Nick writes “Here’s a great collection of homemade musical instruments and instrument mods from Dennis Havlena. Most are cheap and quick, and include sound samples. I particularly dug the simplified hurdy-gurdy.” Link.
Marc writes “This is a well detailed plan of building “the ultimate gaming table” for role-playing and board games. I appreciate the details like cup holders and dry erase boards as well as the layout of the room itself.” Link.
NotBobVilla sent this along…“A Sheetrock lift I designed/built on a job site of a 6 story building I renovated. I built 2 of them they worked so well. We also had about 30,000 SQ/FT of ceiling to put up. Typically when someone talks about a sheetrock lift its 2×4’s fashioned into a Tee. With 2 to 3 guys struggling to screw it to the ceiling. This is a one man operation. Material costs $50-60 bucks 4-6 hours build time. We could have bought one but weres the fun in that? It works just as well or better as lifts costing $600+” Link.
“Most barcodes are 12-digit UPC barcodes, with ten digits at the bottom of the code and one small number to each side. Impress your friends by asking them to select a random item from the kitchen with a removable label and cut the numbers off of the UPC barcode; you can then proceed to read the numbers encoded in the lines.” Link.
Here’s a simple and clever way to build a motorized cart for kids: power it with two 18V cordless drills. The drills friction-drive the cart’s front wheels via two 3/4-inch sanding drums, and you drive and steer the thing by pulling the drills’ triggers, one with each hand. Two fully charged drill batteries will run the cart for about 45 minutes of play time. Thanks Paul! Link.
How to make a war driving box – “It’s very easy, but this is not a step by step HOWTO, only a guide to build your own box. To start, you need a small up and running OpenBSD System on an Intel based System. This Sytem can run on in VMWare or on a older PC System (I use a 500 Mhz Pentuim System with 4 GB HD and 128 MB Ram)” – Thanks Jason! Link.
If you have some old CPUs laying around, you can turn them in to great geeky keychains, perfect for holiday gifts. The process is pretty simple, drill a hole, get a keyring and that’s about it. 
