Even if you live in a big city, chances are you have some wild raccoons or foxes that cannot abide a vertical trash barrel. While apparently omnipresent, these phantasmic critters usually vanish in the night leaving only a shameless trail of refuse you never wanted to see ever again. While I haven't found a way to stop them, I can help you snap some photos of the dastardly creatures.
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...
Spring has sprung, which means it's time to plant all those delicious vegetables and lucrative cash crops. If you are like me, every year you meticulously plan every aspect of your garden before dutifully neglecting it all summer. I decided enough was enough and built this simple automatic watering system.
There is nothing more annoying than a greedy roommate. It's absolutely infuriating to wake up and find the cookies your mother just made for you gone without a trace. Your favorite drink is empty and the homemade meal you worked so hard on the night before is nowhere to be found. This irked me so much that I made this shocking cookie jar. When a cookie burglar touches the side and the lid of the jar simultaneously, a small electric shock stops them in their tracks.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Have you ever fallen victim to a redstone trap? Well, this week's Saturday workshop will give you the confidence you need in order to make your own! This workshop will be centered around creating a suffocation trap with an extra added surprise.
I have to say, the Xbox 360 controller is the best controller ever created. When I first held it back in 2005, I swore that the dudes working at Microsoft came over and took a molding of my hands because of how great it felt. The thing felt like it was born there.
Your BIOS, or Basic Input Output System, is the firmware on your motherboard responsible for initializing your computer's hardware when it is first powered on. It probes for video adapters, RAM, the whole works. The BIOS provides a small library of basic input/output functions used to operate and control the peripherals such as the keyboard, text display functions and so forth, and these software library functions are callable by external software such as the OS and system software within sai...
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server.
There are many impressive accomplishments in Minecraft, too many to name in fact. Sprawling builds, complex machines, and massive servers are the hallmark of Minecraft and things keep getting bigger and better. No one doubts the epic scale Minecraft has reached, but every once in a while something grand comes along that sets a new benchmark in awesomeness. By far the most recent step in this long line of big ideas was an innovation pushed forward by YouTube user Kimundi2. The premise of this ...
Earlier this month, game developer David Braben and his Rasberry Pi nonprofit foundation revealed a $25 USB PC. The computer can connect to an HDMI monitor on one end, and a USB peripheral on the other (such as a keyboard or a USB hub). You can use the USB hub to connect multiple items, such as a keyboard, mouse, printer, USB ethernet/wireless, creating a fully functional computer.
Video games and art have somewhat of a sticky relationship. Many video games have large teams of talented artists doing amazingly creative work, and yet the art community is only just beginning to utilize video games as art (sometimes). Perhaps if video games were shown not just as a medium of expression, but as a means of creating great art as well, the art community would be forced to consider it differently. The third part in the Hacked Kinect series will focus on the artistic possibilitie...
Though it's unlikely you'll ever have a need for hostage survival skills, it never hurts to take in a few tips on what to do in the event of being accosted by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. Wired has tracked down a HowTo guide that addresses such a scenario. Though most of the advice is fairly general, one important point addresses the dangers of lighting up with the enemy:
Wired posts a gallery of the original models of now iconic devices, with some fun tech-fetish facts. Did you know the first cell phone weighed a whopping 4.4 pounds? Or that the world's first super soaker was invented completely by accident? Examples below; click through for Wired's complete gallery.
The forefront of bike technology has delivered bikes without hubs, bikes as flexible as Gumby, and invisible steering. The latest to enter the field rethinks the bicycle chain. As in... who needs it?
Researchers Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama (of Harvard University and University of Tokyo) have constructed a tiny replica of the swallowtail butterfly. The crudely made model uses just balsa wood, rubber bands, and a steel wire crank. The goal is to better understand the biomechanics of butterfly flight. Via Wired,
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.
Sturdier than sewing thread and far less cumbersome than metal wire, dental floss has an amazing multitude of practical uses that can be used for baking, cooking, interior decorating, and more.
In this Electronics video tutorial you will learn how to make a laser pen from a DVD burner. Take a DVD burner, remove all the screws from the bottom panel and remove the panel. Then remove the rest of the body cover as shown in the video. After this the laser will be revealed. Now remove all the screws around the wires and lift up the laser assembly. Undo all the screws on the laser assembly and remove the unit containing the laser diode. Now cut around the unit with a hack saw to get the di...
In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to set and encrypt a NET-Gear router with WEP password protection. Begin by opening your web browser and go to the router website: Router Login.. When the Prompt window appears, type in your router user name and password, and click OK. In the sidebar, under Setup, click on Wireless Settings. Once again, type in your user name and password, and click OK. In the Security Options, check WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Then select the Pass-phrase box, typ...
Worried about your dog figuring out how to jump over your fence? In this video tutorial from Ron Hazleton, learn about the "invisible" dog fence some are installing which keep a pooch away with electrical signals. It's underground, out of sight, and actually works! Within this video, learn how to trench, cross pavement, wire the equipment, and test this invisible electrical doggie fence.
This video demonstrates how to hang things on hollow walls. From the people who brought you the Dummies instructional book series, brings you the same non-intimidating guides in video form. Watch this video tutorial to learn how to hang things on hollow walls, For Dummies.
In this 3D software tutorial you will learn how to model a chair parametrically in 3ds Max. This tutorial covers making a simple parametric chair with using editable poly modifier and wire parameters in 3D Studio Max. If you are not good at modeling with modifiers in 3ds Max, this is a great tutorial to start learning with. The video is best viewed full screen. Model a parametric chair in 3ds Max.
Plaster walls, although popular homebuilding materials, are notoriously easy to damage. Door handles, elbows and moving furniture are all great at putting holes in plasterboard walls, holes which, thankfully, only take an hour or so to patch up. Stumped as to how to do it? Watch this video tutorial to learn how to repair these holes on your wall.
A sink full of slow draining water, or even worse, no drainage at all, is a sure sign of blocked pipes. Blockages are due to all those scraps of food and crumbs that get down the plug hole everyday. Yuck. Watch this video tutorial to learn how to unblock a sink. You will need a good sink plunger, an adjustable wrench, a bucket, a strong wire, gloves and some disinfectant to finish up. Unblock a sink.
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to replace a pane of glass in a door. Steps:
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to install a stand-by generator. Steps:
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to choose a carbon monoxide detector. Steps:
All you've got to do is a some simple wiring and a little digging in the garden.
In this video watch Michael Zbyszynksi, explain how to make carrot caviar in this video. He starts with a beaker of ordinary carrot juice mixed with sodium alginate -- a derivative of seaweed -- at a ratio of 2 grams of sodium alginate to 250 grams of carrot juice (a 0.8 percent solution). He then uses a syringe to drop small beads of the solution into a bath of water with a couple grams of calcium chloride dissolved in it. The calcium chloride hardens the sodium alginate from the outside in,...
Some think of Google as the ultimate Big Brother, and with good reason. If you use Google (and most of us do), Google potentially has your email history, your complete search history, your travel routes, your interests, and more. Maybe they've even snapped a picture of you out in the real world (via Google Street View).
By trial and error, I have found a good way to remove the door panel from a 2002 Ford Explorer (and other similar years).
Thank you to everyone who entered the photo contest for a chance to win a cool lucid dreaming goggles kit from Mad Science. This month's winner was Cerek, who submitted this great camera shutter release project photo:
If your bicycle's feeling a little dull these days, then give it some personality! Using the crafty ideas below, you can transform your two-wheeler in a unique work of mobile art that will have everyone jealous.
This article is dedicated to sugarcane, because we all want more sugarcane in Minecraft. The best way to generate sugar cane is with an automatic reed farm that uses pistons and redstone. The pistons push the canes into the water canal you'll build, then delivers them to the collection point at the end of the canal.
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.
What started off as a meme, has turned into a near reality. When the E3 trailer for Battlefield 3 was released this summer, it started off with a soldier holding up a dinosaur statue. Obviously, this means that DICE (the developers) should release a DLC pack where you're fighting dinosaurs. This is the next best thing, I guess. DICE, if you're listening, I've got loads of ideas for the dinosaur DLC.
Congratulations to Bryan Kiguchi for Dreaming Little Bird, our winning shot of the Phone Snap Double Exposure Challenge!
Sometimes entrepreneurial inspiration comes from the oddest of places— such as, say, down-and-out crack dealer delivery methods. Inspired by HBO's The Wire, Kathleen and Clem of Fat Cookies are attracting a crowd with an atypical model for vending baked goods: oven fresh cookies are lowered via string in exchange for one hoisted dollar (1. pull a string, 2. attach a dollar, 3. get a cookie).
ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2009) — Learning to juggle leads to changes in the white matter of the brain, an Oxford University study has shown.
Budget Hack's cheap Wifi range extender works off of the age old concept of adding tin foil to your TV's rabbit ears. The materials are cheap, and the project is relatively easy (if you're willing to pick up some soldering skills).
