Making Stuff Out Of Broken Computer Equipment?

Class Act Dynamo writes "Recently, my keyboard stopped working, so I bought a new one (nice cordless number, really excellent). I was about to throw the old keyboard out when I thought it would be interesting to take all the keys out of it and turn them into refrigerator magnets in order to have a simple 'megnetic poetry' type of thing going. As the fumes from the industrial strength glue went to my head during this project, I began to wonder what other types of craft-type projects people had undertaken with their unusable old perpherals and such. Then I began to wonder why there was a purple octopus on my couch. I decided to ask slashdot readers the first of these questions."

Comments

Re:Hard drive magnets a sore subject. Literally...

[MichaelCox_au]

The real danger with strong neodymium magnets is that they are both brittle and extremely magnetic--as a result if you accidently let two of them stick together, they can sometimes attract with such force that they shatter and send thousands of poisonous shards out at high speed. Hence the reason why you should always wear hand and eye protection when handling them. You should also avoid handling them if their protective coatings are broken as the rare-earth metals are extremely toxic and easily absorbed via mucus membranes.