[Glass Giant's] wrist-mounted fireball launcher adds a little stage magic to his life. This method of fire production is several orders of magnitude less dangerous than other arm-attached flamethrowers or instrument-mounted torches. The module, which is strapped to the underside of his wrist, stores and lights a combination of flash cotton and flash paper. The two flammables are housed in a small aluminum tube touching a glow plug. A slider switch acts as a safety, completing the circuit from the battery, to the glow plug, terminating in a mercury switch which heats things up when held at the proper level. He’s still working out the best way to load the flash materials but as you can see in the video after the break, this is definitely worthy of the Street Fighter reference.

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What can you make with a toilet paper roll, duct tape, and a graphing calculator? A stand for your homemade spectrometer. This is neither as pretty nor as accurate as a precision scientific instrument, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. In fact, it works perfectly well for rudimentary observations. Light is shined through a sample solution, passes through a diffraction grating, then shows up as bands of color on the projection surface seen above. The photosensor mounted on the cardboard tube was pulled from a night-light, and is read using the ruler and the multimeter. This results in two data units that are used to graph the results. As long as you’re running test samples as a control this simple setup will yield useful information for the scientist on a shoe-string budget.

[via BoingBoing]

Hackaday writer [Gerrit Coetzee] built a simple clamp to aid in surface mount component soldering. This cheap, easily made device uses gravity to hold tiny components in place. The tip of the bolt is pointed, but gently like a ballpoint pen so as not to harm the components with a sharp tip. Roughly position your component, rest the tip of the clamp on its center, then nudge for final positioning. [Gerrit] also points out that this acts as a heat sink, helping to prevent damage to the component if you’re too lethargic with the soldering iron.

It seems like this device has been around in one form or another for quite a long time. But the best ideas do keep on popping up. Another nice tip to go along with this one is the use of a dowel when ironing during toner transfer for your PCBs.

Want to put 100 horses into your golf cart and then take it to the Dragstrip? Why not? [Mac McAlpine] did just that by dropping a 2007 GSXR 600 EFI into a 1987 gas-powered Yamaha golf cart. After the break you can see a video of the test run, as well as an overview of the modifications made when swapping engines. [Mac] mentions that the setup still uses the stock bike chain and jackshift even with the upgrade in power. He has, however, upgraded both the front and rear axles with caliper and drum brakes respectively. There’s also a NASCAR Car of Tomorrow wing on the roof to help keep the wheels on the pavement.

Good thing he’s wearing that helmet. Without a seatbelt it’ll make smashing through the windshield a little more comfortable. Drive carefully [Mac]!

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[ViDAR] was looking for a project to keep him occupied and settled on creating a VGA converter for his Game Boy. He had some difficulty finding pinouts for the LCD and CPU but working with what was known, and an oscilloscope, he found the necessary signal. Tap into just a few lines using those thin blue wires; Vsync, Hsync, clock, and two data pins. From there a development board with an Altera Cyclone II field-programmable gate array takes care of the heavy lifting. The board already has hardware for a VGA connection so it was just a matter of processing the incoming signals into the VGA standard. His demo video is embedded after the page break.

Want a dedicated solution? Check out this Game Boy video adapter inside a VHS cassette.

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In case you needed another reason to build, borrow, or buy a 3D printer, here’s one way to design and print your own cookie cutters. [Nikolaus Gradwohl] put together a processing app that aims to make the design process a bit easier. So if you’ve never designed a printable object before, but can get your hands on a MakerBot or similar device through a friend or your local hackerspace, this is for you. Check out the video after the break to see the process of making a cutter in the shape of a mushroom, or just download the app and give it a go.

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Nookdevs have released information on how to root your nook color. So naturally, I had to run out and get one.  Who doesn’t want a multitouch android tablet for $250?  The instructions for rooting are extremely simple. You really only need microSD card and a Linux/Windows/Mac computer to connect to.  After rooting, your nook will work exactly as it did before, but you can now install android applications on it.  Many applications are built for a phone that has more physical buttons, so I have run into some issues, but over all, the applications that work tend to work well.

Join me after the break for more thoughts, a video of it in action, and a few pictures.

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For Halloween [Paul] wanted to build a Jacob’s Ladder without the peril that working with high voltage might bring. He was inspired by a sequencer board for electroluminescent wire and decided to build a Jacob’s Ladder simulator using the glowing material. What he ended up with is quite convincing. Eight segments of EL wire have been mounted between two diverging towers. When a PIR sensor detects motion in the room, an Arduino switches on the simulation, playing a recording of the classic sizzling voltage sound while using the sequencer board to flicker the wires from bottom to top. See for yourself in the video after the break. We give [Paul] bonus points for constructing the base out of Lego.

But if you’re not one for being cautions, there’s always this real Jacob’s Ladder build. Or maybe you just want to make something glow with the EL wire.

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