Automaton

How cool would it be to show up at a Halloween party wearing one of this?

Guess what? You can. The trick top hat was created by automatier Dug North and its design is available in MAKE magazine's special Halloween edition. Dug on the hat:

The project requires two costume "coachman's" hats, plywood, some small pieces of wood, two L-brackets, two springs, a brake cable and lever, a cable crimp, some washers and screws, and...brace yourself...a rubber finger puppet. Terrifying!

PS: The description above is from Dug's Automata/Automaton Blog, a great blog with, yes!, a great name (although his automata are of the mechanical figure/object variety and this blog's are of the robotic variety).