101 Uses for an AOL CD? 100
Richard C asks: "I've just seen, for the first time, the newest AOL advert on UK television. One section depicts a man phoning AOL to ask for a free CD. As he speaks, he picks up his coffee mug, to which an AOL CD is stuck - he's been using it as a coaster. "Oh, don't worry - I've already got one" he adds. The irony of this amused me, to say the least, thought probably not in the way AOL intended. In any case, and in the true '101 uses for a dead cat' style, I thought it would be amusing (if not productive) to ask the Slashdot readership for their '101 uses for an AOL CD'. Be imaginative!"
Re:fp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:3, Funny)
Idea (Score:5, Funny)
Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
You can make an array of them, put them inside a reflecting telescope, and adjust them each at the optimal angle and create a self correcting mirror for the ultimate telescope.
Spin them like coins, or mount them to some rotary motor, and bounce lasers off of them for an interesting show.
Weave them through the spokes in your bike tires for extra saftey at night (think reflectors.)
Cover your walls with these. No more pesky problems with the IR remote not working in THAT corner of the room (don't we all have this problem somewhere in our home?)
While the wall is covered with these things, a little wattage lightbulb will go along way for illumination.
With all that reflecting going on you can open up a photo studio.
Throw them, and if someone asks you what you're up to, tell'm you've found a way to get AOL to launch with 100% reliability.
Line the inside of a paraobilic dish with these and run a dark water carrying pipe through the focus. Solar water heater. (Maybe use the steam to drive a turbine, and get some power as well as hot H2O.)
If you're being tailgated, use them to blind the drivers behind you, he'll never notice the breaklights. Start thinking about what color you would like the tailgater to paint your car
Throw them out the sunroof if your car is already the right color. 65MPH CD-ROM Shiruken will work wonders on their paintjob and windshield.
Use the 800 number on the package and demand a copy of the AOL client that works with your non-M$ operating system. (C-64s didn't have CDRoms..too bad.)
Re:Ideas (Score:3, Funny)
Glue them to the rims of your ghetto-ride.
Stack them in bulk (think a few hundred) and slap them on the ends of a metal bar and start bench-pressing.
Line your roof with these. Cut your cooling costs by 80% for those in the sun-belt. Reflect sunlight into your home and save on lighting. Relfect sinlight onto a dark bit of metal and enjoy the no-cost no-noise heating system.
Break them up into bits and make a disco-ball.
Use the left-over bits and make a tasteful [yeah right] mosaic.
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
Make a suit of armor out of them and confidently proclaim you've invented the new police tool for the 22nd century - the laser proof vest!
Attach them to every road-side post and save a few lives - high intensity reflectors!
While we're at it . . . put them on the outside of all military ground-vehicles. Those damned laser-guided bombs will be so confused by the hundreds of laser spots reflected by the disks!
Can you say Juggle?
Make a stack of 1000, replace axle on car with stack of 1000. Instant steam roller.
Cool hub-caps for that radio-flyer.
Put Roseblood to work doing something useful! (Score:1)
Roseblood, you are amazingly creative.
Re:Put Roseblood to work doing something useful! (Score:1)
I wonder if you forgot to add <sarcasm></sarcasm> to your post.
No, I am serious. (Score:1)
No, I am serious. You gave the impression that you were thinking of all those ways as you were typing. If so, it was a remarkable show of mental freedom.
Re:Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
I'm right here. You just have to click the right links.
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
Woo does that mean you're my friend now? =)
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
(ok weak attempt at humor, I'm tired, been a long day, blah blah blah)
Re:Ideas (Score:1)
Artics, to non-truckers..?
Re:Idea (Score:1)
Flower pot! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure it takes a while to perfect the art of flower-pot-making, but hey...we all have plenty to practice on, right?
Indeed! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Indeed! (Score:1)
Assault Frisbee (Score:1)
I don't know about you guys... (Score:2, Funny)
After releasing all my years of pent up anger on them with a heavy, blunt object.
"News" for nerds, stuff "that matters" (Score:1, Insightful)
Google Image Search... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are a few uses:
--Suit of Armor, Shield, Sword, and Helmet [mit.edu]
--Scare Grackles [cornell.edu] from your bird feeder for cardinals [ziffdavisinternet.com]
--Robot wheels [robots.org]
--Microwaveable dish [physics.ubc.ca]
70 things found on the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Microwave for a few seconds to create new and interesting abstract art pieces.
3. Eclipse viewer
4. Signal mirror when you are lost in the woods
5. Y'know when you're driving and some creep right behind you has their brights on? Use the shiny side to send their light right back at them
6. Take some string, some cork, some glue, and an even number of CDs : Yo-Yo
7. String up a bunch of them together and give them to a small child to keep them entertained.
8. Glue as many as you can to a black body suit and go to the next holloween party as a disco ball.
9. Bookmark for any hardbound book.
10. Frisbees for children or expert frisbee throwers.
11. With two of them you can make Elton John sized mirror shades.
12. Balance a table with uneven legs
13. Give your parakeet a friend
14. Practice throwing stars for young ninjas.
15. Throwing small pieces of pottery
16. At work, keep the bathroom key in an easy to find location by attaching it to a CD.
17. Astonomy: Glue two halves of a sphere to both sides of a tennis ball and model Saturn.
18. Practice skipping stones indoors.
19. Glue it to your pet mouse so it doesn't chew on an injured leg
20. Wind chimes
21. Christmas tree ornaments.
22. Make your own platinum album
23. Shields for your GI Joes
24. The AOL Mini-CD would also work as part of a lance for him
25.
26. Vanity mirror for Barbie
27. Make your Gi Joe's stand up properly
28. Glue them to the outside of your house and bounce all of the sunlight off. Cut your cooling costs
29. They say that there is no intelligent life out there. Glue them to a 4x8 board, grab a xylophone, and start signaling.
30. Tape a few strategically to the walls of your house so that no matter where you are you can us the remote control.
31. Glue one to your computer monitor so you can see whose behind you.
32. Give them to your kid when they have to make a diarama of the final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (Think of the rotating knives)
33. At your next party, give every guest their own personal tray of oe'deuvres.
34. Get four of them and jack up your hot wheels.
35. Diarama idea #2 : The Pit and the Pendulum
36. Kill time by working out the Towers of Hanoi problem
37. Nueveau wall paper.
38. Snow shoes for dogs.
39. Bicycle reflectors.
40. Roadside and driveway reflectors.
41. Laser defraction grating material for experiments.
42. Toaster demonstrations.
43. Put one behind each christmas light on your outdoors string of lights.
44. Large fender washers
45. Edward CD hands
46. Replace those old playing cards on the bike as noise makers against the spokes.
47. Furniture coasters
48. Solar mirror for concentrating heat into a fresnel lens solar oven
49. Glue several together into a parabolic shape for spy listening device
50. Same as above for satellite dishes
51. Make a house for the fish in your aquarium.
52. Collect thousands and make an artifical reef.
53. Use two for your snow boarding chicken
54. Fishing lures for marlin
55. Jack up your roller skates
56. Tie some to strings and attach them in front ot the air conditioner vent. Watch them dance.
57. Experts estimate that it would take about 10 to 12 of them to make a skeet pidgeon.
58. Make a grinding wheel for your pocket knife.
59. Add some straw between two of them and your pets can work out with you.
60. New For Christmas:The CD ROM Christmas Tree
61. This is for Windows 98 CD's, but we can do the same with AOL CDs: Launch Win98
62. Use a hot knife to carefully fold them into various shapes. I'd like to see the platonic solids, myself.
63. A reader named Kevin pointed out that they make great candle holders. Why didn't I think of that? (6-10-02)
64. Another reader suggests taking six of them and glueing them together to form a box. Might be tricky, this one.
65. They also suggest cutting them in half to form the legs of a rocking chair for dolls or stuffed animals.
66. And the very obvious Disco Ball, which I only have alluded to as a halloween costume.
67. New on 10-12-02: Get an old satellite dish (big one) line the dish with them point it at the sun and you have one hell of a cigarette lighter. This would probably do a lot of damage to my pipe.
68. Or have the focused energy hit a metal tube to heat water. Boy, that would save on the electric bill, wouldn't it? Great ideas.
69. Another suggestion for the upcomming holiday parties. Dan wrote in:"If you have helium balloons but you don't want them to be sideways on your ceiling during aparty, simply attach a CD to the end of them. Take some rope and tie it around the end of the balloon. Then attach the other end of the rope to the CD. Make sure the rope is long enough to go all the way down to the ground. Not only will the CD's act as weights but will create a nicerainbow effect on your ceiling to make the party even more spectacular."
70. New on 12-2-02: Replacement "patty stacker" dividers!
Re:70 things found on the internet (Score:2)
This guy's comment may be redundant, but the entire question begs for redundant ideas... don't take it out on his karma.
And we might even get a few interesting ones.
Re:70 things found on the internet (Score:1)
NO NO NO!!
don't use them for watching an eclipse, they don't filter nearly enough UV light!!
Re:70 things found on the internet (Score:2)
Re:70 things found on the internet (Score:1)
Hollywood Costume! (Score:2, Interesting)
save'em for the 4th of july (Score:2, Funny)
Here's a few... (Score:1)
I heard about people using them for target practice
Anyways, here's a few I remember
* Melt them down and make computer chips
* Break them into 4's and tile your pool
* Refills for Nerf gun shooters
* Break it into little pentagons and Viola!Instant guitar string plucker
* Nija Stars
Got those from some web site a while ago
Re:Here's a few... (Score:2)
Is it just me, or is that the most annoying malapropism around? Constantly see it though.
CD soup! (Score:4, Funny)
CD Soup
Ingredients:
4cupsvegetable soup stock
2 clean, discardable CDs, preferably newish (unused AOL CD's are perfect!)
2(14.5 ounce) cansstewed tomatoes
1largepotato, cubed
1onion, chopped
2stalkscelery, chopped
2carrots, chopped
1large headcabbage, finely chopped
2tablespoonsItalian seasoning
1(15 ounce) cankidney beans
3cupsfresh corn kernals
1largezucchini, sliced
1cupuncooked orzo pasta
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. In a large soup pot combine the vegetable stock, the undrained tomatoes, potato, onion, celery, carrot, cabbage and Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer for about 15 minutes.
2. Stir in the beans, corn, zucchini and pasta; simmer for 10 to 15 more minutes until the vegetables are tender. Kill heat, add CDs and stir vigorously for about three minutes.
Allow to set for five minutes.
Season with salt and pepper.
Note: The CD's are not edible.
Re:CD soup! (Score:1)
New Low (Score:1)
You won the contest, then. (Score:1)
Anyone lame enough to read and post to a story this lame should win a prize for being lame.
Sometimes something ridiculously lame comes out on the other side and is funny.
Bored with your everyday lizard? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bored with your everyday lizard? (Score:2)
See, he got it right, even if this [slashdot.org] retard couldn't.
Or... (Score:4, Funny)
2 words: Fish Scale Car (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:2 words: Fish Scale Car (Score:2)
Here's a little background [ultimatechaos.com] and some pictures [devolutioncar.com].
Apparently, they used roughly "500,000 free hours" worth of AOL CDs. You do the math.
Re:2 words: Fish Scale Car (Score:1)
Re:2 words: Fish Scale Car (Score:2)
The good old days (Score:3, Funny)
Andy
Re:The good old days (Score:1)
I had hundreds of them. Always wanted to mail them back to AOL just for the humor of it all.
Re:The good old days (Score:1)
Collect them! (Score:4, Interesting)
~GP
best use ever (Score:4, Insightful)
1/ dont have the next millions of cds made.
2/ dont send them to anyone.
3/ give the saved money to a charity
4/ make some kind of announcement where you say that in one shot you (1)reduced pollution, (2)realized you were bothering people with useless marketing, (3)did something usefull with that otherwise wasted money.
5/ have a merry christmas once in your lifetime.
An indicator for who is giving your address away (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait for the obligatory AOL CD to come through the door with the misspelling, look up who supplied it, then sue them under the UK Data Protection Act 1984 law for disclosing your information.
metal tins (Score:1)
Re:metal tins (Score:1)
CD Rack (Score:3, Interesting)
gluing a bunch of them together. it lookes kinda like this
__
|__|
|__|
|__|
|__|
_|__|_
|____|
You can stack the CD's in it vretically it holds
about 50 jewl cases! I will post a pic if I can get one.
That's just wrong. (Score:1)
here is a short list (Score:3, Informative)
tool for parking in garage & venetian-like bli (Score:1)
2.) String a bunch of them to make venetian blinds or whatever.
3.) Depending on the type of plastic, I wonder if it would be good to use as a scraper for when you're doing the dishes.
I think that the ninja star idea was 1 of the best ideas.
Re:tool for parking in garage & venetian-like (Score:1)
Re:tool for parking in garage & venetian-like (Score:1)
When I eat, I eat very cleanly. The only things on the plate are dried up sauces, bones, etc. I don't leave scraps.
A CD seems like a very awkward thing to use to scrape.
The whole suggestion was just a brainstorm idea, kind of like the venetian blinds idea. I'd like to try it just find fun & creative exercise, but I'd never use it for something permanent.
Soviet Russia (Score:1, Funny)
I feel somewhat obliged to say that In Soviet Russia, AOL CD's have 101 uses for you!
Further uses... (Score:1)
* Placing cd's underneath carpet underlay convinces worried dogs that carpet is no longer full of bees
* Silver coating can be used to protect cat's triangular head from damage during megalomania
* Can be used as solid foundation for new church
* Can be used to turn a priest into a bishop, and once transformation is complete, protects bishop's stability during Christ-enduced rotation
* Melted plastic body excellent for detection and eventual destruction of primitive shellfish
* Large groups (20+) can be stapled together and fired to re-align course of earth-bound asteroid
Re:Further uses... (Score:1)
The one and only thing to do with AOL CDs (Score:3, Funny)
From the earliest days of people recieving AOL CDs in the mail, there has been a need to cleanse these foul devices of their evil, and this is the only true way of excorcising the beast from the essentially innocent soul of the acryllic disk.
What you will need for this ritual:
1 (or more) AOL CD
1 Holy Urn of Isanël Umâhar of the proper diameter to fit a CD (suficiently sized and pre-blessed mixing bowl may be substituted)
1 (or more, proportionat to the number of CDs) bottle of holy water (religion of blessing entirely by choice of the person perfoming the cleansing)
1 Unholy Priestess (may be substituted by a suficiently versed hooker, or the pink ranger)
1 wooden alter (may be substituted by cheap IKEA knockoff microwave shelf)
1 2.4ghz radio frequency cooking device (microwave oven)
making sure the microwave is sitting on the altar, first place the CD into the Urn, fill the Urn with the holy water, while having the Unholy Priestess dance around the chanting the words "pa limat wi vuim irumo uv tajelac" five times, while the Unholy Priestess is chanting, place the Urn within the microwave, and with the chant "Ë lamacha dra drui sucud vuim uv taisuk", set the microwave for 1 minute and press "Start".
Afterwards do as you will with the Unholy Priestess.
Actual use (Score:2, Informative)
Some birds? (Score:1)
Obviously, the ones that already have a pile of disks are scared away, while the birds without are not.
As a Lampshade (Score:3, Interesting)
WIth a drill press and forstner bits I opened up the center hole to about 1-1/2", then epoxied the stack of CDs together. I put the lamp's ballast inside the CD-ROM case and mounted the light tube atop the case in a nicely machined piece of aluminum that I had pulled from a betamax machine.
So the flourescent tube sits vertically in a stack of CDs and its light refracts radially out of the CDs through the plastic and between the foil layers - a very cool effect.
I don't have a picture of the CD lamp online but there is a picture of a lamp made from a halogen bulb and four old sound cards here [savannahnow.com]. Just don't take anything said in the article seriously.
A warning to aliens (Score:2, Funny)
Building material (Score:2)
send them to GreenDisk (Score:4, Interesting)
Send them to GreenDisk [greendisk.com] for recycling.
Crackled (Score:1)
Windshield Scraper (Score:1)
The only reason I had the disk is that the case work as replacement DVD case when the plastic center-hole prongs break. Just pull out the AOL sheet out of the outer clear plasic, clean off the sticker (easier said than done), and replace with DVDs jacket artwork.
Car decoration (Score:2)
2 Birds (Score:3, Funny)
SD
I've used them (Score:2, Informative)
AOL CD'S (Score:1)
Cover your ceiling with them. (Score:1)
102 if you use them to ... (Score:1)
a few more (Score:1)
as a pocket mirror
my friend has a baka idea about building houses with them (don't ask me it involves pegs and interlocking or somthing)
in art ^__^ (done this myself)
as a paint pallette, it has it's own hole to stabalize it on your hand even.
Most noble use (Score:1)
Sick Thing My Superhero Frienf Thought Of (Score:1)