Weekly Link Roundup!

Trying something new this week, a roundup of links that I found interesting as a technical person/engineer.

Make Magazine's posted this cool tip: repurpose a simple bull clip to act as a holder for a Coin Cell battery!

Also from Make, news of this new series from Nova: "Making Stuff" about Material Scientists
Have any of you seen this? Looks pretty cool. I'm definitely going to have to try and dig it up... truth be told, after I got into Mechanical Engineering, I started to fall in love with Mat.Sci. I think I would have gone that route if Mech didn't work out for some reason.

Big hubbub this week about Apple's proprietary "pentalobe" screws: (from Core77)


This is completely contrary to iFixit.com's Self-Repair Manifesto, but I think Core77 has an interesting perspective on the matter.

Also from Core77:
A story of two engineers who left the grind to repurpose old machinery into decor from their workshop in an old silo. so cool!

From Inhabitat: Marine Corps Solar Up:
This caught my eye because it was actually mentioned in Friedman's Hot Flat and Crowded: their motivation for doing this isn't the fact that it's "green", they're doing this because transporting oil across the desert is the most dangerous part of their job.

"By far, the biggest benefit for Marines is the eliminated need to transport extra fuel. The lightweight, flexible solar panel blankets take up little space, saving room for other supplies like ammunition. This means convoys can be smaller, reducing the risk of attack from enemy troops while on the road. On top of that, by running generators on solar-power batteries at night, they would be quieter than those operating on diesel, making them harder for the enemy to find."

Lastly, from Designmind, an interesting experiment that seeks to determine how much people value different types of personal data:

Related (and also from Designmind): an interesting story about "the hidden cost of free"

What do you think? And what else was cool this week? :)