Pickles are one of those rare foods that most people love, but never even think of making. Most home cooks shy away from making pickles because they take time and patience, and because the grocery store option is both cheap and delicious.
Not many people use film cameras anymore, so it can be hard to find the materials to develop your own photos at home since most local camera stores are closing. But it's actually relatively easy to make homemade developer, and you can make it with a few relatively common ingredients.
Walking the streets at night can be uncomfortably dangerous. In 2010, there were 32,885 motor vehicle deaths in the United States. Of those, roughly 13%, or 4,280, were pedestrians. Two-thirds of those pedestrian deaths occurred at nighttime. Along with darkness, drivers also have to deal with rain and other harsh weather conditions. Combined, all of these factors can be very dangerous for anyone taking a walk at night. As it happens, pedestrian deaths are on the rise since 2009.
In the Harry Potter world, there was a character by the name of Beedle the Bard, who told a story about witnessing the three Peverell brothers building a bridge out of magic and successfully crossing a very dangerous river that had claimed many lives.
You may or may not care about this, but sometimes it physically upsets me when I see gears stuck together haphazardly, with no concern for whether their teeth interlock. I mean, what do you do with non-interlocking gears?
Here's how to build a sexy looking water-fuel generator that will convert your tap water into an extremely powerful, clean burning gas!
With how quickly technology evolves in this day and age, it's only natural that people replace their computers every couple years—even sooner. It seems that right when you get a new desktop, there's always a faster model with more features released the following week.
What's a penny worth these days? Not much. But could there be some free energy hidden inside your spare pennies? You'd be surprised! See how I hack together stacks of pennies into makeshift batteries that can drive small-current devices like LEDs and calculators.
Everyone has a junk drawer in their kitchen. It's like an unspoken rule. The junk drawer is full of all the strange bits of what not that accumulates in your home over time. Everything in there is useful, and you never want to throw any of it away for fear that you might need something in there one rainy day.
Omniscience is not required to make some really cool shit happen. Yes, it took a while, but we can make fuel from the Sun! Solar panels are basically our answer to God. And now that we can make solar electricity, finding the most efficient way to harvest it is tricky.
Isn't laundry day the worst? You have to pack all your dirty, stinky clothes into a laundry bin. Then, you have to lug the often-times heavy bin all the way to wherever it is you have to do clothes. If you have a big family, like I do, then you might even have more than one bin.
Breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar gets a lot more difficult when the whole thing weighs 13 pounds.
No one ever wants to experience pain, whether it's as small as a stubbed toe or as great as recovering from surgery. Yet so much of our lives causes pain, lasting or brief in its form. With a few mental tricks and unusual home remedies, you can relieve some of the most common aches and ailments that arise painlessly.
When I was younger, my family would go to fancy restaurants and I would invariably order a Shirley Temple. (Ironically, the real Shirley Temple actually didn't like it much.) But it's hard to really find anything offensive in this kiddie cocktail: It's ginger ale with a splash of grenadine. There's also the less famous Roy Rogers, which is Coca-Cola with grenadine. The grenadine, red and sumptuous, always made its drinks look and taste much cooler.
This summer's going to be a hot one, so skip the water pistol this year and break out the big guns! In this project, I'll be showing you how to build a water balloon shotgun—a high-powered water balloon launcher that's capable of firing 17 water balloons at the same time!
For those who don't know, LEGO recently came out with a new line called Monster Fighters. This set is about fighting monsters, sure, but it's about fighting classic monsters in a Steampunk universe. Just look at this promotional picture from the LEGO site: That LEGO dude (properly called a minifig) is wearing a vest, pocket watch, bowler hat, and a mean smirk. Not to mention that he has a robotic leg. You won't find the word "steampunk" anywhere in this marketing campaign, but I call Steampun...
In my days as a hardware tech, I often came across motivated do-it-yourselfers who watched a video or two on how to repair a phone and thought that they'd give it a go. More often than not, they failed miserably and damaged their phones (and wallets) even more in the process.
When it comes to your baby and your time, nothing but the best and most efficient will do. These high standards carry through every aspect of your life as a new parent, from diapers to strollers and especially to food.
Alcohol is a marvelous thing. It might even be responsible for saving civilization. And we're always fans of hacking our booze intake, whether it's learning how to drink all night long without getting drunk or how to discreetly get your drink on without anyone knowing.
Sewing your own cosplay costume requires a massive investment of time, energy, and sewing skills. Before you get started, you should watch all of this three-part video tutorial on sewing cosplay costumes. It covers everything from buying fabric to the actual sewing and everything in between, and should have you ready for you next anime convention in no time.
Silent Hill might be the single scariest game of all time, and it has spawned many sequels and films of wide-ranging quality. If you like the games and want to cosplay as one of the sexy yet demonic nurses from Silent Hill 1 and the film, this video will teach you everything you need to know, from what fabric to get to the pattern and how to put it all together.
Most people who are really serious about rocketry prefer solid-fueled rockets, but if your passion is for water rockets, then this video should help you with your advanced eater rocket project. It will show you how to construct and troubleshoot a 9mm Gardena nozzle to control water flow that costs much less than a storebought one.
If you consider yourself a "laser" man, then you probably know all about front-surface mirrors. But do you know how to make an FS mirror? This video from AP Digital light will show you how to make cheap first surface mirrors.
If you're tired of the standard themes on your iPhone or iPod and would like to change them without jailbreaking your phone then check out this video to see how to do it. You'l be using an app called DIY themes to make any theme you want!
The Segway is one of the oddest inventions of the last decade, but they've captured the imaginations of many. If you don't have $5000 to spend on one, but have $4000 and some heavy robotics skills, watch this video. It will teach you how to build your own DIY self-balancing Segway-style scooter, in either steampunk wooden barstool form or a more modern bicycle-handled model.
Master Chief, the star of the Halo franchise before it's most recent iterations, is one of the most recognizable and beloved protagonists in gaming history, and that's without players ever actually seeing his body through his inconic and intimidating armor. If you want to dress up as Master Chief for a Halloween costume, film, or other purpose, watch this video to learn how to make your own DIY Master Chief armor for cheap.
IF you don't mind carrying a small table-like protrusion around all night on Halloween, we've got the Halloween costume for you. In this video you'll learn how to make an easy DIY Head for Dinner Halloween costume that will shock and amaze.
Perspex is a durable and fashionable material, so getting tables like this made of it at the stores is expensive. If you've got some tools and wide DIY streak though, you can make one yourself with about 8 hours of time and this video, which will teach you just how to do it.
We all know the G-spot as that sensitive area that drives women crazy, but for auto enthusiasts, it has a whole new meaning. The G-Spot, designed by Daniel Davies, is a vehicle immobilizer, which keeps your vehicles safe from car thieves. And you don't need to pay a huge amount of money to get one, either! You can make on yourself, right at home, provided you have all the right materials.
If you need a dolly for your movie masterpiece, you don't need to go with a professional dolly system. You can save that money for your expensive actors and actresses by building your own DIY camera dolly on the cheap. You'll need some nuts and bolts, PVC pipes, scrap wood, drill bits and a drill, inline wheels and a hammer. This homemade camera dolly will cost you around 65 bucks.
If you know what a cam slider is, you know you want one. But camera sliders can be pretty pricey, so that's when it's time to resort to DIY techniques. In this video, see how to build your own pro-slider. It's super easy and only takes ten minutes to make!
This simple how-to from Buildpedia shows every DIYer how to "sweat pipe", meaning, how to solder it together. This is a simple technique that's easy to get the hang of. You'll need a solder kit, the pipes want to solder, an aceteline torch and a few other things.
Glass normally doesn't conduct electricity, but there are all sorts of cosmetic and industrial applications for conductive glass. There are easy and hard ways to make it. This video will show you one so easy you can do it at home with only four ingredients: glass, Stannous Chloride, toothpaste, and alcohol.
The seals in your car had best all be functioning properly if you expect your car to work right. To test the ones in your engine cylinders you'll need an automotive cylinder lead down tester, and if you don't want to buy one, you're in luck because this video contains easy-to-follow instructions on how to make one in your garage.
Plexiglass is great for all sorts of projects, but it is notoriously hard to work with at home. If you've got a plexiglass project in mind though and need an easy, cheap way to bend it, watch this video. It will teach you how to make a tool out of part of a blowdryer that will help you bend plexiglass into whatever form you want.
The phase-shift oscillator is one of the most common electronic parts, used in all sorts of mostly noise-making devices. If you like electrical engineering and new a new project, watch this video to learn how to make a phase-shift oscillator out of a single transistor, resistors, and capacitors.
If you are the proud owner of a laser cutter, you had better be careful with your expensive new toy. Some materials can damage the optics in your laser or produce poisonous gas when you cut them, so you need to make a gas containment chamber to work in. Watch this video to find out how to do that out of silicon wafer, silicone sealant, and a metal cookie tin lid.
Nitrogen Triiodide is a very powerful contact explosive, but like most fun chemicals is not readily available to the general public cheaply. If you want some and have some chemistry skills, watch this video to learn how to make Nitrogen Triiodide at home out of household ammonia and water purification iodine crystals.
Don't worry ladies, you can make an easy costume that is both scary and sexy this Halloween, and this video will show you how to do it. It contains detailed instructions for doing the makeup and costume for a sexy female mad scientist. MUWAHAHA!
Tony is not the most well-known of Die Hard characters. He's the guy who McClane writes, "Now I have a machine gun ho-ho-ho" across the sweater of and leaves for Hans Gruber to find. He makes a good, quick, conversation-starting Halloween costume, and this video will show you how to make a Tony costume yourself out of a sweatshirt and other basic materials.