Aimme, John, Tiff and Myself were talking about Wargames for whatever reason and I decided it would be kind of cool to build a case that looked like the WOPR ("wopper wopper", don't ask). Talking it through with my boss we figured out a fiberglass shell would probably be the easiest route to getting the most interior space without having to scale the model up so large it would take up a whole room. So that's designed in theory. It also has to have blinking lights. I've got the control circuit designed, half of it soldered onto a circuit board and the other half still on the prototype board and it seems to be working just as I'd like it too. So now i need to carve the foam positive mold and lay some fiberglass (hard but not too hard), and figure out how to solder 750 small LEDs into appropriately random patterns so that the WOPR will blink and chitter slowly when my computer is idle and more rapidly as it becomes taxed (I've got the software written to control the board, I just need to wire the lights).
I guess it's actually comming along pretty well, the soldering is going to be tedious but not terribly hard, the real deal breaker will be carving the foam positive mold. If I can pull it off, and get enough pictures along the way, I'll put it all up here and hope for my first Slashdotting :)
