As mentioned elsewhere, this is the first is in a recurring series of general fun posts with some ideas for interesting hacks.

In building The List app, I have picked up a bunch of cheap Android phones from Amazon. This, coupled with my natural hoarding abilities has left me with a desk covered in phones (thanks to Rob Myers and all the other people who gave me their old G1 phones in the past) but sadly, the severe lack of USB ports on most modern laptops (my ThinkPad has three, and my external keyboard and mouse use two of them) left me with the job of finding an interesting solution to the problem.

At Mozfest in London, I saw a demo by Dave Green and Dave Page of their CheapSynth project, which takes an old USB or Bluetooth video game controller (the kind used in games like Rock Band) and uses it with some Python to make music on a Raspberry Pi. While I haven't got to the point of really using it much yet (the Pi has made it to my desk, at least, but it's trapped under some phones) I did immediately plug in the supplied Bluetooth dongle, as it gives me an extra USB port to play with.

Now I just need to see if the second USB hub I've ordered really will let me have the 12 extra USB ports I so desperately need to feed my phone habit.