Mishima is a 15″ PowerBook G4 that met an untimely demise when my cat Lilo knocked it off a desk… face-down right onto a lead-acid battery. The LCD display was irreversably damaged, a few keys popped off, and the case was cracked a bit. I replaced the keys from a spare keyboard, opened up the machine, and gently removed the screen assembly. I procured a Dell 2001FP 21″ LCD display from a friend. I then designed a custom stand using heavy-duty extruded-aluminum structural framing and machined a VESA-compliant mount for the LCD display. I put it all together to create a standing “digital hub kiosk” that provides a source of music, a dashboard for my morning rituals (traffic, mail, etc), and a display for one of my server’s traffic graphs. The design is stable and did not require drilling into the floor or ceiling; the unit is “wedged” in with high-grade neoprene rubber bumpers at the top and bottom for traction. Not a bad use for a broken laptop!

In 2009, I moved Mishima to my exercise room at home where she can now be used while walking on a treadmill. The screen has been upgraded to a 24″ widescreen LCD, making this an ideal setup for watching DVDs while exercising.