Plastic Indication Search Results

How To: Upgrade Your Car's Digital Clock with a Dash-Mounted iPod Nano

Have an older car with nowhere to plug in your iPod? Rather than paying to have one installed, you can mount your iPod nano on your car's dash like Redditor hyeinkali did in his 2001 Honda Accord. Normally, there's just a boring digital clock between the air vents, but it's perfectly suited for a nano-mod. This is a great hack if you plan on getting one of the new nanos or iPod touches, because it gives you a chance to get some more use out of your old nano and its old school 30-pin connector...

News: The 'Electri-City' Tables by Ben Yates

I have an interest in using recycled materials in sculptures, particularly circuit boards and other wasted electronic and mechanical components with which I put together sprawling cities lit with fairy lights. These cityscapes can conjure an image of a parallel society built from what we throw away. Utopian or dystopian, the ‘Electri-Cities’ remain a feast for the eyes and the mind. What makes them particularly intriguing is the population of tiny model railway people—they bring a host of nev...

How To: Don't Smoke? Turn Your Car's Ashtray into a DIY Smartphone Dock

If you don't smoke, your car's ashtray is probably either unused or, if you're like me, full of loose change. And if your car is older, unless you've installed one, it probably doesn't have a place for you to plug in your phone. This quick hack by Jalopnik's Jason Torchinsky will solve both of those problems by turning your ashtray into a simple DIY smartphone dock that will charge your phone and let you play music through your car's speakers. After removing and cleaning the ashtray, Jason to...

DIY Portable Power Pack: Turn Your Backpack into a Solar-Powered Gadget Charger

A smartphone is pretty much useless with a dead battery. When you're out and about, it can be hard to find a place to plug in (if you remembered your charger, that is). But this DIY solar panel backpack made by electrical engineer Theodore Protasiewicz will help you use the scorching sun to your advantage and make sure that your gadgets are always ready to go. Theodore started with just a normal backpack, some solar panels, 18 gauge wire, and a USB port and hacked it into a traveling solar ch...

News: World's Greatest Bento - Plastic Japanese Meal

Anna The Red is the greatest Bento artist I have come across on the web. She's so highly regarded she even did an ad for Google. Check it out: For those of you who don't know, Bento is a "single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine". When bento is arranged in an elaborate style (such as people, animals, characters, plants, etc.) it is referred to as kyaraben or charaben (a shortened version of character bento).

News: Expanding fun!!!

Pour expanding foam in the sun roof of Bam's Hummer and he will never drive it again or you could line the car with plastic so you could get it out. Keep in mind that even with the plastic it will break out all the windows and maybe the windshield. It's expands really fast so you have to be quick. Your best bet would be to mix four 5gal buckets at once. The faster you mix it and the hotter it is outside the faster it will expand. Also there is several types of this foam some of it is weak and...

How To: Make the dessert tiramisù

Tiramisù is a great Italian dessert that everyone can enjoy. Traditionally, it consists of layers of sponge cake soaked in coffee and brandy or liqueur, with powdered chocolate and mascarpone cheese, but it doesn't always have to be made that way, but it almost always is, just like in this recipe.

How To: Customize Your Business Cards

When we speak of business cards, the first thing that comes into our minds is a white piece of paper with contact information. This is the traditional design – it’s safe and you can never go wrong. But in these contemporary days, the key to getting the market is by grabbing attention. So why settle for safe? Make custom business cards and start getting noticed.

How To: Fish a swimbait lure to catch quality bass

If you're targeting big bass during the summertime, the best bait to use is a swimbait lure. You may know that they don't give you tons of bites, but in this case, quality is the key. The best bass you'll eve catch will come off this swimbait lure. This is why swimbaits are favorites with anglers who have the confidence to continue casting them in search of lunkers. Wade Bourne of MyOutdoorTV shows you how to fish a swimbait lure.

How To: This DIY Soft-Circuit Military Tech Lets You Power Electronics Using Your Clothes

It turns out that the popularity of soft circuit electronics has leaked out of the interwebs and into the hands of the U.S. military. Soft circuit electronics allow you to literally sew electronics circuits into fabric using flexible conductive thread instead of wire. Soft circuits can be used for all sorts of fun projects, like the TV-B-Gone Hoodie and the Heartbeat Headband.

Master the Power: How to Make Fluorescent Tubes Glow with Your Bare Hands

I'm sure most everyone has some kind of fluorescent light source in their home; those long white tubes that emit a bright white light when turned on, or maybe a few of the CFL power-saver bulbs. These bulbs actually require very little "power" (i.e. a high voltage:almost no current ratio) to emit light. In fact, static electricity is enough to make them flicker. Inside these tubes is a gas, and when electricity flows through that gas, it gets "excited" and produces light.

News: Math Craft Inspiration of the Week: Electrically Generated Fractal Branching Patterns

Natural processes often create objects that have a fractal quality. Fractal branching patterns occur in plants, blood vessel networks, rivers, fault lines, and in several electrical phenomena. Many of these processes take lifetimes, or even occur on geological timescales. But this is not the case for electrical phenomena. They often occur near instantaneously. One example would be the branching patterns that sometimes occur in lightning.

News: The Perfect Hack for Enabling NFC Credit Card Payments on Your iPhone 4

Remember the good ol' days when you actually had to swipe your credit or debit card to make a payment at the store? Now all it takes is a flick of the wrist to purchase goods with your card, thanks to RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology from Chase (blink), Visa (payWave) and MasterCard (PayPass). But soon "contactless" payments will be made by an entirely different beast—NFC, which stands for near field communication.

News: The N7 Rifle from Mass Effect 3 Replicated in Extreme Detail

There's still about eight months before the final chapter in the Mass Effect series comes out, but some trigger happy fans are already building replica costumes and prop weapons to celebrate the upcoming release. BioWare themselves recently commissioned some of these projects, which were shown at their booth at Comic-Con 2011 a couple weeks ago in San Diego. One of these projects was the armor that turian Garrus Vakarian sports in Mass Effect 3, by Kommissar Props. But even more impressive wa...

How To: Easy DSLR Project—Get Unfocused!

(Difficulty Level: from Newby to Expert) Digital cameras can produce freaky sharp images—it’s one thing that sets them apart from film cameras. A DSLR doesn’t have grain, it has noise—and that sounds a lot less charming for a reason. If you shoot at a low ISO, high f-stop and fast shutter speed, you can wind up with a super sharp image that might look great even on a billboard. But sometimes, sharp isn’t everything.

Inventables: A Store for Superheroes & Hackers

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: