The two questions we get asked the most here at Street Tech Labs (besides: “Gareth, how do you keep your skin so soft and supple?”) are: “What the hell do I do with my cast-off PC?” and “What the F*** am I s’posed to do with all these junk CD-ROMs that keep coming in the mail!?” We tried to answer that second question in my robot book, using two AOL CDs to build a small robot development platform. Here’s another idea: Make a mod-looking desklamp.
Here’s a link to a similar lamp project, with more in-depth how-to instruction.