I had an enjoyable half hour assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA, before returning for some late night text composition. It goes much faster with a power screwdriver and a good set of bits. (Also, a 16oz hammer makes tapping in dowels directly satisfying.) But if you want to grab hold of ingenuity in a tangible sense, go build some Cubitec.
Dina and I are building a wall's worth to hold the books in the office; great fun.
Recommended.
I've been using a dual Opteron as my primary desktop lately, but Solaris doesn't support the sound device included on its motherboard. After asking around about the likelihood of support arriving, I was told that one possible path was to use a USB Audio device instead.
So I drove off to Fry's to look around and found, as is always true when I look at PC peripherals, that there is a wide variety of such devices, ranging from a cheap plastic version with only a few features to US$100+ options from Philips and Creative.
I ended up selecting from the midrange, and bought the Hercules Gamesurround MUSE Pocket, which is a little chrome number with a big volume dial (which Solaris supports) that doubles as a mute button (which it doesn't) and 5:1 surround sound (which I can't test). (Generally the Gamesurround gets middling reviews, but as a USB Audio pod when no sound support is available, I like it.)
Recommended.
References:- Hercules Gamesurround product page
- CNET reviews the Gamesurround, and provides a larger picture. (The included picture is from the Hercules site.)
- Solaris 8 2/04 USB Administration Guide on USB Audio