Sure thing, here ya go.

The eyes came out a little cockeyed, but meh. The servo is supported with puddy and the whole works are held together with binary epoxy. You can also see the control box, which basically just takes RS232 via the DB9 and converts into signals for the servo. There are six total servo channels, only one of which is in use currently (I was ambitious once upon a time).

Before the kids came along, I built a number of fun electronics projects for Halloween. I built a flicker circuit I got off of Wolfstone (a great site for would-be haunters).

Along with a couple of friends, I built a coffin-leaper one year, too. I built the electronics (a pressure sensitive mat that activated a solenoid valve). Another fellow built the pneumatics and another built the actual coffin and dummy. When you'd step on the mat, the dummy would spring up and a loop tape with sounds effect and a strobe would go off.

I also built a lightning/thunder machine using a "color organ" (basically a device that causes different flood lights to flash in time to various sound frequencies) that came from a Velleman kit. I set up an old pair of PC speakers playing a loop CD of some thunder and use that to drive the color organ. I usually get a few good jumps from kids who aren't expecting it.

I have a commercial fog machine that I use with a timer to give my house a nice cloud of low-hanging fog. I built a fog-chiller out of a cheapo foam beer cooler by cutting two holes in either side and running a flexible piece of aluminum ducting through it (with a twist in the middle and holes punched in it to increase surface area). This keeps the fog hanging low. Another tip is to spray down the area with the fog using a garden hose.

I started working on animating a Bucky skull a while back, too. I added eyes attached to a servo and wrote a program in Windows that let you move them with sliders. I intended to animate the mouth, too, but my kids came along shortly after that. I still pull out my decorations every year, but my own little goblins have taken priority over my projects - so it goes.

I'd love to finish the Bucky skull and maybe build a bookshelf where the books pop out on their own (driven by a motor and series of cams). Maybe one day when I have some time to myself again ...

Hope this gave everyone a few good ideas for projects to scare the neighborhood kids -- happy haunting!!

I thought the same thing recently when I watched a DVR'd TV show displaying an emergency announcement about a tornado from three days ago. Fat lot of good that did me, it just interrupted my show - if the tornado was going to get me, it would have done it three days ago.

I just simply had a difficult time buying Summer Glau as an unstoppable killing machine. It's the same way the T-X in Terminator 3 just didn't really work. It seemed like they were pandering to undersexed nerds.

I enjoy the Terminator films for the heebie-jeebies I still get from watching Arnold's terminator strafe Club Noire with robotic efficiency. Now that was some tasty sci-fi.