Hasta La Gadget!

What do you do once you have ripped every last one of your CDs to MP3 format? Take out a Dremel and some glue and turn them into a stand for your iPhone, of course. Those pointless plastic disks can now sit supporting your MP3 player rather than taking up much needed landfill space.

To make the Recycled CD iPhone Dock you just stick a stack of CDs together and then shave out space for the iPhone USB cable, following the simple instructions (if you need them) over at Geeky Gadgets. We’d echo commenter Keith’s concerns, though – that the iPhone is not actually supported – and stack a few extra CDs on top, then carve out a more cosy space for the iPhone to rest in. A great DIY project which proves that CDs are good for something other than keeping coffee-rings off the desktop.

DIY: Recycled CD iPhone Dock [Geeky Gadgets. Thanks, Roland!]

If you have stripped down an old road bike and turned it into a fashionable’n’fun fixed-gear machine, you will have a bunch of parts left over. Once you have weighed them in your hands and laughed maniacally at the sheer weight of the gear cassettes and brake assemblies you no longer have to carry with every single revolution of the pedals, you might wonder if you can recycle them.

If so, you may consider a rather stylish clock, just like those made by Kenneth Armstrong. He has been tinkering with cogs, disk-brakes and even entire wheels for seven years, combining parts into these sculptural timepieces. There’s something of the steampunk about these, and if you check out Armstrong’s site, you’ll see he’s been rather busy, turning out locking posts made form old d-locks and tables fashioned from bike wheels and tubing. There’s even a rather uncomfortable but cool-looking chair welded from old handlebars. We love them.

Recycled Sculpture [A Portfolio Recycled via Urban Velo]

A team of AMD engineers claim they have broken the overclocking world record for quad core x86 processor frequency.

At an event hosted by CompUSA in Miami, the engineers used liquid nitrogen and liquid helium cooling to reach 6.93 GHz on an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition quad core processor.

The 6.93 GHz speed, claims AMD, beats the previous record of 6.89 GHz for Phenom II quad-core processors. It is also more than twice the 3.2 GHz normal clock speed for the processor. AMD engineers cooled the processors to under three degrees kelvin or below 425 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius)  to get the results.

Check out the video of the event

See also:
Overclocked AMD Processor is Cool at 6.5 GHz
CompUSA Comes Back From the Dead

Some years ago, Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson was dealt a healthy dose of paranoia when he tested out a Mercedes with keyless entry. The car would lock and unlock automatically if you had the fob in your pocket. The trouble was, Clarkson never knew if the car was actually locked. If he went back to check it, the door just opened again.

Nathan Seidle of Sparkfun electronics decided he needed the same level of niggling worry in his life and rolled his own car-opener with a Nike+ dongle and receiver, an Arduino board, a Nike+iPod Serial to USB Adapter and some creative sabotage.

With a little plugging, soldering and very simple programming, Nate has himself a widget in the cart which constantly beeps out a signal, fishing for an in-range Nike+. When it hears one reply, it decodes its unique ID and if the “key” fits, the car opens. But Nate, like Clarkson, had a problem:

While testing I found the range of the transmitter (the footpod) was really pretty impressive at 50+ feet. This was cool, but I didn’t want my car to be unlocking/lock while walking around my house or office.

The answer? A Tin-Foil hat. A few wrappings of aluminum foil and the range was halved. The car itself ignores the iFob while the engine is running, so it can’t switch off on the road, and Nate has finally rid himself of his final mechanical key. We just wonder what he’s going to use to scratch up any cars that steal his parking space.

iFOBing A Mazda [Sparkfun via Lifehacker]

SAN MATEO, California — To stand out among a beautifully, constructed, near-authentic steam carriage and a fire-breathing installation that spews out a flame every few seconds isn’t easy.

But if one project can grab attention it is the ‘Hand of Man’,  an outsized hydraulic arm that can be operated from a little gloved controller nearby.

“It’s modeled on the human hand and foreman and has the same range of motions,” says New Mexico-based artist Christian Ristow took about six months to build the installation.”It is all hydraulic and powered by diesel engines.”

The initial funding for the project came from the Burning Man festival last year and since then Ristow has honed the machine and added more functions.

The 25-feet tall arm has been created such that anyone from the audience can walk up to a little platform and stick their hand into a glove. The motions inside the gloved controller are reflected in the giant hand.

“There’s a feeling of power that goes with controlling a robot of this scale,” says Ristow. And that arm has the power to inflict some serious damage including the ability to pick up a small car and toss it back to the ground.

Operating the installation itself is pretty simple and intuitive says Ristow. And to prove him right, next in line to try out the Hand of Man was a five-year old boy.

For more on how Ristow’s Hand of Man was created, check out his blog.

Here’s also a video of the Hand of Man from the Burning Man festival.