101 Uses for an AOL CD?

Richard C asks: "I've just seen, for the first time, the newest AOL advert on UK television. One section depicts a man phoning AOL to ask for a free CD. As he speaks, he picks up his coffee mug, to which an AOL CD is stuck - he's been using it as a coaster. "Oh, don't worry - I've already got one" he adds. The irony of this amused me, to say the least, thought probably not in the way AOL intended. In any case, and in the true '101 uses for a dead cat' style, I thought it would be amusing (if not productive) to ask the Slashdot readership for their '101 uses for an AOL CD'. Be imaginative!"

Comments

Google Image Search...

[Kaz Riprock]

Here are a few uses:

--Suit of Armor, Shield, Sword, and Helmet

--Scare Grackles from your bird feeder for cardinals

--Robot wheels

--Microwaveable dish

Hollywood Costume!

[DavidYaw]

Seriously... I remember watching a made for TV movie, an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, and the giant's vest/armor was made of CDs. They had been painted brown, so it wasn't obvious, and it wasn't possible to recognise any text printed on the CDs, but it wasn't a flat brown, so it probably was actual printed CDs (as opposed to plain white blanks)

Ideas

[roseblood]

Break them up, use the glittery foil parts to make a nice fine glittry dust that your female friends can use in their hair (don't ask.)

You can make an array of them, put them inside a reflecting telescope, and adjust them each at the optimal angle and create a self correcting mirror for the ultimate telescope.

Spin them like coins, or mount them to some rotary motor, and bounce lasers off of them for an interesting show.

Weave them through the spokes in your bike tires for extra saftey at night (think reflectors.)

Cover your walls with these. No more pesky problems with the IR remote not working in THAT corner of the room (don't we all have this problem somewhere in our home?)

While the wall is covered with these things, a little wattage lightbulb will go along way for illumination.

With all that reflecting going on you can open up a photo studio.

Throw them, and if someone asks you what you're up to, tell'm you've found a way to get AOL to launch with 100% reliability.

Line the inside of a paraobilic dish with these and run a dark water carrying pipe through the focus. Solar water heater. (Maybe use the steam to drive a turbine, and get some power as well as hot H2O.)

If you're being tailgated, use them to blind the drivers behind you, he'll never notice the breaklights. Start thinking about what color you would like the tailgater to paint your car :).

Throw them out the sunroof if your car is already the right color. 65MPH CD-ROM Shiruken will work wonders on their paintjob and windshield.

Use the 800 number on the package and demand a copy of the AOL client that works with your non-M$ operating system. (C-64s didn't have CDRoms..too bad.)

Re:Ideas

[jafuser]

C-64s didn't have CDRoms

Fact of the day: C-64's had an online service called Q-Link, which later closed down and was reopened for windows computers as AOL.

2 words: Fish Scale Car

[tchdab1]

Here in Berkeley there's an Art car running around plated in CDs, shiny side out, so the car looks like it's got fish-scale skin. Of course you can't tell what kind of CDs they are since the labels are on the other side, but you gotta believe AOL provided a lot of the material.

Collect them!

[Gregory S Patterson]

Yes, I collect AOL CD, as do a lot of other people. It's truly amazing how many different styles and variations there are of these things (it's in the thousands). I feel like they've become icons of a generation.

~GP

An indicator for who is giving your address away

[skinfitz]

Use a slightly different spelling of your name (or insert a random letter as a middle initial) whenever you sugn up for things like game company loyalty cards etc. ensure that you tick the "do not spam me" box on the form. Keep a record of which spelling you used where.

Wait for the obligatory AOL CD to come through the door with the misspelling, look up who supplied it, then sue them under the UK Data Protection Act 1984 law for disclosing your information.

CD Rack

[bobibleyboo]

One of my friends built a cd rack out of them by
gluing a bunch of them together. it lookes kinda like this
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|__|
|__|
|__|
|__|
_|__|_
|____|
You can stack the CD's in it vretically it holds
about 50 jewl cases! I will post a pic if I can get one.

As a Lampshade

[frAme57]

No, seriously. I have a flourescent table lamp that I made from a dead CD-ROM, an off-the-shelf 6" flourescent light and a seven inch tall stack of various CDs, many of which were AOL discs.

WIth a drill press and forstner bits I opened up the center hole to about 1-1/2", then epoxied the stack of CDs together. I put the lamp's ballast inside the CD-ROM case and mounted the light tube atop the case in a nicely machined piece of aluminum that I had pulled from a betamax machine.

So the flourescent tube sits vertically in a stack of CDs and its light refracts radially out of the CDs through the plastic and between the foil layers - a very cool effect.

I don't have a picture of the CD lamp online but there is a picture of a lamp made from a halogen bulb and four old sound cards here . Just don't take anything said in the article seriously.

send them to GreenDisk

[Mr. Slippery]

Send them to GreenDisk for recycling.