So, all you need is some artwork, a laser-etch machine and the urge to burn your fingers. Or, if even that's too creepy for you, the technique also works on artificial nails.

And I know the headline says "not painful"... but if you check out the Instructables link, you'll see that's not strictly true. Aligning laser and nail and avoiding sensitive skin is sometimes not so easy, it seems... as is not cooking your nail because the laser intensity's too high. Watch it, and promise me not to try this body mod either? I'm pretty sure the lid should be down and all safeties engaged on these machines, for a reason. [Instructables]

Over on Instructables this chap has a "how to" guide, so you can try it yourself. Assuming a) you can get hold of a laser-etcher and a helpful operator, b) you can defeat the safeties on the machine designed to stop you doing this and c) you're a total nutcase. Because doing this cooks your skin, frying small parcels of it into vapor. It's basically digital branding, and it exposes your body to mahoosive amounts of laser energy. And it hurts.

Got it? Look at the gallery again, and then promise me you're not going to try it. [Instructables]

Now, this is done on a plucked hair by steering a beam of gallium ions over the surface to etch the 20-micron logo into the hair cells. But imagine you really could have your hair tattooed. No-one would see it, it would be just like painting the pilot inside a plastic airplane model: you'd know it was there. What would you have?

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The process is done using an Epilog laser cutter hooked up to a Windows machine (irony?) running Corel Draw to make the pretty pictures. Hit up the link here for more details on the laser-etching process and jump to see the video of Gina's Powerbook getting etchified.

– Travis Hudson

Laser etching a Powerbook [Lifehacker]

Flickr [via Real Tech News]