I recently moved to New York, which means my apartment has room for about 25 percent of the stuff I need, and everything qualifies as essential. But whenever I go home to my Dad's house, I'm struck by the sheer amounts of
stuff we've managed to hold on to, much of it tech-related. It's funny, even though I'm pretty much positive I'll never use my first iPod again—a second generation model that turns on very, very rarely—I'd feel weird throwing it out.
So, to make myself feel better (and entertain myself), I looked online for some of the coolest ways to give new life to old gadgets:
The Mac AquariumOkay, if it we me, I would call it a Maquarium, but otherwise I'm totally (ahem) on board for the idea. The Apple Collection has a whole
gallery of Macs turned fish tanks, and I also found a great set of
instructions from the original creator of the G4 CubeQuarium—now that's my kind of title.
The creator actually recovered his Cube from a garbage bin, totally dead but perfect to hold one lucky betta fish. (And I'm sure you can make a PC aquarium, too.)
The Panda ChairThe name eludes me, but this chair made out of blank CDs, featured on
designboom, makes me tempted to create something similar out of all my old Britney Spears albums. (Shut up.) On her
website, artist Belén Hermosa explains that the polycarbonate in CDs is costly and difficult to recycle.
The iPod... EverythingLifehacker has a fun
list featuring ten ways to breath life into your old iPod. The tips range from the expected (add speakers) to the more surprising, like turning your iPod into a portable
encyclopedia or
bartender's manual.
Do any of these ideas appeal to you? What new uses have you discovered for old gadgets?
Comments (9)
The fish tank is sooo cute! The chair looks cool... but I'm a bit hesitant on how it stays together.
Me... I don't know if reuses gadgets, but I do reuse a lot of other stuff.
Wow that's crazy! The "Maquarium" is very pretty too.
It makes me sad seeing fish swim in a small tank. Must be a boring, dull life.
The fish tank is so beautiful and the list from LifeHacker looks very useful. I don't like throwing away my old gadgets, but I never come up with any new or good uses for them so I usually just have a pile of pointless gadgets somewhere. Oh, boy.
that's awesome
The MAC aqua thing is pretty awesome!
I wonder what I can use all these half-working PS3 controllers for? I've got about 20 of them.
i only like the mac aquarium.
look ma, it has twice the processing power of the normal powerpc architecture!