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Posts with tag diy

How to Turn Your Scanner Into a Grainy Camera

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 24th 2008 at 11:26AM


Here's a DIY project not for the weak-of-heart (or impatient). MAKE, a magazine completely dedicated to the art of DIY, has intriguing directions on how to turn your flat-bed scanner into a nifty camera capable of taking grainy black and white photos.

You probably have a scanner sitting around somewhere (likely untouched and collecting dust since 1999) and the magnifying glass can be had for $.99 from a local store, but we're pretty sure most of you don't have foam core on hand. Unless you're an arts and crafts fanatic ordering the foam core to create the focusing mechanism for this scanner-camera probably isn't worth while.

It's a neat project, but seeing as how you could probably create a similar effect with a digital camera and 'Photoshop' we cant imagine wasting the time and man hours to build this one-trick-pony. Check out the video above for step by step instructions. [From: MAKE, Via: GeekSugar]

Why Broken Gadgets Are Easier to Thorw Away Than Fix

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 16th 2008 at 10:15AM


Frustrated with his beloved iPhone acting up on him, Popular Mechanics writer Glenn Derene used the opportunity to write this piece on the iPhone, and the larger state of electronics today.

After struggling to coax functionality from the iPhone's buttons for months, Derene finally caved in, taking the phone to his local Apple Store's Genius Bar. The resulting tale should not be unfamiliar to any trouble-shooting Mac user, or problematic iPod owner; Derene waited for over two hours to receive no suggestion other than the one to buy a new iPhone.

Blame for this "no-fix" phenomenon can be, according to Derene, attributed to the increasingly complex and integrated electronic systems that lie within the most advanced gadgets. While a savvy, tech-minded amateur could -- with some extra time on his hands and help from Radio Shack -- fix most of yesterday's electronics, he is today confined to tossing his misbehaving gadget into the garbage. (The iPhone's backplate can't even be removed without destroying the phone).

So, after all that, what's the culprit? What was it that defeated this fine specimen of machinery? That nearly drove Derence mad? Pocket lint lodged under the buttons, of course. [From: Popular Mechanics]

How to Modify Your Scanner to Be a Camera

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 10th 2008 at 7:19PM

Thanks to GeekSugar.com, we located this video tutorial on how to convert your flatbed scanner into a camera on Make.com.

Since even inexpensive digital cameras produce pretty good pictures these days, and since you can use a scanner to accurately scan your traditional photographs, we're thinking of this project as more of a digital party trick than anything else.

And while the folks at GeekSugar refer to the scanner-camera's pictures as "vintage-y," we think they look a lot more more like first-generation, black and white digital pictures than first-generation, black and white tin types. That, of course, begs the question: How old does something have to be in order to be classified as "vintage?" Anyway, head on after the break for a more detailed writeup on how to mod your scanner to take pictures. [From Make, via GeekSugar]

Continue reading How to Modify Your Scanner to Be a Camera

DIY Guy Builds Replica Fighter Jet

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 8th 2008 at 3:33PM

Crazy Guy Builts Replica Fighter Jet
We're not exactly sure what would posses someone to build a half-sized replica of the F-35 Lightning II (AKA the Joint Strike Fighter). We're even more puzzled by the fact that this impressively accurate reproduction is actually powered, and a full sized adult can cruise around in this thing at a whopping 5 miles per hour.

The 49 year old Arthur van Poppel took 3,500 man hours to construct the model from wood, iron, foam, fiberglass, and epoxy. Poppel told the Telegraph that he had only a couple of photographs and a small-scale plastic model to work from.

If the whole thing wasn't perplexing enough, the small flourishes push the whole thing past line that separates eccentric from crazy. Its jets spray water and emit chemicals that mimic the smell of diesel engines as it moves about. It even produces fighter plane sound effects and has functioning navigation and cockpit lights. If this guy was younger he'd totally be into to LARPing. [From: Telegraph]

Gallery: Replica Jet

Man Builds Lamborghini in Basement, Then Has to Dig It Out

by Evan Shamoon, posted Nov 5th 2008 at 6:39PM



In what could just as easily be the plot of a John Hughes movie from the '80s, a man in Wisconsin named Ken Imhoff spent 17 years building a Lamborghini in his basement (he'd apparently fallen in love with it upon seeing the movie 'Cannonball Run'). Then, after he finished assembling it, he had to deal with the next challenge: namely, how to get the car out.

To sum up, he ended up hiring an excavator to dig down into the foundation of his house, at which point the car was itself pulled out with the excavator.

"I was like an expectant father watching it come through the wall," Imhoff told The Telegraph of the experience. "I was literally shaking and running the supposed plan over and over in my head. "Have I overlooked anything? Is some of the wall going to fall on my work of seventeen years?..."

With his neighbors gathered around to see what lay beneath the car's covering blanket, he says the whole experience was rather like an artist unwrapping his long-awaited masterpiece. "I had never seen it in the light of day either."

Hopefully he's still deep enough into his midlife crisis to use the thing to score a few chicks. [From: The Telegraph]

How to Send a Real Postcard (Via Regular Mail) from Your Desktop PC

by Will Safer, posted Nov 4th 2008 at 11:34AM

Cheeky monkey.

If you spend a lot of time – maybe too much time – trolling around social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, you may forget to drop the occasional line to your family and friends who aren't connected to the Internet.

Save yourself a trip to the post office with Touchnote, an English company that lets you upload images to its Web site, craft a message with clever dialog or "thought" balloons, and mail away a custom postcard anywhere in the world for only £1.99 English pounds (about $3.25) per card plus postage, which comes to about 99 cents for delivery to the U.S. Discounts on cards and postage are available if you order large batches. For those of us in the the States, delivery time is about five days, but if you're in England, your card should find its way to its recipient by the very next day. Nifty!

The image you upload can't be more than 5-megabytes (MB), and since this has to go through the regular mail, we suggest keeping the content clean. (The post office is sensitive, you know.) [From: Mashable.com]

Drilling Holes in Your Wall Could Improve Soundproofing

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 3rd 2008 at 11:33AM



Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain have found that -- remarkably -- drilling holes into a wall yields better soundproofing, Unplggd and New Scientist report.

Researchers discovered that holes with a three-millimeter diameter trapped and canceled out sound waves, which without the holes, would have penetrated the wall. Because the offending sound waves were larger than the holes, the holes effectively caught the sounds, preventing them from penetrating the wall. As a result of this sound barrage's reverberation through the holes, the wall wound up resonating so as to nullify interfering sound waves.

Unless this unusual design is full of holes (sorry, had to say it), it could be a great boon to apartment dwellers, particularly those who don't want to shell out a hundred bucks to silence their neighbors' yappy dogs. A quick cautionary note: This experiment was conducted underwater and not yet on dry land, so don't bust out your three millimeter drill bit quite yet. [From: New Scientist via Unplggd]

iPhone-Controlled LEGO Robot Pours Beer

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 28th 2008 at 5:52PM


There is something about ingenious, geeky, DIY projects that sets our hearts aflutter, especially when they involve beer.

An intrepid geek has combined Lego building bricks, the iPhone, and Pownce (a Twitter competitor), to construct an automatic, beer-pouring robot. The Lego arm monitors a Pownce RSS feed for the instruction "pour." That word triggers the robot's arm, tilts the beer bottle, and pours a frothy brew into a glass.

Of course, the contraption needs to be loaded with a beer manually and a glass must be placed in front of it before activating the machine. It's pretty cool, but not particularly useful. We'll be sticking with our RC Cooler, which doesn't pour a beer for us, but it can deliver one from across your apartment. [From: CrunchGear, Via: Textually.org]
Engadget

The DIY Coat-Hanger Laptop Stand

by Thomas Ricker, posted Oct 26th 2008 at 10:53AM


Don't let that "finished" rubiks' cube fool you. The steps too build this ergonomic laptop stand are dead simple: 1) bend hangar, b) stop bending hangar. Perhaps, therein lies the genus.

Etsy's Alchemy -- a Craigslist for Custom-Made Stuff

by Evan Shamoon, posted Sep 26th 2008 at 10:49AM



In case you've been too busy LOPDIFY (Letting Other People Do It For You), online DIY marketplace Etsy has become the go-to Web site for the artisans and craftsmen (and craftsladies) of society to sell their self-made productions. Now, the site has opened up an area they're calling Alchemy, where users can request custom-made items, and sellers bid on the opportunity to fulfill them.

The folks at Urlesque have dug up this gem:

Toilet shaped stud earring
posted 9/24/2008 , expires 10/15/2008

My mom has wanted a toilet-shaped earring to put in her cartilage (ear) piercing to signify that her ear is "in the crapper". (She is deaf in her left ear due to a surgical mishap.) Her birthday is in mid-November so I would like it to be done by the beginning of November so I can give it to her in time.
Thank you very much for your help!

No, young earring-seeker, thank you. [From: Urlesque]

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