Hi! ^_^ Okay, so

it's not a giant Easter

Island stone head [those are called Moai]... I made that picture hehe. But it IS a small Moai.

You s

ee, the story is quite strange, and

at the same time common, you'll see why. My final project was due to midnight, and my computer's clock was screami

ng 12:01am. Y

ou can prolly imag

ine my face [and

my teammate's] and humor. Programming a game was not an e

asy task, especially under our circumstances [also ridiculously akward... t

rust me

] So at that point, I compile the game.. and my laptop [b

rand new]

died. Instantly. Shouldn't have

messed with dire

ct hardware accessing and using lots of resource

s at the same time. Anyways, I try to save something into my PNY 512MB green usb drive, booting from 3 different linux live-cds until it worked [let's not forget we're almost one hour late here... and it's l

ate at night and we hadn't s

leept for 2 days in a row]. I plug my usb drive to my team's laptop and... it cracks. IT'S FREAKING UNBELIAVABLE! I break it appart so I can plug just the chip. We rescue some files, we finish our final project at 9am.

My laptop is dead. My USB drive is broken. I am in the middle of finals. Funny as hell :)

Anyways, vacations came. Wha

t to do with my broken drive? Mod it. How? With a toy. And lots of hot glue.

WARNING!

Hot, burning stuff is involved here. Burn yourself at

your own risk - ask for help if you are a kid ;)

And damage to your usb drives are not my responsability. I only state here what

I did and worked for me.

Okay...

MATERIALS [everything 'I' needed]:

-A [preferably broken] usb drive; this PNY h

as a sma

ll chip, dunno about others

-A hot glue gun

-

Glue sticks [yyyyup, for the glue gun :o]

-A hollow toy.

-Magic tape

-A knife

-A fridge

-A little brother

HOW IT'S DONE:

Step 1.

Find several toys as candidates for your project. I first saw some Mega Blocks, a Mew figurine, and some other toys around in my bedroom.

The Moai head was my choice because of it's size and shape; it's hollow, about the width of the usb's chip, and not

too big. I also liked th

e color, pink is one of my favorite color

s [so

what? xD], and it made me remember the hea

d in the movie Night at the Museum... ohhh did I laugh with that movie! hahaha. The downsides were some holes at the top of the head [it was

a Play-Dough mold, kinda] and the bottom is kinda

big, so plugging it could be difficult in some circumstances.







Step 2.

Have your little

brother firmly grab the

tiki head[he's 11 by the way, and I was tak

ing care that he wouldn't get burnt].

Now with one hand place the chip in the desired position.

MAKE

SURE ENOUGH PART OF THE USB PLUG IS OUT OF THE

TOY OR YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO USE IT LATER

!

Fill with hot glue. Be careful, though, since you have to s

tart from the bottom, so if it gets solid before going all the way down, the head

will be half empty!



Also, I had to cover the holes I mentioned at the top of the head with some magic tape. No big deal.

Step 3.

Put it in the fridge so it co

ols down faster :)









Step 4.

Now it's all solid [make sure of that] take the knife and carefully clean the USB plug and the glue

"h

airs"

that could be around there.

And that's it! :D YAY!! If you want, as an optional 5th step, reburn VERY carefully the little glue edges so it's all neat. I chose to put the chip upside-down because the face side is thicker, and it would have be

en really difficult to plug it anywhere, so I have to turn it face down, and plug it to my laptop. The green led looks cool through the glue ^_^

My next project: a cap for the usb plug xD jk... I hope this mmm "tutorial" helps in case someone wants to do something similar to mine. If you do, let me know! Peace.

Ð





Labels: diy, hack, moai, mod, tiki, usb