submarine built a while back. It has an improved design, and is more versatile. Maker Jason writes “…the build process, and parts, I used to build an Underwater ROV with camera – This will be version 2 of my ROV adventures, I plan to take things I learned from version 1 and fix them, plus I will be adding features later. The plan is to make this a flexible platform that will allow me to add things like temp/pressure sensors, air lift balloons, torpedos, sonar, grabbing arm. But stage one is going to be working the bugs out the main platform.” [via] Link.
“The Bell Model 500 desk phone manufactured for decades by Western Electric is an icon of Twentieth Century product design. The evolution of the Model 500’s receiver begun with the first telephones produced in the late 19th Century and it’s longevity has taken it into the 21st. I have always found it to be ergonomically designed and comfortably to use, It is the embodiment of “form follows function”.” Here’s how to make it a cell phone handset. Thanks Jake! Link.
Folks trying to keep a Maker’ down! – “Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home. But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard. Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank’s permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.” [via] Link.
