Mini Blinds When your looking for a bargain on window treatments, look no further than mini blinds. Mini Blinds are those aluminum blinds you probably recognize from when you were a kid or the ones you see in your office building. They are incredibly inexpensive when compared to other traditional window treatments but still function and offer clean-lines for the room.
Why settle on just pork chops or ribs when you can string up the entire pig? Serious Eats posts an great slide show on roasting a whole pig, from materials to the process to the perfect pig roastin' sauce.
Combine your passion for drinking soda and growing your own vegetables by making an upside-down tomato planter! This gardening project is especially great for people who have limited space for growing their own green things. To make this, you'll be using an empty soda bottle, aluminum foil, masking tape, twine, potting soil, and other simple materials.
Bikes are a great form of transportation. They use human energy more efficiently than any other machine. You can keep it in your closet or hallway. You can even take it on the train in a pinch. However, this portability is also the bike's biggest draw back. If you own a bike in the city, chances are it will be stolen. Locks barely deter thieves armed with bolt cutters and crowbars. Throw the bike thieves for a loop and make a tilt-sensitive alarm. It will hopefully startle your bike's assaila...
Tesla coils are totally insane, yet undeniably captivating. And they can be used for many things, from electric painting to dueling musical battles. But one trigger happy fellow has a different use for Tesla's lightning shooting coil. A weapon.
Here's another home hack for you (1, 2, 3). The perfect way to make bacon? Ditch the frying pan. Instead, try Apartment Therapy's recipe for perfectly cooked, oven-baked bacon.
Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka (creator of the crystal chair) is back with a new "shape-shifting" chair, set to debut at Milan Design Fair this upcoming week.
Texas based photographer Adam Voorhes takes four objects (telephone, frog, gun, etch-a-sketch) and dissects them for his photo essay entitled Exploded. The frog in particular looks like an illustration, but is indeed a photograph.
Founded by Zach Kaplan, a "serial entrepreneur" with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Inventables is a futuristic online hardware store based out of Chicago. The company sells innovative materials at much smaller quantities than typically available—largely to artists, inventors, developers, and researchers. If you've got a brilliant idea and cash to spare, careful, you just may go hog wild. My premature "Dear Santa" wishlist-in-progress:
To make yourself a tasty meal during a camping trip, all you need are chopped up raw meats and vegetables, glowing embers, and a roll of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Simply place ingredients in a tightly wrapped aluminum foil packet, place on hot embers, and wait until everything inside is fully cooked.
Attention cheapskates and locksmith apprentices, this key copying solution is stunningly simple. We've really mulled over this one. As you can read in the comments below, people struggle with executing this successfully. But it can and will work. You just have to modify your key to fit your needs.
This article will show you how to make a proportionally correct 1/187 (about) size Hubble Space Telescope. I tried to add as many details as possible, but it was hard at such a small size. It was really easy, but it did take a while to make.
My first attempt at a helmet cam, yielded ok results, but I wanted something even better. The downside to all of this was cost, but it is very close to what I want now.
Hydrogen gas has been a front runner in the alternative fuel debate for decades now. It is plentiful, inexpensive, and the only byproduct of its combustion is water vapor. In the following video, I demonstrate how hydrogen can be produced in large quantities using very inexpensive and common chemicals. Materials:
If you want to prank someone with a water balloon, but don't actually have any water balloons lying around, just use some paper instead. Yes, I know... paper doesn't sound like something that will work, but with you'd be surprised what can be done with a little origami.
If you've got a knack for gardening and an inclination for recycling, then you need to know about these six garden hacks. Some of the trash inside your bathroom and kitchen is actually garden gold, so get your recycling hats on.
Revitalize your computer experience with something new and eccentric, possibly even more comfortable—a felt computer mouse.
Arvind Gupta is an Indian educator and inventor who makes whimsical, elegant toys from simple and inexpensive materials. His site has hundreds of free project tutorials, with simply outlined instructions in the categories of science, math, astronomy and more. Below, peruse the video gallery and images for a selection of Gupta's inspiring work.
What do these egg-carton lamps by American designer Victor Vetterlein have in common with Frankenstein's monster? More than you'd think! Both are green. Both have bolted necks. And both are assembled from materials most would be happy to let decompose.
"Photo Grandpa" aka Fotoopa (that's photograndpa in Dutch) has created an amazing laser rig for ultra-high speed photography.
Mike from the SubStream's "Film Lab" has some tips regarding lighting, gripping and gaffing. Mike's soul screams for Rosco's magic Cinefoil wrap (aka Black Wrap, aka shroud-of-death wrap). Made from black holes. Learn what it's used for and how to use it! It's really just thick black aluminum foil with heat protection. The easiest and cheapest lighting accessory.
Eric Jacqmain is one smart cookie. Borrowing from the same principles of Archimedes’ mythological death ray, the Indiana teenager used an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish and about 5,800 3/8" mirror tiles to create a solar weapon with the intensity of 5000x normal daylight. The powerful weapon can "melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant."
After 3,000 man hours and $100 grand spent, 49-year-old Randy Grubb of rural Oregon turned this old junker long-haul truck...
While they may make your clothes smell fresh after a cycle in the dryer, commercial dryer sheets contain many harmful and toxic chemicals that have been linked to causing cancer.
Need to bike around in cold weather to get to places? Winterize your bike by adding plastic zip ties around your tires to add more traction when you are biking through ice and snow.
Is your favorite black T-shirt starting to look a little old? To restore a faded black fabric color to its former glory, add two cups of brewed coffee or black tea to your washer's rinse cycle.
Young C. Park, retired dentist of Honolulu, Hawaii, has satisfied a life long interest in model airplanes with his meticulous, incredibly detailed models of the Corsair and P-51 Mustang. Pictured below is Young Park's Corsair.
Sometimes the simplest things yield the most fun results. This clever trick creates long, condom-esque plastic bubbles.
We were dumbfounded at first, too. But this jumping bean is momentum based, not larva powered. The erratic movement of these DIY foil toys is actually simple physics. Hint: there is a marble inside the aluminum foil. When the marble rolls internally to the foil's end, the foil-bean flips with the momentum. All this commotion mixed with some well coached hands makes for a magic jumping effect.
Michael Faraday knows how to harness static electricity. The television sends enough static electricity to the aluminum to spin the cup between the polar charged cans.
It's no secret that water and electronics don't mix well, but somehow, people always manage to combine the two. I've had my fair share of water-damaged electronics, everything from cheap headphones to a desktop computer. My devices are getting dunked in water so much, it's like doughnuts in coffee. And I know I'm not the only one. That jam session with your favorite song will end really quick when your iTouch is chilling in the toilet bowl.
If you tried visiting the Apple Store online this morning, you were probably prompted with the same notice as the one below, which lasted a good portion of the a.m. What could Apple have been doing to shut down their online store for so long?
Lying is awesome. From a very young age, children learn that flat out denying the truth gets you out of trouble and helps keep you calm in the face of horror. But what happens when you just have to know if someone, say, used your toothbrush? You could ask them to take an expensive and arduous polygraph test.
Glass is one of the least reactive substances known to chemistry. It is the standard container material for almost all lab chemicals because it's so inert. But there are a couple of substances that have strong reactions with glass. Sodium hydroxide, aka solid drain cleaner or lye, can easily be stored in glass as a solid, but when molten, it reacts violently with glass and can actually dissolve it away! So, the next time you clog up your drains with broken glass beakers and flasks, rest assur...
Scenario: it's late at night, the roads are completely empty and you are stuck at the longest light ever. Solution: don't run a red- change it to green yourself. Avoid a ticket, save yourself some time (and perhaps a little gas).
Just a couple Saturday's ago, we were blessed with the Supermoon, where the moon was at perigee with our planet, creating a larger than usual Moon for us here on Earth. Now, we've got another spectacular show in the skies coming up, only this one isn't at night. There will be an annular solar eclipse on Sunday, May 20th!
It's another Monday, which means it's once again time to highlight some of the recent community submissions posted to the Math Craft corkboard. Additionally, I thought we'd take a look at the process of stellation and make some stellated polyhedra out of paper.Rachel Mansur of Giveaway Tuesdays posted a video from animator Cyriak Harris, which zooms into fractal hands, where each fingertip also has a hand and fingers. A few more details can be found here, as well as some other really cool pic...
The rush to secure face masks and hand sanitizers in March left many Americans concerned for their safety. With an expected second wave this fall, consider stocking up on PPE now.
Is your beloved silver bracelet looking a little worn? Stick it in a bowl of tomato ketchup to remove the tarnish. The acid in the tomatoes oxidizes with tarnished silver, which helps make your silver items look newer than ever before.
After the turkey is carved and the leftover meat is refrigerated, don't get rid of the remaining carcass and bones just yet. You can make some delicious turkey stock with them. Just add them to a big pot of carrots, celery, onion, and water — then simmer.
