DIY: Converting a computer Power Supply to a lap power supply for other things

I had picked up a car amplifier a while ago and found that I had an extra speaker (Polk Audio) that is a different brand than my stereo system (Boston Acoustics). So, I couldn't add it to my stereo--so I decided to build an extra speaker/amp combo that I could than plug into something else at somepoint in the future.

The only thing missing was a power supply.

I bought a 1U power supply from an electronics store for $12.50 because I liked the slim profile and the 12V had a output of 12A. My amp required 88 watts, so this can satisfy that requirement.
According to its label, the Orange wire was for "Power" and Green was for "R/C" or remote control. Both of these had to be shorted to ground/negative (Black wire).

I also needed a load to get it to turn on--I plugged in a harddrive (that doesn't work anymore). This provided the load. Plugging in the power into the 12V output into the amp and the amp into the speaker -- and it worked!

Next, to replace the dead harddrive with a 10 OHM 10 watt resister...

DIY: Digital Photo Frame (update 2)

I disassembled the screen removing it from its original frame--to do so, I had to remove the stickers that hide the screws. Than, pull off the metalic front that was glued to the actual LCD.

I recently finished the DPF. I bought a 12x13 frame and had a matt cut with just a half inch on each side showing. I pasted the matt to the screen using contact cement.

I decided not to disassemble the frame of the rest of the laptop since the side of the plugs cannot be shortened. So, the overall space is not reduced by much if you remove the case. Also, it doesn't leave any of the circuits exposed.

With the frame assembled, it was easy to stand straight up (like an unassembled laptop).

DIY: Digital Photo Frame (update 1)

I just found out that the picasaweb-download script doesn't work anymore. The folks at google have made changes that broke this bash script.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough bash to get it to work. The other scripts I found on the net (in perl picasa module and another that requires xmlstarlet) both don't work because I couldn't get their dependencies to install on dsl.

If anyone has more luck let me know. I am going to give up on the picasa integration for the time being.