Your attic is the most critical area of your house to be adequately insulated in order to keep you toasty warm in winter and cool as a cucumber in the summer. Since heat rises, a poorly insulated attic allows valuable heat from the living space of your house to escape during the winter. During the summer, heat trapped in your attic can reduce your ability to keep your house cool. In colder, Northern climates, an R-value of 49 is recommended for adequate attic insulation. In warmer climates, a...
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to install an air valve for a hot-water heating system.
Reduce the risk of blown fuses, blown sensors, shorted wires, and even possibly increase shift times on an automatic and possibly increase horsepower with a grounding kit! All you need is some wire, terminal ends and electrical tape or heat shrink. To make this work, all you have to do is run ground wires from essential components to a good ground area, such as the strut tower.
Surprisingly, making your very own smoke grenade is pretty easy—and cheap. All you need is a saucepan or skillet, piezoelectric lighter, sugar and some potassium nitrate (easily available online and in most gardening stores).
I recently came across this amazing MIT media lab site, Kit-of-No-Parts. Though not directly related to the content Cory has been posting, it is an interesting "craft" approach to technology/science. The site was created as documentation of a student's thesis work in the High-Low Tech research group at the MIT Media Lab:
Yesterday I had an order for one lonely Bubble Bath Cup Cake to be sent to California. The poor little thing may not make it. Temperatures are as high as 110 degrees and I am not sure this little cup cake will make it.
Ingredients2oz Dark Chocolate6oz Milk Chocolate3/4 Cup unsalted butter2 1/2 cups sugar2 teaspoons vanilla excract4 large eggs1 cup plain flour1 teaspoon salt1/2 cup chocolate chips1 to 2 table spoons of icing sugar for decorationMethodPre-heat oven to 175oCTurn on hob to a medium heatPut pan on hob and add boilling waterPut bowl over waterPut both chocolates and butter in bowl and stir until completley smoothLeave to coolAdd sugar and stirAdd vanilla and stirAdd eggsStir thoroughlyAdd salt an...
If you fancy yourself a nomad, check out Walking House, a mobile and modular dwelling system that is pneumatically powered, all-terrain ready. The vehicle-home crawls along at a snail's pace of 60 meters per hour, which equates to less than 1/2 a mile per hour. Akin in concept to the rolling house-on-the-go (except in the way cooler insect-like robot form), Walking House also boasts some cool eco-friendly features:
Forget electric cars, quit mixing your at-home biodiesel; just attach one of Dutch John's handy wood gasification contraptions to the back of your car and fuel your transportation with backyard wood chips.
In Part I, Kirsten showed you how to create templates for your applique. In this video, Part II, we'll show you how to use these templates, along with a heat-fusible sheet, to pre-cut and easily apply our applique fabric. Our apron project is completed in this video!
Simon Adams and VideoJug demonstrate how to make a Beach Peach cocktail. Made for the heat, the Beach Peach cocktail is the only essential beach companion this summer! A refreshing rum-based cocktail which highlights a delightful peach sensation. Into the cocktail shaker add the ice cubes.Then add white rum, the peach brandy, the peach juice, the lime juice and the pineapple syrup. Ensure that the lid is on firmly and shake vigorously. Fill the glass half way with crushed ice. Attach a strain...
To make your own sweetened condensed milk at home, all you need are milk, sugar, butter, and about two hours of your time.
While candy-making can seem like an intimidating task, making your own homemade Tootsie Rolls is actually surprisingly easy. For a super-easy, no heat version, you can simply gather all your ingredients, mix and knead them together until everything reaches a Play-Doh-like consistency, and cut the resulting sticky ball into bite-sized pieces.
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.
Scrambled eggs may seem like the easiest breakfast dish to whip up in the kitchen, but in order to make them truly perfect, several details in the cooking process are important to keep in mind.
Whether you live in the dorms with no access to a kitchen or simply too lazy to cook on a stovetop, you can "cook" up some amazing meals on a microwave that aren't bags of buttered popcorn or frozen burritos.
Cool cassette tape art by Atlanta based artist Brian Dettmer. From Design Boom:
Sunday morning. Don't cook at home. Been there, done that. Use the heat of the engine. Bake your meat. Put those 8 cylinders to work. Gas prices across the country average out at $2 to $2.50 a gallon, so you might as well get your money's worth.
A First Timer's Guide When some new guitarists break their first string they stash it in the closet and forget about it. Me, I put the sweaty axe back in its case and asked my parents to take me to the local music store. After a morning full of senseless racket emanating from my bedroom, my mom welcomed the drive.
If your steam radiator whistles or makes other obnoxious noises, the air vent may be clogged. Learn about the anatomy of a steam heating system and how to fix one up. Tune up a steam radiator.
Heat, moisture, dirt, static, and fragile electronics are only some of the many PC dangers that can ruin your PC. Watch this video and get some great tips on how to maintain your Personal Computer Maintain your PC.
This recipe for blueberry sauce from Blueprint magazine, March/April 2007, is the perfect addition to healthy pancakes and waffles. Place blueberries in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil; cook until thickened and syrupy. Serve with pancakes or waffles. Make blueberry topping for pancakes and waffles.
This video shows how to straighten curly, frizzy hair into soft, silky, and beautiful, shiny straight hair. Also provides tips on which straightener to choose. You will need hair straighteners, a comb, rounded brush, and heat protective serum. Use hair straighteners.
Get that salon blowout feeling at home! Follow these tips for a perfect at home blowout. Shampoo & Condition
The Fog of Will Suki = a chink in the armor, a psychological weakness. Doubt.
Remember the oh so delicious buttery popcorn you could only get at the movie theater? You can actually make popcorn that tastes this good right in your own home. All you need are the right ingredients and a little practice. Once you try this delectable snack, you will never eat microwave popcorn again.
Weather - there's no escaping it! Mother Nature can be hard on asphalt: if you live in an area where there are extreme weather changes from season to season then your asphalt will eventually become damaged. As the ground freezes and thaws there is movement that flexes the asphalt. Repeated flexing can cause weakness to occur. In many cases the first damage you will see will be cracks forming in your asphalt driveway.
This penne lasagna dish, prepared and cooked by Chef Hubert Keller, is easy to make the night before and is sure to please everyone with its rich, Italian flavors. Ingredients
Have a few light bulbs and a blowtorch? Then join the folks over at Harvard in a cool science experiment on the conductivity of glass. As you well know, glass is an insulator with low conductivity and high resistivity. In the video below, they flip the switch, demonstrating how heating the glass fuse enclosure from an incandescent light bulb can create a conductive material that completes the series circuit and lights the second light bulb. In the video, the two light sockets are wired in ser...
After a stressful day, there's nothing more relaxing than a smooth glass of straight, room temperature whiskey to help unwind. On hot days, popping a few rocks in does the trick. And on cold days, hot toddies are truly amazing.
Is dessert your deadliest vice? Try adding even more decadence to the equation—heavy, gooey chocolate with hints of crispy bacon and smokey bourbon, AKA the calorie-rich bacon bourbon brownie. Adapted from Slash Food, this after dinner treat isn't for the faint of heart.
Microsoft has had a pretty bad wrap with their Xbox 360 gaming console. Right from the start, the console has suffered a multitude of different hardware failures and design flaws. These problems cause the parts to get too hot and become faulty. I'm sure everyone who's had an Xbox 360 has gotten at least one Red Ring of Death or E74 error.
Well, Ol' Man Winter is upon us yet again, blasting us with his icy breath. When I was a kid, I loved wintertime because it meant the prospect of sledding, snowball fights & missed school days in which to enjoy both. Now that I'm 45, however, my attitude toward the season has taken a complete 180-degree turn: I find myself dreading it because of the likelihood of being snowed-in for days on end, and the certainty of being forced to endure the frigid temperatures.
Want to make your own sexy (or not) Tron costume like designer Syuzi's? All you need is a black body suit and some electroluminescent wire. The bodysuit is easy, but as for the electroluminescent wire, you'll need Adafruit for that:
I saw this on the Food Network and tried it out. We loved it. It is a great way to use leftovers and with Thanksgiving coming up, I know you'll want to try it on Thanksgiving evening while watching football. I think it was Jamie Oliver who presented it although I couldn't find it on the website. It was described as a common thing done in the UK as the evening meal after a Sunday lunch. It is great with leftover turkey, dressing, and potatoes and gravy. MethodTake the left over turkey and brea...
The art of eating leftover pizza. Some like it cold. Some even whip it up into a leftover pizza sandwich. Me, I like my pizza reheated.
You can do all kinds of unexpected things with milk, like make your own pore strips and invisible ink, or even get rid of red wine stains with it. But did you know that you can also use it to make your own glue?
This is the perfect dinner meal. Gratin. You can't go wrong with gratin, especially when it involves a little broccoli and cauliflower, so try out this video recipe for cauliflower and broccoli gratin.
Just because it says "steaks" doesn't mean there's any meat here. Unlike most dishes that call for cauliflower, this one creatively slices the cauliflower into "steak" slabs instead of the usual separated florets. You won't believe your eyes! Or your mouth! This is the perfect side dish to liven things up.
When you sauté kale, it tends to retain all of its nutritional value, whereas boiling and steaming kale will kill the vitamin-enriched goodness. So, this simple kale side dish should be in every cook's recipe box. Kale by itself has a rather bitter flavor, but when cooked in soup or even just briefly with garlic and oil, it's delicious. Harvard University's Martin Breslin shares a quick side dish that's good for you, goes with fish or meats, uses only one pan, and clean-up is a breeze. Best o...
