It can be hard to know what to do with an old bike. I'm sure I have one or two partially collapsed examples lying around in my garage. But here's an eye-opener - the mechanisms that make your bike work can actually be useful in a range of other applications as well, like pumping water, or shelling nuts. If you're in a country that's struggling, that can be a big deal.

Recently I converted my old Ford pickup to diesel, and I needed to make a bracket to hold a throttle position sensor, which helps to control the new transmission. Often I wing this sort of thing, working from notebook drawings or cardboard models. But this time I decided to use 3D CAD modeling, CNC manufacturing and 3D printing to design and fabricate the part to the exact specifications I wanted.

One of the most fun Kinect hacks we've seen in a while gives the idea of motion capture a whole new meaning. Behold the Board of Awesomeness, an all-terrain motorised longboard wired to a Kinect and a Samsung tablet running Windows 8. To roll ahead, the rider simply pushes his hand forward.

I just stopped by MakerBot's far-flung booth somewhere in the back caverns of CES (I believe it may technically be in Arizona) to check out their new Replicator 3D printer. Check out the video below - pretty sure that's a bust of Stephen Colbert being slowly brought to life with swirling circles of molten plastic.

David Forbes was on his way home to Tucson, Arizona, after a family trip last summer when a policeman stopped him in the Detroit airport. The officer said he had received 50 panicked phone calls since Forbes had entered the building, and now his entire family had been marked for extra screening. The delay was inconvenient, but it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Forbes had 160 circuit boards and enough electronics to start a data center strapped to his body. What the authorities didn't realise, though, was that all the equipment wasn't dangerous - it was actually a wearable TV set.

When you think of technology, you probably think of computers and jet engines and such. But there are other feats of engineering that are equally sophisticated, just less obviously so. Instant Kool-Aid, for example.