Badge Maker

Get kicked out by security when you show them this fake photographer ID badge.

Sparkline Generator

Very cute.

The Solar Sail

Maybe I will be able to see it. Or maybe it will crash and burn :(

Mathomatic

Yes, we know about Mathematica and all those highly scary packages, but this is LGPL and you don't need a PhD to use it.

Champagne Chair Contest

I occasionally make chairs from Champagne bottle parts, but none as fancy as these.

Zoom in and look at their faces

Some of these people are about to get very, very wet.

The Summer Burn 2005

Summer music swap. A simply spiffing idea.

Your Monday Optical Illusion

The others in this collection are good too.

One Million Volts

I'm pretty sure I've linked to Mike's Electrc Stuff before, but he builds crazy scary high voltage stuff. 4-foot long milltion-volt sparks, and so on. I will not be trying this myself.

Powerbook Screen Repair

How to replace the bezel on a nearly new 15-inch Aluminum Powerbook G4 after it's been bent by a 4-year old child that knocked it off a desk

IMPORTANT: These instructions may not work for you and are for educational purposes only. Following them may void your warranty or expose you or the Powerbook to extreme danger. If you attempt to follow them and break anything, it's your own fault. Usual legal disclaimers apply.

You will need:

• A replacement bezel (I suggest you get the whole kit which includes the hinge cover and a collection of parts to replace things you might break along the way)
• A load of tools
• Approximately 3 bottles of beer
  
• Good lighting and a lot of patience
  

First, follow the instructions at pbfixit.com to remove the display. If your powerbook is very new, you might have to go through some additional steps to disconnect the Airport connector, since it's changed. You have to get to the Airport Extreme card, which is under the PCMCIA cage. The pbfixit instructions tell you that you have to remove pretty much everything (hard disk, optical drive, logic board, etc) to do this, but actually you don't have to. Try this instead:

1. Remove one screw and one 4mm nut from left hand speaker assembly. Gently fold it doewn so that you can get to the PCMCIA cage.
2. Remove the 4 screws (2 on the left, 2 on the right) and wiggle the cage slightly so that it's half-removed.
3. You will see that the eject button is stopping it from coming out. Pry the PCMCIA cage away from the eject button and remove them both.
4. Remove the 2 screws holding the Airport Extreme card, pull it out.
5. Disconnect the Airport antenna connector. You may have to pull it quite hard.
6. Once you've got the display off, you need to open it up. Slide a tool between the bezel and the gray plastic insert. The easiest place to do this is in the corners near the hinges. Work your way up the sides.
7. Detach the hinge side by pushing in the spring clips. These are hard to find and quite fiddly. There are 8 of them. Once you've worked these loose, you can detach the bezel and TFT assembly from the outer case, but not too far; the Airport antenna cables join them together.
8. Disconnect the Airport antenna cables from the small board that's in the U-shaped hinge cover. The board is in a paper envelope. The full bezel kit includes a spare envelope.
   
9. Remove the orange tape (keep it somewhere) and the metal tape (spare included in kit).
   
10. Remove the inverter board. It has two cables connected to it.
11. If you're replacing the bezel, hinge cover or hinges, unscrew the 5 tiny and very annoying screws that attach the hinge cover to the bezel. One of them has a ground wire attached. Remove the hinge cover from the bezel.
    
12. If you're replacing the bezel or display, remove the 8 screws that attach the display to the bezel.
13. The bottom of the screen is stuck to the bezel with one of the strongest adhesives known to man. Use a sharp knife, a little brute force, and a great deal of care when taking it off.

You can walk the above list in reverse to reassemble everything. When you switch the machine back on, it will complain slightly. Just be thankful that it switched on at all. You deserve a fourth bottle of beer.

You can turn your old bezel into a rather expensive picture frame.

Along the way you might have noticed a magnet mounted on the back of the screen. You can use this to hold small objects, or maybe to attach your Powerbook to the fridge.





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Apple iPod Battery Class Action

Is your iPod battery life sucking (continuous playback on 3G iPod < 4 hours, 1G and 2G < 5 hours)? Did you buy it before May 31, 2004? Claims must be postmarked by September 30, 2005.

Friday Game 2

If you got tired of the other one, try this one. Make your Teletubby-like creature fetch bricks in a Tetris-Breakout-like game.

Fast Film

14-minute movie mashup, made with photocopied stills from 300 movies. Worth watching, even though it requires RealPlayer.

Friday Game

POOM! Bounce the ball as many times as you can. Annoyingly hard.

RFC 1149 implementation

From a few years ago: IP over avian carriers.

HTML and CSS Table Border Style Wizard

How handy.