So you want to get some cycling practice but you’re worried about all of the reckless drivers out there. You don’t want to resort to one of those lame stationary bikes, either. The solution? Free motion bicycle rollers. I would love to bike more often, but the thought of cycling here in New York City is utterly daunting.

If you have a pair of hard-soled shoes, two pressure-sensitive LED tiles, and some baby mama drama from which you need to extricate yourself, let this Instructable be your guide and recreate the special-FX steps from Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Admittedly, I’m not sure how easy it would be to do any sort of dancing with a gigantic LED tile attached to each foot. But when you’re standing still, and being viewed from the knee down, you will be the spitting image of the King of Pop. The Instructable covers all the bases, from assembling the light-up squares to spray-painting the shoes just so. Be forewarned, though, these imitation shoes will make you just as irresistible to women as Jackson was (circa 1983): You will get a lot of attention from people, people will dance around you on the dance floor, and you will feel a bit shallow, but you love it! The best chat up line possible is to ask someone to join you on your dance floor so they stand/dance on your tiles, which puts them basically on top of you. Enjoy! Do not use these shoes for evil! So there it is, plain and simple: don’t go around breaking young girls’ hearts.

Don’t try and hide that Leksvik table from me, I can recognize Swedish wood from a hundred miles away. We all own Ikea furniture, it’s as certain as death and taxes. But not everyone makes a projector from a lamp. Instructables member Derte84 cobbled together his projector using just the Isbrytare lamp from Ikea, tape and a couple of photo slides. Very simple, as you can tell. This particular model of lamp has a lens, which is necessary to make the image beam onto a wall, and is what Derte84 attached the photo slide to—though not too close to the light, as otherwise it’d burn

This may not necessarily be the most practical DIY, but if you’re looking—I mean really looking —at that picture and you’re not thinking “I want to go to there,” well, I just don’t know what to tell you. Like Daft Punk before you, now you too can dazzle people with a line-y, glow in the dark suit (and freak them out by remaining totally mute the entire night wearing it). Making one of these takes some preparation—you’ll need to order the glow wire online and secure the parts for a battery pack to keep it running—but the Instructable gives detailed instructions for every step. So if you’re heading to a dance party this weekend, or performing a futuristic heist, or meeting your significant other’s parents for the first time, this DIY project is definitely worth a look. [ Instructables ]

What you’ll require here is about 30 minutes’ endurance, a $10 budget, and a good reason why you’d want to swap some good old versatile wall plugs in for USB-only power outlets. Once you’ve got all that sorted, it’s a quick skip to the source link, where you’ll get step-by-step instructions on converting to “the future” of power distribution. And hey, just to help you justify all that expenditure of effort, we’ve got a whole category devoted to the cornucopia of most awesome devices you can power via USB. Kudos gained for clever design, kudos lost for relatively redundant outcome.

Say your pet rat dies. Instead of trashing it, you could shove LED throwie lights into its eye-sockets in a decorative taxidermy experiment that’s as creative as it is graphically morbid. It might be what little Snowy would have wanted. Seriously, wow. This is one of the most twisted step-by-step instructables yet. Personally, I don’t have enough balls (or serial killer instinct) to gut my former pet, and stuff it with an LED assembly, wires and magnets.

Hey, narcissists and/or filmmakers! Instructables has a guide to making your own Snorricam, that chest-mounted camera holder that points the lens directly at your own face. The final product looks like a term project for wood shop class, requiring mostly traditional materials as the Snorricam mount is primarily made of plywood. Not an incredibly difficult construction, for sure, but one that could be really useful for aspiring filmmakers without friends, or those who want to get that crazy angle used in so many movies ( Requiem for a Dream comes to mind). [ Instructables via MAKE ]

It may look like just a bit of corkwood taped to the front of a pretty expensive shooter, but that’s only because it is. If you’re already willing to withstand gadget muggles sniggering at your mighty DSLR and its six inch frontal protrusion , surely adding this sort of a ghetto mod isn’t going to dent your self-respect too much. Put together using the ultimate in ordinary household objects, this fish-eye lens manages to kick out some pretty useful-looking images and seems a viable alternative for those with more time than money. Check out the read link for the full instructions and a gallery of photos taken with the lens. Filed under: Digital Cameras Homebrewed Nikon D90 lens is a fish-eyed theft deterrent originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:31:00 EST

Here’s an Instructables to bring back the obnoxious kid that lives not so far down in all of us: Learn how to turn one of those miniature Altoids tins into a tiny catapult. It’ll be fun for nobody but you. We like Instructables like this one because not everyone has a damn laser cutter lying around, and this one only requires materials you’ve likely got lying around anyway (coat hanger, rubber band, spoon, etc.). The creator promises it’ll only take about 10 minutes, and we promise it’ll be fun for at least 11.

Over at Instructables, user Banjomaster shows how to make a fisheye lens for his Nikon D90 for just $16, with the help of one of those wide-angle doorway peephole lenses. The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser. It looks like a pretty simple mod, both in materials required and construction method: It only needs a couple pieces of particle board, the aforementioned peephole lens, the spare lens shield that came with his camera, and of course some duct tape. The only possible caveat: The replacement wide-angle lens is significantly smaller than the camera’s lens, so there’s a circle around all of the shots. On the other hand, it’s sort of cool; it makes everything look like you shot it through a hotel door.