According to Ron van der Ende:

I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that I find in the street. I take it apart and skin it to obtain a 3mm thick veneer with the old paint layers still intact. I construct bas-reliefs that I cover with these veneers much like a constructed mosaic. I do not paint them!

I want some of these so badly. [Ron van der Ende via Motherboard via Obsolete]

The 2-XL was an interactive educational robot (by interactive, we mean it had four buttons: question, yes/true, no/false, and "more info) from the late '70s that used different 8-track tapes for its different functions. Basically, it was just a talking 8-track deck, and the four buttons just selected different tracks.

It was later re-released in the early '90s with cassettes instead of 8-tracks, but that really lessens the kitsch value, we think. [Toy Whimsy]

The signal from the tape head is transmitted via FM radio to a receiver, which then records the glitchy sound of a robot dutifully following a strip of magnetized acetate. Future revisions will add remote-control. [Instructables via MAKE]

For full resolution, click here.

It wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that mass-produced recordings were available to the average person—the concept of buying music is amazingly new. (Or to some, ooooooold.) Just a century ago, the first records began to do for music what the Gutenberg press did for words. Before them, music was handed crudely from person to person; after, it could reach millions, untouched and unspoiled.

If we couldn't record music, the Beatles would have never left Liverpool. By the same token the Jonas Brothers would have never left Georgia or Disney World or the Old Testament or wherever the hell they came from. Talk about progress! There may be no accounting for taste, but you can thank these reproducible formats for the very existence of the notion of pop music.

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

I had, used and loved a clock radio for years before this, but the first music I truly owned came from a playground friend, who bought me a tape single of Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life", with "Tattoo of the Sun" as a b-side. (Like Dan, I'm a baby.) After about a week of of solid playback on both our living room stereo and my dad's ancient JVC portable, I got tape fever.

I bought a few more from the dollar bin at a mall chain that doesn't exist anymore, choosing based on some ridiculous cover art criterion (I think it was "it should look like that House of Pain tape that I'm not allowed to buy") which netted me two completely unmemorable albums and one that I recall being called something like Mean Streak, and as having three hair band-looking ladies on the jacket. There is absolutely no evidence on Amazon that this album ever existed. So, I stopped buying music for about a year after that, because it seemed really hard.

The next Christmas brought a Sony CD boom box into my life, along with Chumbawamba's Tubthumper and something by Smashmouth. A 12y/o family friend with cred beyond his years sent me a Busta Rhymes' Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front that year, which I foolishly shelved.

Although to be fair to my reputation, the first truly premeditated music purchase I made after that Christmas was much cooler: Dada's Dizz Knee Land. Thanks for the tip, Aunt Diane.

For Gizmodo's week-long Listening Test (a tribute to all things audio), each writer will be sharing his/her first album. In other words, there will be many more to come.

While major retailers have long since ditched VHS for the space-friendly DVD alternative, Distribution Video Audio was the last major supplier of VHS, supporting part of their $20 million a year business by selling mass amounts of VHS tapes on the cheap. With little fanfare last October, the company shipped their last truckload of VHS. From the company's president:

It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt. I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done. Anything left in warehouse we'll just give away or throw away.

Rather than rewrite the whole story, I'll just point you to the LA Times and assure you that it's a great, be it sad, read. The format that popularized replaying, archiving and sharing media is but the stuff of collections. Luckily, it's been replaced by some pretty incredible alternatives. [LA Times and image]

The JVC player was probably only ever intended to service old, supplementary collections of tapes, but my romantic side hopes that at least one person will see this news and think "Aww, shucks, I guess it's finally.time to get one of those Dee-Vee-Dee players." As a comfort to those people, JVC (like others) will continue to offer a few combination players, and at least plans on selling its standalone VCRs until inventory runs out. [TradingMarkets via BBG]

In your heyday, people rocked out to your not-so-dulcet tones, unwitting grunge parents produced little grunge babies to the soundtrack of your sweet hisses, and relationships and restraining orders alike were borne of compilations carefully mixed onto your glossy insides. Now you're silenced, screwed into the shape of a cabinet and put up for sale on the same "Internet" that did such horrible things to your children. Such is the way of the world, Tape. And let's be honest — as much as you don't want to hear it, this is the coolest you've looked in years. [CreativeBarn]