inportb

I now have a shiny new cover for my Kindle 2 (okay, it’s matte, but you get the idea). With a gutted notebook, a bit of felt, and some time, I stitched together a lightweight carrying case. It’s not going to protect the Kindle against a fall, but it’d sure keep it clean. The only drawback is that it covers the speakers, but I’m happy as long as the 3.5mm audio jack is available. As a bonus, the transparent cover shows what’s on the screen even when closed.

The felt back keeps the device strapped to the cover.

It’s today! According to SparkFun,

You can blame it on Chris Anderson’s book Free. After reading his book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that’s ‘free’. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs, available code, etc.), but we don’t have free physical widgets. Now combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter, Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There’s always a catch. So up front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it’s open season.

• $100 max per household
• You pay shipping
• Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
• Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
• Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
• Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

So… go grab some parts?

Thanks to my awesome uncle, I now own a Kindle 2. I have updated the firmware and loaded up a couple of PDF’s, and am browsing Amazon’s library of free and public domain content. And ultimatebuster has mastered the art of converting any website’s content to PDF.

full of e-ink win