Bored? Why not direct your restless energy into building an Atlatl, an ancient spear-throwing device that’ll let you toss a spear far farther than you could before.

Using leverage, this simple device will radically increase your throwing power. Finally, you can deliver messages to your neighbours via notes stuck into their doors with a spear thrown from across the street. That way they’ll know you aren’t f—king around. [Make via Lifehacker]

The picture above is a crashed UFO prop, complete with chasing LED lights.

Or there are the “ghost sliders”, where you attach a set of casters to kneepads in order to drift across pavement like a ghost. This is dangerous. Don’t blame me when you end up eating asphalt instead of candy and get your jaw wired shut.

There are hundreds of projects at the link. Check it out if you need something to keep you occupied this weekend. [Make]

Verna Rockets has a full debrief on its own builds, complete with links to several sites with parts and instructions. You’ll find everything you need to build a flying model rocket that looks like a Recon Viper, the U.S.S. Enterprise, even The Black Hole Space Probe from “The Black Hole”

Confession: I always get psyched by rocket kits. Have any pics of your own launches that you’d like to share? [Verna Rockets via Hobby Media]

Over at Instructables, there’s a step by step on boring a cigar, treating its surface, and then loading it with a fiery LED along with a USB stick. The result is a classy cigar USB dongle that can possibly lead to computer mouth/throat cancer. But don’t feel bad for your laptop, it’ll turn obsolete well before its needlessly induced nicotine addiction claims its life. So you’ll thoughtlessly drop your computer in a retirement home (a landfill disguised as a recycling centre) from where it will spend the rest of its days doing its damnedest to poison you back. [Instructables via Geeky Gadgets]

Here’s stuff from the NYT article that we already knew:

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas. Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said.

This stuff is common in normal companies even, and a good majority of tech employees have badges as a permanent fashion staple. But this, this is interesting:

Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

That seems a bit over the top to me, but hey, you know what? It seems to be working for them. [NY Times]

This doesn’t look like the easiest project we’ve seen; it calls for laser cutting and a significant amount of audio tech know-how. But the results are pretty much exactly what you’d want, and it’s definitely a sweet-looking end result. This thing even features audio-in so you can plug in instruments, pre-recorded sounds, or anything else you want, and the pitch-shifting and vibrato buttons let you adjust the robot sounds on the fly. Check out the instructions for more info on how to sound like a robot. [Instructables via MAKE]

What happens when you trap Jackson Pollock’s soul inside of arduino-powered robots?

What the robot’s doing only looks random—it’s actually based on a reference image or video. Sadly, Jackson was the only ArtBot of Oscar’s on display when we dropped by, not his almost-creepy Theo Jansen-inspired designs. [ITP, ArtBots]

When you have walking, talking Teddy bears with homemade computer chips showing up to a 2nd grade science fair, you know parental involvement has gone too far. Welcome to the seedy world of parent-sanctioned cheating.

Speaking with the Chicago Tribune, one parent sheds light on the situation:

Her son wanted to build a hockey game, so Rosenstock helped him affix magnets to the bottoms of figurines and rig a light that illuminated when the puck hit the goal.

They proudly took it to school only to find an even more impressive “parent project” displayed alongside theirs.

“They literally had a walking, talking teddy bear. They had made a circuit chip. A circuit chip! You’re talking about 2nd graders,” Rosenstock recalled with a laugh.

A science teacher named Bill Gillespie recalled giving high marks to a student that built a device that distilled crude oil into gasoline. It probably used $US30,000 worth of parts, but it was only after the science fair that they discovered her father was a prominent engineer. Who would have thought?

Some teachers feel that parental involvement in student projects and homework can be a positive bonding and learning experience—but on the other hand it can lower a child’s self-esteem, create an environment of unhealthy competition, and spark a steroids-esque witch hunt among teachers and judges in schools. Obviously, parents need to know where to draw the line—but I only say that because I’m bitter about not having engineers in my family with a moral flexibility about cheating. Think of all the science fairs I could have won! [Chicago Tribune via Fark]

Once again, the week before Labour day brings offbeat art lovers from around the world to Black Rock City, Nevada, for a seven-day event that immerses the senses in radical artistic self-expression. Actually, its pretty hard to describe Burning Man unless you have actually been to one, but it is certainly a far cry from the stuffy art museum atmosphere most of us are familiar with. Plus, there are enough flaming gadgets to keep any nerd entertained. Hit the jump to see some of the unique projects on display this year.

Other projects to look out for:

• I Heart Lamp by Blue Lake Iron Works by Joel ‘Fatboy’ Brown, Mark ‘F St’ Whitman, Spike Foster, Tisha ‘Mortisha’ Sloan: “I Heart Lamp is a super-size sculpture of grandma’s living room floor lamp. More than 10 metres tall, the lamp sits on the playa as a reminder of the cushy living rooms that are the American Dream for the mainstream, but with a twist to fit other dreams. Made from a scavenged Douglas Fir pole and recycled box pipe and lumber, this lamp, besides being surrealistically large, does not contain an electric light bulb. This lamp is lit by a propane fire cannon that turns on the same way the light would… when someone pulls the chain hanging from under the lampshade almost 20 feet in the air.” (It may also be an homage to the movie Anchorman. I hated the movie, but anything Steve Carell says is OK in my book.)

• PlaySoundGround by Sasha Leitman and Michael St. Clair: “PlaySoundGround is an adult-sized playground that is also a musical instrument. It consists of three large pieces: a merry-go-round, a slide, and a teeter-totter. These pieces are equipped with sensors that convert the motion of play into music. The installation provides an arena for chaotic improvisations, synesthetic experiences and pointless fun.”

• SOL by Alex Nolan and Justin Grant: “SOL is a groundbreaking piece of kinetic art, pushing the limits of sound, vision and motion in art. The sculpture is a nearly 25′ tall robot, sensing the location and motion of nearby observers to track them with a highly directional sound system. The work is powered by an array of solar panels, drawing energy the sun to fuel its sensory output.”

• Tetrion by Jim Abrams: “The Tetrion is a tremendous representation of the pieces from the original Tetris game.”

[Burning Man Image of 2008 Burning Man designed by Rod Garrett and Larry Harvey]