Maybe you've even done Mother Earth a favor and e-cycled that squeaky old doorstop of a cassette player instead of throwing it out.

But what about the cassettes themselves? The garage sale shoppers didn't want 'em ("C'mon lady, it's Meatloaf for 25 cents!") but you feel guilty chucking all that plastic in the landfill...and the big, frizzy hair on some of those 80s cassette covers is pretty fun to look at still...

Well, video-maker loup226 has come up with a fun, easy solution to the problem of all those miles of dusty, analog shelf-hoggers -- make a Jacob's Ladder. These simple folk toys date back to the Pilgrim days, but are still a lot of fun for kids to make and play with. (Seriously -- can you walk by one of these things without picking it up and trying it?)

You may notice that loup226 uses new cassettes in this video...so unless you're one of those OCD collector-types who leaves everything in the shrink-wrap, you might want to secure your old cassette cases closed with some cellophane tape first.

...Or "dingtones," as Popular Science author Dave Prochnow calls the personalized sounds that echo through your home after doing this cool custom hack.

In a nutshell, AFTER the all-important step of disconnecting the power, you connect your doorbell's wires to the inside of your mp3 player's play button, and rig the player and a small speaker to work on electrical power. Pick a song on your mp3 player, and you'll hear it whenever someone rings your doorbell.

This project takes a decent amount of electrical know-how already, but if you want to get really 2.0 about it, you can even rig up a fingerprint reader (pictured) and play a different song for each one of your friends! (Full instructions at popsci.com)

Thanks to bvosrich for pointing out this cool project on the discussion board, in What would you like to see in Season 2? Got any other projects or ideas you think the Techno-Gurus should incorporate into their new high-tech makeovers? Join the discussion board and let us know!

]]>Jim 2.0Mar 21, 2008http://2pointhome.com/diys/steps/44267An older gentleman told me the other day "no one makes any records anymore!" Well, I thought to myself; "millions of people make records every week, just not on vinyl or tape like in the old days..."

Ever since the Irving Family episode where I showed Joelle how to convert all her old mix tapes to mp3's, a lot of people have come up to me asking how to go about doing it.

Well I finally got around to putting together a short tutorial on how to convert those tapes to mp3's, and many of you will find it surprisingly easy. Most of what you need is probably lying around your office, or in your storage closet; I also offer suggestions on how to achieve the best audio quality. Good luck and enjoy this fun video!