Sooooooooo, how have things been? Good I hope!? Many of you have already noticed a bit of a lull in new posts here around BoN, which I can only chalk up to the amount of work involved in writing for several blogs as well as being part of a scrappy startup. Annnyways. More rock, less talk.

If your screwdrivers speak to you in your sleep and you scoff at manufacturers warranties, then you’re certain to know about TakeItApart.net. If not, you must be still in search for the holy land. Take It Apart is a community and how to resource walking you through the disassembly of various gadgets and electronics, covering everything from toasters to mobile phones. I’ve recently found excellent instructions for taking about a Nokia E61, which were perfect in their quality and detail I must admit (after a successful keyboard and case change). Naturally following the disassembly instructions from Take It Apart will void your warranty, but, I think you’re aware of that already.

Hack more: Take It Apart.net

Ever wanted to blast a cap in Gozer and change your last name to Venkman? Now you can, kind of. A large group of fans and crafter hackers have put a lot of time and effort into the recreation of various props from the Ghostbusters storyline, including their most popular tutorial, “Learn how to build a proton pack”. Not sure if you’ll be able to zap your neighbors or lock them away in your ghost trap, but it’s worth a shot and can always come in handy for Halloween.

Bust more: Ghostbusters Props Page

Big Lord of the Rings fan AND environmentally conscious enough to want to build your own low-impact and sustainable home? Then look no further than Simon Dale’s incredible low-impact home recently built by himself and his father-in-law in Wales which he’s detailed via plans and build photos for the world to share and reuse. Recessed within a small hillside, the home provides extremely stable shelter and insulation thanks to the mud and stone surrounding the home. All of this was designed and built by Dale for the EXTREMELY low price of around 3000 BGP (5,791.51 USD / 4,454.13 EUR). Talk about sustainable and interesting living, the home feature solar and wind powered electricity (hopefully CFL bulbs), earth cooled refrigeration and water supplied by gravity via a nearby stream.

Features of the low-impact home:
* Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
* Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
* Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
* Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
* Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
* Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
* Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
* Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
* Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring…)
* Woodburner for heating – renewable and locally plentiful
* Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
* Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
* Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
* Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
* Water by gravity from nearby spring
* Compost toilet
* Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Read more: Build your own low-impact home (Thanks Clemens)

So you want to piss off your friends or shut up the loud yapper next to you on the subway? Well, get your Radio Shack catalog out of the bathroom and your soldering iron warmed up and ready to go. The wonderfully hacky Ladyada has put together a detailed process for creating the Wave Bubble and published it under a Creative Commons license. What is the Wave Bubble you ask? It’s a self-tuning, wide bandwidth portable RF jammer (cell, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc) that fits snugly in your pocket (though I’d recommend you not keep it in there too long). Using an internal lithium-ion battery, you can jam dual band frequencies (like mobile phones) for up to 2 hours within a 20 foot radius, then recharge via a mini-USB connector. If you’re actually skilled enough to take on such a highly technical project, you should still be aware that this technically is against FCC regulations (therefor don’t even think of selling pre-made jammers). Did I mention that you shouldn’t even think of building this?

Read more: Wave Bubble RF jammer

Tired of seeing the Japanese shirt folding video on Digg or your favorite forum for the 9 milliontyth time? Well, now it’s time for the good ole’ western style shirt folding video! That’s right, you’re about to witness a high point in innovation and learn how to create your own shirt folding “machine” with a little cardboard, a box cutter and a little sweat.

Watch and learn how to make your own shirt folding machine after the jump..

Read more of ”DIY shirt folding machine how-to“

Though this kit is mainly for artists (a shame), I can think up some extremely fun and mischievious uses for this DIY RFID kit. For those who don’t know, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification and is an automatic identification method relying on storing and remotely retrieving data from special RFID tags or transponders wirelessly. This kit allows you to program and tag 10 RFID tags (included) to display a certain video when the tag is registered on the special RFID video player (also included), allowing artists to create personalized video installations for different viewers. The software allows one to program the tags via Mac OS X and includes sample videos and tutorials for the low price of 349 EUR. I can imagine a group of enterprising hackers could easily hack this apart to create some mighty interesting projects, which I’d in no way encourage.

Read more: DIY RFID Kit

Two parts home improvement, one part software development and all nerd, a 24 year old computer programmer who sometimes goes by the name MacGuyver decided he needed a dancefloor in his house. So he did what any self-respecting nerd would do, build it himself. From the carpentry to the coding of the light controller application (in .NET 2.0), everything in the tutorial was all done by “Mac” and thoroughly documented for us to enjoy. Now if only there were plans for a smoke machine, this party would be on.

Read more: Program and build your own dancefloor | USB controlled dance floor blog