So, what do you do with your damaged CDs? You know, those CD-A's with deep gouges, failed cd writing, etc?

Here's an offtopic thread dedicated for you creative individuals out there

I'll start:
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CD Idea #1

Decorative Heat Shield

My bedroom/den is located on the 2nd floor of my house, with a b*i*g sheet glass window facing the west. Unfortunately, the view is not good as my neighbor's roof is located directly in front of the window. To make matters worse, my room gets unbearably hot after midday, because the sun's rays from directly overhead gets reflected toward my room, thanks to my neighbor's glazed rooftiles. And before the heat is able to dissipate, the sun lowers toward the west bombarding my room directly with radiation.

Even the airconditioner failed to bring appreciable cooling, making the dress code in my bedroom (if anyone is daring enough to stay inside) to be topless-and-shorts.

I was desperate. I was playing around with the idea of installing a car-windshield heat reflector on the window, unfortunately that will block the sunlight also, making the room dark.

My eyes wandered to a stack of damaged CD's. A lightbulb flashed on in my mind. Within minutes, I was busy glueing the CD's in a nice geometric pattern covering the window.

I glued the reflective side toward the outside, to reflect the heat rays back out, and the label side toward the inside, to make a nice mosaic on the window. As the CD's are round, they have the inevitable space between them. Add the built-in hole of the CD (plus the transparent area around the hole), and sunlight is still allowed stream in, and quite acceptably. The room is still quite bright, and the holes make nice rays when enough dust is in the air

Does it work? Hell, yes! I ran out of stock at 25%-30% covering, but already the room temperature in the afternoon drops quite noticeably compared to previously (I carefully chose the location of the CD to provide the most effective blocking). It's still rather hot, but now it is more bearable. At least the little aircon unit I have now can beat the heat.

I'm going to go around fetching damaged CD's from my friends...

My mom uses them in the garden because birds won't attack the strawberry bushes for example.

When I lived in Jalisco, Mexico I saw many of the locals had them hanging as a decoration from their rear-view mirrors. I see it sometimes up here too. Same people.

Ha, awesome!

I throw out coasters, so I've never accumulated enough of them to do any sort of project. However, I have taken the platters from a couple of dead hard drives to make a mirror mosaic of discs. They're very shiny.

This is common among taxi drivers here in Tijuana.

Hey, that's great idea! In my previous office, they use dead Hard Disks for... doorstops.

Well, I recall once seeing somebody make a mobile (hanging from the ceiling) from a dead 300M DEC washing-machine style disc drive. I believe they were rather annoyed the day they made it.

We use ours for coasters. Most of our coasters have the names of second-rate dialup ISP's on them. My music CD's don't seem to die very often. We usually just toss write-failed CDroms.

If you weren't so far away, I'd send you a stack to finish your window.

Re: CDs/CD-Rs as coasters

Does one use them as-is or does one affix some sort of substance to one or both sides, e.g. for non-slip purposes...

Enquir...er...silly minds want to know!

-brendan

I used to get so many. Demo discs, cds off zines 5 years old, AOL discs. I had loads so I reused them in 2 cases.

1. Resistant material tech project
I made a CD rack out of CDs. Looked good and it would reflect the spectrum of colours on walls n such...trippy
I had also made a clock to go with it too

2. Wall decorations. Goes well next to the open hard drives. I also thought about letting them hang from the celing...still thinking about that

Good frisbees too although it isnt as resourceful as the previous


Heh I do that too. Great paper weights as well.

The best ones for glass coasters are the little CD's. I suggest glueing at least three of them together in a stack. If it's slippery, either affix a little CD label on the bottom one, or spray aerosol rubber.

Hmm... with the reflective side up, it would look really great in a nightclub setting, what with the trippy colorized reflection *rushes to find damaged little CD's*

Careful! It can easily injure someone as the edge is thin and it spins.

Problem if they are used as paper weight: Someone might swipe it thinking it's functional ...

With a little sharpening, it would make a good Bond bad-guy weapon. If it hasn't already been used!

-brendan

MICROWAVE