Well over a year ago I was laid up from serious woodworking so to keep from getting bored I took a very old laptop computer, took it apart, and made a digital picture frame out of it.

Much of the hardware was stripped out of the laptop and the base motherboard was eventually glued to the back of the lcd screen. I used Damn Small Linux as the OS and got it all up and running so that when I was able to get back to woodworking I made a basic frame and box for it all to live in and hang on the wall.  A fun educational experience for me, one I would now not perform because you can buy a nice digital fame in the stores and they are much easier to use and not so bulky.

Well the frame goofed up quite some time ago and I never got around to fixing it, till last weekend when I finally got it running again.  When I switched to my Mac I tossed out much of my old PC stuff but kept a few odd and ends, one of which was a laptop wireless card. Not sure why I never gave the frame wireless access before but I decided to make my life easier and placed the card into the frame. I was surprised at how well Damn Small Linux accessed it and now I can easily change images out on it from my Mac.

Not so much woodworking but goes to show we are a group of inventors and innovators.  We like to step up to challenges, learn new things, and work with our hands. While doing this project I had the idea of building a jukebox with neon lights and all out of an old laptop, Linux, wireless, etc to play my MP3s; my Mac is well capable of this and other more exciting projects came along.