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Check out http://www.makezine.com/. It's DIY wet dream for kits!

Here's your wireless;

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/11/bluetoothing_a_trash_80.html

First thing I would do is Build a Workbench with them. Check out instructables.com and makezine.com there are plenty of plans. Here is the link to a make podcast on a bench http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/07/make_podcast_weekend_projects.html I would then setup an old PC with a dual boot linux/XP setup, just to cover all your bases. If you are into Electronics and a little programming I would suggest getting an Arduino. http://www.arduino.cc/ To expand your electronic aspect of the lab I would get packs of resistors and Caps. Get a cheap soldering iron and DMM. That's all I got for now hope that helps.

Gotta put in a plug for Make magazine, which is a fun read, and full of good projects that anyone can do.

I teach an undergrad course in computer organization (basically beginner architecture), and I've gotten lots of ideas from Lady Ada and Evil Mad Scientist. We use AVR microcontrollers, and the cheap-o USB programmers from Lady Ada, to do a bunch of fun and easy projects.

My kids are 8 and 5, and are playing around a lot with LEDs and magnets. I probably won't let them solder until they're teen-agers (lead in solder sucks, but solder without lead also sucks), but they are getting to breadboard some stuff.

And of course, mentos and coke is always a good idea.

Exactly. There are so many things that you could do.

Me, I'd grab the latest issue of MAKE and build cool stuff. Or maybe something with my Lego Mindstorms. Leave work early and go climbing everyday. Spend more time with the woman. Go for dance lessons.

Seriously, time is at such a premium that if I had nothing to do, I'd probably just sit there and enjoy the fact that I have nothing to do.

Here goes some useful links to electronics resources in the web:

Mag Lab Education - Electricity and Magnetism: A to Z

Make Magazine - all about hobbyst stuff - try searching here for "multimeter", or "soldering", or "PCB"...

Microelectronics Videos - very good videos about microelectronics and fiber optics

UVA Virtual Lab - Amazing multimedia resources covering many aspects of electricity and magnetism

ePanorama - practical projects, texts, tutorials, and many more...

MIT OpenCourseWare - if you want to go really deep in theory...

anyone wants to complete this list???

Make Magazine has a lot of interesting and low cost projects to practice with. They use Arduino a lot from Beer Making to Solar Panels

Make isn't strictly an electronics magazine, but it does have a lot of interesting projects with instructions. Although its not a handbook or an general instruction manual it should have some inexpensive things to practice with.

Make Magazine has a lot of interesting and low cost projects to practice with. They use Arduino a lot from Beer Making to Solar Panels

Make isn't strictly an electronics magazine, but it does have a lot of interesting projects with instructions. Although its not a handbook or an general instruction manual it should have some inexpensive things to practice with.

arduino is a good suggestion, i'd also say the online (or print) versions of MAKE. in addition to skill building sections like soldering, making PCBs we also have 4 volumes that come out per year with tons of electronics articles. http://www.makezine.com/ (i'm the senior editor)...

Well then, let's save you some money. Boeing Surplus is no more. They closed last winter. Kinda ticked me off, since I finally moved close enough to be able to stop by.

Seattle PI
@ Make magazine
Save Boeing Surplus site

You know much against my better judgement I'm starting to like Apple. Tempting the Linux crowd into giving up their principles for a pretty UI is just so delightfully evil.

Maybe I should post on Make blog on DIY tattoo removal that involves brewing up TATP ingredients for people like Cory.

Boston! I hope you can see this, because I'm doing it as hard as I can!

He might find this quite inspirational

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/01/make_your_own_vaccum_tube.html

He might not want to go this far, but skills like this are rare.

over here

Is RMS ever happy? I am going to start a project "One Puppy per child" and the first one goes to Stallman.

Microsoft has done surface without the table, in fact, that's how the whole tech started off.

See here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujhFInvyxo

or here:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/03/microsoft_research_techfe.html

It's the original demonstration from where the current surface stemmed.

A specific table isn't essential to the surface concept.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/01/darkest_material_ever.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Here's an article with a photo, please.

There's nothing stopping you from using full-frame lenses on a camera with a smaller sensor. It works fine. The only difference is that your images are effectively magnified (technically, pre-cropped

It not only crops but it also has more noise. Two sensors with the same resolution but one being a fullframe and the other being an APS, the fullframe sensor will have less noise. Especially for low light shots at high ISOs. An APS sensor shooting at an ISO of 3200 or even 1600 can have visible artifacts whereas the same exposure with a fullframe sensor won't. Photo.net has had some good discussions on this. Here's one, "why should I use a full frame sensor'. As far as any magnification, I have telephoto lenses so it doesn't matter to me. The largest lens I have now is only 200mm but I'd like to get an 800mm lens. With it not only could I get some good close up landscape shots but I could also use it for astrophotography. And for wide angle lenses, if you have a 20mm lens you want it to be 20mm not 30. For a fisheye it's even m or extreme.

I've been considering medium format for a while. Digital backs are really expensive.

That's why I said I'd start with a film back. Even I can't afford the $8000 for the EOS 1Ds Mark III I definitely can't afford $20,000 to $30,000 for a digital back. But give it tyme and prices will drop. When Canon released the EOS 1Ds Mark II with 16MPs the suggested price was $8000. Now the Mark III's price is the same but it has more than 21MPs and is approaching the resolution of medium format digital backs. Also if I can make money as a photographer I may be able to afford a digital back, and with one I could earn more.

Hehe. I think you're really underestimating the cost of astro here. Sure, you can get some shots with an inexpensive scope and mount, but what I've seen is that people outgrow that stuff very quickly

Gadget love, or lust. I know what you mean, I too want the latest and greatest. But you don't have to buy more expensive equipment.

custom-modified DSLR that has the IR filter

Another gadget I'd love to have. "Makezine" recently had an article on IR photography. It named some old digital cameras that worked well for IR, they didn't have IR filters so all that was needed for IR photography was some ND filters. It also said how other cameras could be modified for IR.

TV-B-Gone!

check the 2nd comment

At first I was totally psyched, then upon further examination I decided that, really, I can accomplish much cooler and more interesting things, for now, with a Gumstix linux computer (or a cluster thereof) or a Parallax "stamp" or even something like this guy here. The problem is that none of my ideas require only an LCD screen, motion sensor, camera or speaker. They all require the ability to tie in other circuits in a way that this device doesn't appear to support (there's ethernet, for instance--also over wireless--but no analogue interfaces of a kind you could really do anything with). Simpler things like the gumstix computers are way more customizable in the long run if you're willing to get your hands dirty, and they're also way cheaper!

This is a problem with the "Blogosphere" in general. The vast majority (not all but certainly most) just echo news from other sources, or worse other blogs. They do not offer any insight, commentary or additional information on top of their source information. It's a crapshoot whether or not they actually write ANYTHING original rather than copy+paste.

The worst is when you have a blog linking to a blog linking to the original info. FFS people...

The net effect is old news gets constantly recycled and real news gets diluted. How many times have you seen a new blog post about something that actually happened months ago? The "9V battery contains AAAA cells" thing stands out as the most recent example for me: here (2 Jan 2008), here (9 Jan 2007), here (3 Jan 2007), here (23 Dec 2006). You have a "story" at LEAST a year old that has been copied verbatim at least four times!

Original here (No date) as far as I can tell, since all of the above blogs link to it.

Plus, all of these blogs have comment sections, which make them twice as redundant because the comments themselves also fail to add anything most of the time. If they do you'll never find them because there are so many other palces that run the same "story."

Fight the watering down of information! NEVER link to a blog unless it provides something EXTRA to the news! ALWAYS take a few minutes to get as close to the original source as possible! If you run a blog yourself, work to ADD to articles you link to - personal thoughts, additional information, insightful discussion on the topic at hand - be UNIQUE. That's how you get a readership... by having something worth reading.
=Smidge=

Nokia N810
and/or
ASUS Eee PC
and/or
OLPC Give One Get One

Pleo

Arduino
iPod Touch 16GB (jailbroken)
Apple Tablet (will have to wait for January. Or when hell freezes over.)

The current issue of Make magazine has a short article on a rapid prototyper some guys built that does selective sintering of powdered sugar! Instead of a laser or electron beam to do the sintering, they created a jet of hot air to carmelize the powder. They've turned it open-source and called it the CandyFab project.

As for using chocolate, I don't know of anyone dabbling in that. But, I suppose there's no reason you couldn't build a fused deposition modeler that uses chocolate chips in a hopper as the raw material. What would you use for support structure?

There's a link at the bottom of TFA talking about how someone couldn't get through security with a Improvised Electronics Device.

This tells me that the TSA agents are incredibly poorly trained. (No I'm not just now coming to this conclusion.) Whenever a TSA agent sees something suspicious, they absolutely have to investigate, but they need to know how to investigate. The first thing is they should have a list of things that could possibly damage an airplane. Bomb, wepon (gun, taser, etc.), maybe a transmitter aimed at disrupting cockpit communications or instruments. Then they should look at the suspicious device and determine if it has any of the critical parts for actually causing harm. Is there an explosive? No? Then it's not a bomb. Is there a large power supply? No? Then it isn't a transmitter capable of disrupting communications, or an electronic wepon.

Our first responders absolutely need the ability to tell the difference between a bomb and a moonite on a lightbrite. (Possibly by looking for an actual explosive.) That they can't speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the war on terror. Exposed wires should be a giant tip off that anything dangerous should also be in plain sight. No one is going to build a rats nest of wires and then carefully conceal the actual explosive behind a clever trap door. If "they" are going to disguise it, they are going to disguise all of it.

It's just you. On Slashdot, we call that "pretty fuckin' cool", on Makezine.com, they call it "neat, but don't try this at home", and at Survival Research Labs, they call it "another Thursday at work".

roundup of various reports about Google's rumored gPhone

Psshhh.. Who needs a G-phone, when you can have an O.G. Phone?

I love modeling stuff. Everyone should sell their crappy old analog gear and go buy it. Dump all that dusty junk at once, especially on Craigslist in Minneapolis. Make sure you accept the first offer that comes along, even if it seems pretty low. It'll pay off, there's a big sale at Guitar Center RIGHT NOW. Those things don't last forever- and I should know- I'm on their mailing list

Modeling is clearly the future. How often do you have to replace the vacuum tubes in your DAW or your pod? That's right, never. That's called progress.
 
Real Marshall stacks require additional power outlets and an extra cable for every speaker cabinet you want to connect them to ...and guess how many amp models that plexi has? One. Onboard effects? ZERO. That's right, there are 0 possible amp-effect combinations! Don't see that in the ads do you? Nearly any modeling solution is literally infinitely better.

Oh, and you'll be looking for a long time for a pong easter egg on the Marshall. There isn't one.

In all seriousness... real nerds build their own synthesizers, plug electrified banjos into them, and then feed them into good old fashioned 0 MHz Marshall Plexis (though I prefer class A personally).

Currently, wind power is considerably cheaper by the watt. The price point for alternative energy for me is about $1/watt. Wind is close to that, while solar is considerably more expensive.

I guess this makes sense, since Solar panels require a complex manufacturing process, while a wind turbine is essentially just a fan connected to a motor, and can easily be made at home. In fact, I am in the process of doing this using plans from Make magazine.

From an English perspective, I would recommend you have your students read a magazine like Make (http://makezine.com/) or a website like Instructables (http://www.instructables.com/home) with a two-fold goal. First, either individually or preferably in groups, the students should create one of the projects they find (with instructor and parent approval). Second, again individually or in groups, they should create something new and post the what they did and the results. Both of these could easily be joint projects between science and English instructors. Personally speaking, I'd be really interested in what 8th graders would choose to make, and would therefore really would like to see what they publish. You might even be able to strike up a deal with the folks over at Make to have a special 'middle school' edition with projects from students around the world. One of the popular concepts in instructional technology right now is 'authentic' learning/problems/assessments, and between the creation of something new and writing it up for publication, I can't think of anything more authentic to encapsulate both science and English at the middle school level.

I'd also strongly suggest having them read a classic scifi book (http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/ lists_books_rank1.html; and I'd highly recommend the Red, Green, Blue Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson) then do a report or class presentation including (a) what science was fiction when the book was written, but is now real (think tricorder), (b) what science was fiction when the book was written, but is based on real science (think anti-matter in Star Trek), and (c) what science was and appears to be fiction (think faster than light travel).

The model is dying so all special interest magazines are feeling the pinch.

MAKE Magazine seems to be doing quite well.

The Make team speaks pretty openly about their success-- the magazine was doing so well they are giddy with excitement. I don't remember specifics, but in Make's first year of (2005-2006), they subscription numbers was several times greater then their original projections. And I just renewed for another year.

SysAdmin magazine died for other reasons. Personally, I sent in 3 subscription cards to SysAdmin Magazine, tried to subscribe at Linuxworld, etc. I never received a response, bill or magazine.

I would be interested in something like that too, since I already know Morse code. I learned that to use with ham radio, although I have not used it very much. I don't know about any specific drivers for any particular cell phone, but here are a couple of links that mention people using Morse Code with a cellphone. It seems to me that someone could probably send CW with something smaller than a traditional telegraph key. I believe there was also once a discussion on Slashdot about that too, but I don't have time to look for the link.

• Back to the Future - Morse Code and Cellular Phones
• Video: Morse coders beating SMSers

PC/104 (4" square) http://tlb.org/ttds-pc104.html
Pico-ITX (3.9" x 2.8") http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2154184680.html
Embedded Ethernet Boards http://www.ethernut.de/en/hardware/index.html
Chumby http://www.chumby.com/

Make magazine (lots of fun stuff) http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/11/the_o pen_source_1.html

Someone should design a shopping trolley with power steering, suspension and a sports muffler!

Like this one?
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/images/shop_ cart.jpg

or this one?
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/12/neuro tikart_hom.html

This concept was published in Make in one of their first year issues. It might have been the same guy and Microsoft just bought it out -- but it sure looks to be in the public domain. Here is a link to the Make article: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/07/soap_ mouse.html

There is also a video on YouTube (search for soap mouse" on how to make and use one. It's basically just a mouse in a sock.

And PC Magazine... what can I say? I haven't been there in a while and was amazed at all the crap on their web pages. One little block of text and the rest of the page is nothing but ad links. Very sad.

Are there any programming magazines that still have code listings? or that ship with a CD with the code on it, which would be preferable?

Don't think so. Make Magazine is a great little DIY magazine, but more twards gadgets than programming. Like what Popular Mechanics/Science was 20+ years ago.

On a less related note, I was at the grocery store and realized that not one of the magazines in the checkout line was targeted to men.

I always wanted to open a grocery store where the only grab-items at the register were rolls of barbed wire. (Bachelor living while shopping at 1AM can give one strange thoughts).

Here is somebody who builds rayguns out of scrap. Perhaps these are more to your liking. I believe one of them is a functioning pea-shotter!

http://claytonbailey.com/galleryrayguns.htm

Makezine published an nice article about these some time ago.

it's art?

Yes, hex is way more art than this: http://www.makezine.com/blog/MAKE_599.jpg

Courtesy of MAKE magazine.

Very nice coincidence. Look at what Makezine posted yesterday:

Body Hacking: If You Can't Open It, You Don't Own It

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/04/body_ hacking_if_you_cant.html

SLAC is kind enough to allow the Foothiils Amateur Radio Society to hold a monthly outdoor/indoor amateur radio symposium and operating event there, called AmTech Day. Now that no morse code test is required for any level of amateur license in the US, it's a great time to get into amateur radio and experiment with digital communications, microwave technology, satellites, or even Maker style operations such as bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere with equipment you can build yourself.

In July 1939 at a contest in Asheville, North Carolina Ted R. Elroy set a still-standing record for Morse copying, 75.2 WPM.

The Make magazine featured the leafproject recently which uses a custom board [2] for their "open source robot using artificial intelligence and vision"

Indeed, Make magazine had an article in one of their first issues about this. Including how to make your own wind generator. There are a variety of ways to create and/or reduce the amount of power you use. Make magazine is worth a look anyhow - http://www.makezine.com/.

Sears has what you want. A home CNC machine for wood and plastics. Me want!

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/01/compu ter_contro.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

the demise of popular electronics and the slate of similar magazines, in which you had both semi-interesting one or two element circuits to learn off of as welll as more advanced functional items is badly missed.

There are still some good electronics magazines published. There's Everyday Practical Electronics for instance. Steve Ciarcia's Ciruit Cellar , I used to love to read his "Circuit Cellar" column in the print edition of "Byte" magazine, is good though works mainly with microcontrollers. Ooh I see you mention both "Byte" and "Ciruit Cellar" later. Then there's Make zine, which is about hacking most anything, an example is one issue on hacking plants. One article was on how to setup a mycology lab and grow mushrooms. So though it's not just electronics they do have some electronics projects.

as is heathkit

Heathkit is still around but I don't know how good they are now.

Yesss!!! The Art of Electronics is all you need to start with, in fact is "All You Need" (r). From there on just play yourself, experiment, read, burn capacitors, have fun!.

There are tons of more or less detailed projects in internet, ask Mr. Google

For a starter's microprocessor kit, I'll go fo Arduino it's cheap (22 euros plus shipping), all included (no need for a programer), and it's Open Source (well, that's slashdot, what else could you expect?;-).

If you're after audio look into DIY Audio & Video the cricket amp is a good starter project, and sounds nice (provided you do have an electric guitar). Or may be you prefer to assemble your own mp3 player or this other .

If you're after radio applications, ARRL is your place to go.

If you like robotics, the list is endless, try Kronos Robotics, DIY robotics (in UK), BEAM walkers , etc.

And for lots of ideas,as well of lot's of references, read Make , or just keep reading slashdot ;).

Lots of suppliers and circuits
http://www.makezine.com/

Lots of suppliers and circuits
http://www.nutsvolts.com/

Online textbook
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

Forum
http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/index.php