C’mon, you know you’ve thought about it — no, not what you’d do if Natalie Portman actually answered your fanboy emails — building a Wi-Fi antenna from one of those in-pot steamer/strainers (a Hollywood favorite when depicting junk-built robots and various McGuyver hacks). A builder on Instructables has done just that, creating a signal booster for a thumb-drive-type USB Wi-Fi Adaptor. Making such a uni-directional booster is actually very easy, and at least according to the builder, significantly boosts signal strength.
Hardware Beyond the Hype