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wicked strong magnets...well technically, wondermagnet is selling but rumage through the website and see if you can figure out their business relation ship to otherpower, I can't.

If you are into this DIY power generation, do visit their site...they also homebrew hydroelectric systems. And the participants in their discussion groups include a few very well versed engineers with good ideas for off the grid living.

That got me to tear up an old hard drive, magnets used in there are likely the most powerful ones you'll find at home. They are usually placed in some metal assembly, keep that with the magnet! It helps contain the magnetic field mostly inside the assembly. If you remove it, the magnetic field spreads way further, can erase magnetic media fairly quick, and distort CRT screens (permanently, if you're not careful). Also, watch your fingers! I kid you not...

I'm not quite sure what to think. Shouldn't this be a .cx domain?

You should becareful though if you play around with those things.. I accidentally touched this
with my penis while I was posing for a shot on
this website. Needless to say, it was a very shocking experience for me.. But then again, after lots of chicks found out, I got laid more :)

I've got some of these NdFeB magnets and if you don't have some now, go order some! They are incredibly powerful and a ton of fun to play with. I got mine from a user on ebay who calls himself Pie. He also runs a website called WonderMagnet.com.

Don't ignore those safety warnings, these suckers are STRONG and will hurt you if you're not careful. I bought a whole stack of them and sold two to a co-worker - within minutes he had let them slam together and they shattered sending little sharp pieces (they're a metallic ceramic and break like glass) flying in all directions. To mis-quote A Christmas Story - you'll put your eye out, kid!

I've always been easy to entertain, but this experiment is pretty darn cool. I used a hard drive magnet and a 10' copper pipe I found at work. Drop the magnet down the pipe vertically and wait for it to appear at them bottom....Amazing. The folks at wondermagnet have a large assortment of neodymium magnets to choose from if you want something a little different than what the HD manufactures use.

get a length of copper tube from home depot, the thicker the better. I got a length of tube and then some repair coupling to put over it, to make the tube thicker. then drop a strong magnet down the tube. It will float slowly down instead of falling at a normal rate. here's a page describing a simmilar experiment.. you can get great magnets from wondermagnet. (the spherical ones work best.)

Another fun thing: get two linear polarizers and then show that they are transparent when lined up but opaque when crossed. This is pretty cool if you haven't seen it before. You can get nice big ones from edmund optics.

Also you can get 1/2 wave retarder film from this same place; put the retarder film between the crossed polarizers, and it opens up a little "window" which allows you to see through the otherwise opaque polarizers.

Other stuff you can do with polarizers: look at a window and observe that the glare on the window is dimmer when you turn the polarizer the right way. Also cross two polarizers and put a piece of clear plastic (like a CD case) between them, and you can see all sorts of pretty colors. Also you can take a clear plastic bag and stretch it and put it between the two polarizers, and the colors will indicate the stresses in the bag.

True Story - a guy at work has a small piece of steel embedded just above his eyelid, but below his eyebrow. It's been in there a few days and the wound isn't healing up as it should. He was working with a framing hammer and a chunk of nail or hammer head flew back at him (remember kids, always wear safety glasses!). I told him that I had some powerful magnets back in my cubicle (NIB rare earth magnets, the most fun money can buy, check here if you want some).

He held two of the magnets (product #2, see above site) up near his eyelid and that little piece of steel pulled that loose skin out about an inch! The guy yelped and immediately pulled the magnet away. Of course, a bunch of people heard the yelp and came to see what it was, and he had to repeat the stunt a few times to make everybody happy.

Tugging a visible chunk of steel is one thing, but I seriously doubt that you could pull the hemoglobin out of your body, or at least any significant portion of it, even if they did say so on ST:TNG.

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. The strip is made of plastic and is both transparent and fluorescent, but it's not magnetic. Do some experiments. Wave a stack of 20's next to a good-quality compass and watch for the needle to deflect. Try to stick a bill to a strong rare-earth magnet to find out if it has any ferrous content. Buy some magnetic field viewing film and check it out. But whatever you do, don't just believe the black helicopter brigade.

I like to dig into old dead drives. Collect screws and parts, make clock faces out of the drive platters, and particularly collect the NIB magnets.

On some drives, the ribbon that connects the controller board to the electronics inside of the drive housing is attached to the controller board with a press-fit-type connector.
You may be able to buy a new drive of the same make and model and just swap controller boards.

I remeber reading a review of those cool rare earth magnets on Dan's Data.

The link to the article is here The link for where to cool magnets on his page is here

Now we just have to wait for a slashdotter to build a large version of this and use it to smash some watermelons :)

``Of course, we will do this,'' said Saffo of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future ``And it won't be just for the functionality. It will also be for fashion. You've got a generation that's already piercing themselves. Of course, they're going to put electronics under their skin.''

I certainly hope that Mr. Paul Saffo is dead wrong on this subject.

First off, body piercing is NOT a new trend. It has roots in almost every other culture, and dates back hundreds of years. Just because it is a recent movement in Western Culture does not mean that every person who likes piercings is going to like having a tracking device in their skin. Not to mention that the large majority of people in Western Culture do NOT like body piercing. There is not direct link between the two.

Second, isn't anyone worried about the health risks of something like this?! Electronics are a LOT different than an inert, non-reactive metal or ink in the skin. Pacemakers cause enough problems with people in certain situations (microwaves, magnets, etc.) I for one don't EVER want electronics under my skin. I guess if it ever progressed to where you had to get an implant, some Rare Earth Magnets would take care of that problem pretty quickly.

Lastly, is this something we as humans really want to do for fashion??? If its entirely under the skin, how exactly would it be a fashion accesory? What, would they make the chips come in different colors?? "You cant see it, but mine is leopard-spotted!!" Unless they make them into actual shapes that stick up from under the skin like real implants do, they won't be a fashion accessory.

I'm slowly beginning to think the Luddites were right; technology could easily be the end of us. The last thing we need as a species right now is the ability to track everyone. Here's to hoping things like this NEVER get widely adopted.

My current cubicle walls make it just about impossible to pin up pieces of paper, calendars, etc. Thumbtacks and regular stick pins will fall right out. Since I treat the cubicle wals as an extention of the desktop, I need something to stick pieces of paper to them. Regular office tape works if enough is used, but eventually it dries out and the paper it's holding will slide behind the desk. Duct tape sticks too well to the paper and will rip it if I want it removed.

My solution? Magnets. I'm not talking about those wimpy fridge magnets one gets at Wal-Mart. I'm talking about Neodymium magnets like those removed from old hard drives or bought from www.wondermagnet.com (or ebay). They will hold anything to the cube walls and can be obtained in a variety of sizes. I have one that's about the size of a quarter and it can hold a copy of Linux Journal to my refridgerator (back of magazine placed up against the fridge, _one_ magnet placed on the front cover and it will stay). They don't mar the walls or leave marks on the paper either. I've also used them to hold pens, car keys, etc. to my cubicle walls. The only bad thing about them is that they can ruin floppy disks and possibly monitors if left too close to those items.