Here’s a great way to eavesdrop on an unknowing sap’s conversation. Objects in Flux’s Scott Mitchell has turned a vintage lamp into a parabolic microphone for recording. It’s got volume control and a headphone socket mounted in the lamps base. This way, no one other than the headphone wearer gets to hear the goods. And by goods I mean the sound of your roommate banging away the night.

The whole project is powered by a 9V battery, which is fitted inside the lamp shade, out of site out of mind. While it does amplify the sound, it suffers in performance due to the small size of the parabolic dish. Mitchell provides circuit diagrams and instructions for the project, perhaps you’d like to make your own, more effective, lamp microphone?

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I don’t know how Friedrich Kirschner pulled this stunt off but it’s one of the best DIYs I’ve seen in a long time. He essentially constructed a 3-D scanner out of LEGOs, a webcam and milk. Watching the above video, you can see how Friedrich places a figurine into a vat of milk. A picture is taken and a spoonful of milk is added to the vat. The process is repeated until the object is fully submerged in milk.

Once that’s done, the object can be imported into a 3-D software program like Blender for manipulation. It’s pretty amazing stuff and allows for total three-dimensional scanning. Right now, the process can only be done with Windows. Keep your eyes peeled though as a cross-platform version of the software could be heading to OS X and Linux very soon.

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