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What Can You Do With $100?
An anonymous reader asks "I was recently gifted with $100 and thought, 'What's the coolest geektoy--new, used, cobbled together, hacked--that one hundred clams could buy?' Home automation? Older PDA streaming client? Bathtub ROV? Basic stamp robotic kit? Something fun, something useful, something educational, something that says 'Look what I put together for $100.' Lemme know!"
If you find 6.99 other friends with the same amount of cash on hands, you can get a swell new SCO license.
http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/ doubles as a flash drive.
-- Boycott Shell
A blowjob, plain and simple.
With a Dremel and a decent soldering iron, all your geeky dreams can come true. (well, okay, not that one with the blonde and the midgets and the mayonaise, but all the *other* geeky dreams)
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Computer Gaming World Magazine runs a segment every month on what to do with $100, and they're usually right on, grab an issue and see what they say.
The Answer
Avoid knee-jerk consumerism and put it in savings. You might need it someday.
...and have a good time. Good memories will last much longer than geek toys.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
5,000 Christmas lights at post holiday prices: $100 ;-)
Linux/Apache/Perl/etc.: Free
Duping the world: Priceless!
Doing it for real will cost a little more than $100 if you want a decent webcam, but maybe I'll do that Christmas 2005 ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Or really, anything that will demonstrate how evil it is to use "gift" as a verb... ;-)
Make costs $35 a year. Use the $65 left to build a couple of projects.
Perhaps you should look at Make magazine. Their first issue had some pretty cool stuff. The aerial kite photography project might be doable for $100, if you've got the tools.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Being good open-source citizen, you will immediately donate that $100 gift to your favorite OSS project! Thank you! Or Maybe just a few bucks.
Or, you can buy a bunch of little stuff, like:
Super-strong neodymium magnets. Magnets sound boring, but these things are really, really strong. Get the spherical ones.
There's a whole host of cheap, unusual geeky projects at American Science & Surplus.
Get a cheap computer. Buy a Used Xbox, and install Xbox Linux on it.
Color changing lights. The color change is nice and smooth. Popular with the kids.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
...two chicks at the same time.
Keyhole.com
You must be new to Slashdot.
If you're coming from the right, then the homeless are homeless because of their own laziness and moral failings, and it would be immoral to protect them from the consequences of their actions. Better to let them die in the street.
If you're coming from the left, then homelessness is a government problem, and the $100 should be used lobbying the government to give more money to the homeless. Or used to improve a homeless person's self-esteem. Or to keep the homeless from using racial slurs. Ideally, you would spend the $100 lobbying to improve the self-esteem of homeless people by teaching them not to use racial slurs.
How dare you attempt to defy simple categorization? Have you no shame, sir?
It is only $70, you can use the other $30 for a Brew ingredients Kit
Nothing beats home made beer.
with SSID detection
http://www.canarywireless.com/
leaves half your cash in pocket.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
For $100, you can get 100 or more rolls of toilet paper, which ought to last a few years.
This is more evil.
:)
Let someone play with the magnets. The magnets are so strong, that most people will pinch their fingers within a few minutes
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
What I mean by this, is that you can buy the rocket (D thru F engine model), launch kit (launch pad, controller, engines, igniters, batteries), and wireless video camera - and do something that while it has been done before by others, is still a cool thing to do for yourself.
First - the camera: For about $30.00 (approx. $10-20.00 for the camera, and $10-15.00 shipping, depending on seller), you can buy off of ebay drop-shipped from hong-kong a miniature 900MHz-1.2GHz wireless "sugar-cube" camera and receiver combo, which runs off of 9 volt batteries. The camera is designed to transmit a few hundred feet thru walls in a security setup - but outdoors up in a rocket you can expect around 1000 ft or so. This is the cheapest way of getting these cameras - don't bother with an american dealer, they will charge you $80.00 minimum, plus s/h - not a good deal at all.
The rest of your money will go into the rocket and launch needs - a larger scale Estes rocket will be perfect - you might even be able to get away with one of the egg lofters if you want (you might want to try a different/lighter battery tech for the 9V camera, though). Anyhow - you won't spend anywhere near $70.00 on everything - the rocket kit will be about $20-30.00, everything else will fill (or not) the rest of the cash.
Then - spend your time to build the thing. Remember to pad/protect the camera, and mount it securely (but make it airodynamic, too!). Mount the battery securely as well, so it won't rattle around and change your C/G mid-flight. You are going to want a rocket made for payload lifting or similar - something designed for the extra weight (unless you want to experiment!).
Take it to a field, set it up, check your camera feed (heh - maybe some extra cash could be thrown to a 12VDC video recorder - you want to record your first flight, right?), install the engine and igniter, begin your countdown - and get ready to enter an interesting aerial photography hobby!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
but only if that $100 is in the form of a Tricky Dick Fun Bill.
The ratio of people to cake is too big