[Judyofthewoods] has hacked together this rollerbar mouse. We’ve heard people talk about these in a positive way, going on about how comfortable they are. We haven’t really experimented with one much to verify. This one looks surprisingly nice considering it is made from scrap. The image above is showing it without the cover that hides the hot glue and optical sensor. There isn’t much of a writeup, but as you can see from the picture, there isn’t much necessity for one either.  She seems to have done a great job stating that it is fairly smooth with only minor jittering.

[Ani Niow] built this steam powered vibrator. It has a milled stainless steel shell with a brass motor structure. The motor is a Tesla turbine made from a stack of Dremel diamond cutoff wheels. This drives an off-center weight to create the vibration. She tested it using a pressure cooker as the steam source. It worked, but became so hot it had to be held using welding gloves. It works just as well with compressed air though. You can see the device at the Femina Potens Art Gallery in San Francisco or later this month at Maker Faire.

[via Laughing Squid]

UPDATE: [Ani] responds in the comments.

Here’s another bizarre keyboard mod to add to the pile. Unlike previous typewriter style mods, this one uses Scrabble tiles. All of the tiles were hand beveled and attached to a clicky keyboard. The Num, Cap, and Scroll lock buttons have their letters’ hollowed out so the LED light will shine through.

[via Gizmodo]

[phirzcol] sent us this cool step by step build of a retro looking keyboard, Inspired by [Von Slatt] and his work. [phirzcol] starts with a standard keyboard and removes the keys. He steams some wood to wrap the keyboard, then finishes it off nicely. The process of making the keys looks pretty grueling. Each key has 4 parts which have to be hand cut and assembled. A blue accent light is a nice touch as well.  The keyboard looks pretty good, but we’d like to try typing on it for a while to see how usable it is.  If it looks like too much effort, you can actually buy it on ebay.

And now, for your amusement, we present to you a navigation system from the 1920s. It’s not so much a satellite navigation system as it is a tiny map mounted in a wristwatch, but for the available technology of the era, this was a pretty ingenious invention, Other (and somewhat more bizarre) entries on this list of over a dozen other inventions from the early part of the 20th century include a finger stretcher, an eyeball massager, and mustache guards. Although most of these inventions seem laughable today, they are an interesting study in finding creative solutions to real problems. After all, what these inventors did a hundred years ago with gears and paper is pretty much what we do today with transistors and LEDs.

[via The Presurfer]

[Jake von Slatt] has sent along a few of his projects, but his timing never quite coincides with mine. It’s about time I give this guy some coverage. His latest project was a pair telegraph sounders – he uses them to tap out RSS feeds from his linux box. The amateur radio code requirement in the US has been dropped, but this is probably a great way to practice your Morse code. His keyboard build is definitely one of the most original efforts I’ve seen.