Vinyl Records Purse
Do you still have piles of vinyl records you store for no reason? Here’s a cool and stylish way to re-use them: a vinyl record purse. Such things always look fashionable, I guess. Tasket Basket posted quite a few pictures of how she made this one.
Link – via diygadgets
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Dirac Notation Bookends
Lenore over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories blog created this bra-ket bookends perfect for your quantum mechanics textbooks. Dirac would’ve been proud though Heisenberg would’ve warned about the uncertainty of having objects heavier than books that may fall out of the shelf.
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Not Your Typical Low-Income Housing
Discarded frame samples become ceilings, license plates become roofs, wine bottle bottoms become stained glass windows… Dan Phillips is a self-taught carpenter, electrician and plumber who has created an unusual connection between two seemingly unrelated problems: The shortage of affordable housing in his neighborhood and the plethora of junk and discarded materials filling landfills.
“Look at kids playing with blocks. I think it’s in everyone’s DNA to want to be a builder. …You can’t defy the laws of physics or building codes,but beyond that, the possibilities are endless”
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Wonderful Altoids Hacks
Oobject rounded up some of the best Altoids tin hacks from around the Web. From cameras to flashlights to headphone amps, nothing is safe from the DIY community!
The almighty Altoids tin has been torn apart, beat to death and drilled upon all in the name of science. DIY enthusiasts can attest to the solid build of the tin and how delicious the mints were that formerly resided in it. This list is a collection of some of the finest hackery around that incorporates an Altoids tin.
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Keyboard Cat Papercraft
Now you can make your own keyboard cat that plays his own little papercraft keyboard when you crank the handle! TubbyPaws has a pattern and a cute video tutorial. Link -via Metafilter
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DIY Floating Water Bike
Humans may not be able to walk on water, but an invention by Li Weiguo let us bike on water! Behold the amphibious bicycle, made by water containers jerry-rigged into pontoons:
Li Weiguo’s daughter Li Jin rides the human-powered amphibious bicycle on the water in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China on May 30, 2009. The amphibious bicycle made by Li Weiguo is equipped with eight water buckets as pontoons and adjustable vane wheels as driving power. This kind of bike can walk on land and on water.
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AT-AT Bed
(YouTube link)
I thought I was going overboard by painting my kids’ furniture weird colors. This guy built a Star Wars AT-AT Imperial Walker for his son to sleep in! The interior is accessible by ladder and by the ‘escape hatch”. -via Boing Boing
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Mint Catapult
Why use your arm in a food fight when you can rig up a tiny little catapult? This project is made from a mint tin, a measuring spoon, and a rubber band. What more fun can you have than to fling candy at your kids! Link -via J-Walk Blog
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DIY Science Experiments
Popular Mechanics bought eight science kits for kids, reviewed them, and found instructions on the ‘net for replicating the same experiments with materials many people have on hand.
…homemade experiments can be just as complex and educational (while costing up to $100 less), so we found alternatives to each of the boxed kits that teach similar lessons just as well. Bottom line: Whether preassembled or drawn from kitchen cupboards, science kits can be educational and fun.
Link -via Geek Like Me
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Homemade Spider Catcher
I don’t know how effective this homemade spider catcher is, but it should be easy to make from a cassette case, a pipe, a string, and some glue. Beats walking into a web, the way I’ve been doing lately! Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
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Homemade R2D2s
The Bay Area R2 Builders showed off four fully-functioning R2D2 units at Maker Faire. They cost around $10,000 to build, and take a couple of years of work. Link to video report. Link to website.
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Scrabble Board Game Photo Frame
Do you have an old Scrabble board game abandoned because of a few missing tiles? (Or perhaps because you hate losing at Scrabble) Well, turn it into this marvelous DIY photo frame. Check out the instruction at Photojojo: Link – via DIY:happy
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Homemade Tabletop Pinball
Instructables member seamster made this wooden tabletop pinball game out of bits and pieces he had saved over time, like drawer knobs, dowels, rubber bands, and a recycle tool table. The ball is from a computer mouse! Link -via Unique Daily
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Defy Gravity with The Swami
From Modern Mechanix, one of my favorite blogs, here’s the Swami, a simple pattern you can cut out on a piece of plywood that will let you defy gravity!
As mystifying as the Indian rope trick, this magic marvel defies the laws of gravity.
PROBABLY Isaac Newton was right; but you couldn’t prove it with this gadget. It just seems to work contrary to all laws of gravity.
Swami, by itself, reacts like any other object: supported at one end only—it falls. But, add a fairly heavy belt, as shown in the photo, and it will not only stay up but actually take quite a bit of extra pressure to make it tilt down, even slightly.
We won’t tell you how or why it works. That is part of the mystery. Go ahead and make one and try to find out for yourself. You’ll be truly amazed.
This is SO going to my ever growing list of "to-do one day" projects: Link
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DIY Giraffe Sock Puppet
While we’re still in the subject of being crafty, here’s a spiffy project if you have kids (or if you’re simply young at heart): make your very own giraffe sock puppet.
Craft Jr. has the step by step guide: Link – via One Crafty Place
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Clothes Dryer Chicken Coop
Why buy new lumber to make a house for chickens when you can use the front of an industrial clothes dryer, some wooden pallets, old steel shelves, a crate for shipping fish, and some old pizza boxes?
Pete Betchik of Madison on the Lake, WI built this chicken coop using materials he found lying around.
Link – via dinosaursandrobots
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Recycled Milk Bottle Lights
[YouTube - Link]
I made these plastic milk bottle lights by embedding LEDs in the caps, hanging them from a bent section of pipe and hooking them up to an Arduino microcontroller.
Not happy with an on-off switch, I thought they might look mesmerising with a rotary control knob turning them on in sequence. It works! They make great low lighting to wind down for sleep, and they’re great to hang in the hall for parties too.
There are complete build instructions on Instructables.
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DIY Cuddly Bantha
I must’ve been living in a cave, because I missed this ‘08 post by Bonnie Burton of Star Wars blog on how to make your very own cuddly Bantha (y’know, the furry elephant-like animals ridden by the Tusken Raiders)
Link | One more Fan-made Bantha
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Build a Multitouch Surface Computer for Less than $500
Microsoft’s cool Surface computing device costs $12,000 and is not yet available to the public, so the folks over at Maximum PC decided that they’re going to build their own Surface-like computing device using open-source software.
The result: a fully-functional multitouch device that lets you play games, manipulate documents, and use google earth-like applications. The final price of all the custom hardware was less than $500, not including the actual computer and a borrowed projector.
Maximum PC’s post details their entire build process and explains the technology behind their DIY multitouch machine:
There is, it turns out, a whole community of very smart folks out there on the internet perfecting the art of building DIY multi-touch surfaces. The process isn’t exactly simple, but the results we saw were stunning: multitouch surfaces with responsiveness rivaling Microsoft’s $12,000 offering, built in a garage on a shoestring budget. “Future UI article be damned,” we thought, “we’ve gotta build one of these for ourselves.”
And so we did. We documented the whole process, from start to finish, so that you can try building one of your own, if you’re so inspired. We’re not going to claim to have done everything perfectly the first time, so think of this article as more of a build log than a definitive how-to.
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The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk
The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk is sort roving flea market meets Internet meme.
The idea, hatched by the guys over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, is to send a box containing random electronics junk to somebody who would take a few pieces, write about them, add some item, and then send it on its merry way to somebody else.
You can request a box or even start one of your own … and don’t forget to document the journey at Flickr!
Recipient Conditions for The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk:
1. Take out and add as much electronics junk as you like (but keep it small enough to fit in a USPS flat-rate Priority Mail box or the equivalent for your postal system).
2. Write up, photograph, document or otherwise publish in some way online at least one thing you took out (suggested flickr tag: TGIMBOEJ, see also: flickr group ).
3. There is a little book in the box. Add a checkmark by your name to show that the box has been to you. Also propose a future recipient by adding their name and e-mail address to the book.
4. Within two weeks pass the box along to one of the people whose name is in the book. Before mailing it to them, send them this list and make sure that they want to participate.
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Poppen's Special Kids Racer
Inspired by some old Indianapolis racing books, Joseph Ihnat of Whiting, Indiana designed a 1930s-style race car sized to fit a four-year-old. He used some old kitchen equipment, including a Smoky Joe barbecue grill, for parts.
The body is riveted sheets of aluminum, except for the nose piece which is made from a porcelain enameled roasting pan lid, cut in half, with the handle removed.
The front bumpers are from a 1950s kitchen canister sliced in half, the headrest is made from an old chocolate malt shaker cut lengthwise, and the radiator cap is a lid from a maraschino cherry jar.
Ihnat found some 18-inch bicycle wheels for proper scale, and added "six exhaust stacks per side, providing plenty of pretend V-12 power."
“I upholstered the seat by cutting foam swimming pool noodles in half lengthwise and covering them with naugahyde.”
– Joseph Inhat
Link – via dinosaursandrobots
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45-cent Kindle Stand
John from J-Walk Blog was frustrated because his Kindle electronic reader needed to be propped up so he could read while eating. He could’ve spend $27.95 for a Kindle stand, but his wife handed him a 45-cent metal bookend. With a little bending, he fashioned the perfect stand to hold his Kindle. He also notes that metal bookends now cost almost a dollar. Link
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Woman Makes Clothes Out of Own Hair
Ioana Cioanca, a 71-year-old Romanian woman, is sort of a fashion extremist. Not only does she make her own clothes, she makes ‘em out of her own hair!
Ioana Cioanca, 71, from Bistrita Nasaud, grew her hair from the age of 16 until it was 40 inches long so she could weave it. [...]
"Maybe there are other women who did this but I don’t know if they have so many items. I have nine of them: a hat, a shawl, a skirt, a blouse, a raincoat, a purse, a handbag and a pair of gloves."
So how do the clothes feel? "Quite comfortable and warm," she said. Link
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Spinalistips: Life Tips for People With Spinal Cord Injuries
This is a really awesome site for people with spinal cord injuries, just different things to make life a little easier and more normal. It’s kinda like an Instructables-style Swedish site run by a couple of occupational therapists.
Spinalistips now has more than 875 tips sorted by categories like mobility, carrying objects, eating, and so on.
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ADD OCD DIY? Obsessively Organized-by-Color Bookshelves
Call it art, call it obsession, but the results are a rainbow of awesome to be sure. Some of these were done as personal pet projects but one in particular involved the reorganization of an entire store to fit into one big color spectrum of books. Practical? Perhaps not. Appealing? On an aesthetic level: absolutely.
Some of us are more particular about the appearance of our interiors than others – perhaps to a fault. Sick of seeing your books sloppily organized by type, or, worse yet, having them randomly disorganized across a series of bookcases? Sorting your favorite volumes by color may just satisfy that too-organized part of yourself.
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How the Amish Hack Technology to Meet Their Needs and Beliefs
The Amish are often portrayed as anti-technology Luddites, but in fact they often accept non-electrical forms of technology, as long as they can remain "off the grid" and independent.
The photo shows a home-crafted gas-powered ice cutter used to harvest lake ice for non-electric iceboxes.
The diesel engine burns fuel to drive the compressor that fills the reservoir with pressure. From the tank a series of high-pressure pipes snake off toward every corner of the factory. A hard rubber flexible hose connects each tool to a pipe. The entire shop runs on compressed air. Every piece of machine is running on pneumatic power. Amos even shows me a pneumatic switch, which you can flick like a light switch, to turn on some paint-drying fans.
The Amish call this pneumatic system “Amish electricity.”
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Pringles Can iPod Dock
Ah, the Pringles can. Is there anything it can’t do? It works as a container that keeps not-potato chips crispy for years (yes, a court has ruled that Pringles aren’t potato chips for tax purposes), act as a Yagi antenna (the infamous Pringles WiFi antenna), and even as a coffin.
Now, thanks to Neatorama reader Nick M., an empty Pringles can also doubles as an iPod dock:
I made this project for a friend in about an hour. It is al made from found parts laying around our apartment. I uses a set of speakers, and an ipod charging cable. The entire project cost around 5 dollars and was quite fun. The project requires nothing but the can itself, a set of speakers, hot glue, ipod cable (if you want), and an exacto knife. The can holds itself up.
Thanks Nick M.!
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DIY "Eye Mouse" for Disabled People
Two students from a technical high school in Argentina built a mouse that can be controlled by eye movements, thus allowing people with total paralysis to use the computer.
The invention is named the "Eye Mouse." This idea is not new but what makes it different is that it is a DIY mouse that almost anyone can build with cheap and easy-to-find components.
How does it work? The free software that they provide, divides the monitor surface in squares and asks the user what he wants to do – focus on an area, right click, left click, etc – with yes and no answers. If the eye looks at the camera, that is translated as a "yes".
With just a webcam, an infrared LED, a small, flexible metal tube and the headband of a welding helmet, anyone can build the mouse at a fraction of the cost of similar devices.
The students wanted to make the Eye Mouse available to everyone, so the software is free. They have published step-by-step instructions on how to build the mouse, originally in Spanish but they have already been translated to English.
Link – via ticbelgrano
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Rainbow Cake
Aleta Meadowlark of the cleverly named Omnomicon blogged about her recipe on how to make this awesomely psychedelic rainbow cake: Link – via Unique Daily
What I want to know is this: will it make you poo rainbow?
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Circuitry Snacks - Done Playing With Electronics & Food
Two of our favorite things in the world are playing with electronics and playing with food, and so it is about time that someone finally got around to combining the two. We begin by gathering up appropriate snack-food building blocks and making food-based models of electronic components. From these components, you can assemble "circuitry snacks"-- edible models of functioning electronic circuits. You can make these for fun, for dessert, for your geek friends, for kids, and for teaching and learning electronics.
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