Category: DIY

Dealing with bike tire punctures – add a second tube

This guide at Instructables has the simple instructions needed to get a second inner tube put in your bike tire.  If you’ve ever suffered a puncture while biking far from civilization, you’ll appreciate this. My solution with my mountain bike was to buy kevlar tire liners, but this is a good method to try, as well.  With a second tube in the tire, if you get a puncture in the first tube, you just use your pump to inflate the second tube and off you go.

Pictures are included in case the write-up isn’t detailed enough.

Drill a hole in the rim of the wheel for the second valve stem at about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way around the rim from the original one. If your drill finds the going hard, start of with a small drill bit and gradually work up in size.

. . .

Things to consider – Drilling a hole in the rim will weaken it, ensure that the results of your drilling will be strong enough and avoid drilling directly opposite from the original hole creating a weakness accross the line of symetry.

[tags]Biking, Bike tire punctures[/tags]

Build your own proximity detector

(via MAKEzine blog)

proximity-detector.jpg

Come on!!!! You know you want one! Here’s my thinking on this project – build this, figure how to link it to your PC, and put up a couple around your cubicle at work. Suddenly, no one can surprise you by sneaking up to your cube because they are too short to see and detect over the wall. The Instructables guide mentions hooking it up to a sound playback device, but I think if you could hook it up via USB and write a driver to make a pop-up onscreen whenever the detector activates, you’d have a nearly perfect boss-detection-system (BDS) for work use.

[tags]MAKEzine, Proximity detector, DIY projects[/tags]

Run your own windmill

(via Engadget)

Wind Energy Goes Mainstream with New Residential Small Wind Generator

Skystream 3.7â„¢ uses new technology to help homeowners take control of skyrocketing energy costs with clean, renewable energy

FLAGSTAFF, Az., June 27 – A new small residential wind generator from Southwest Windpower will give homeowners a new weapon in the fight against rising electricity costs. Skystream 3.7™ is the first fully integrated wind generator designed specifically for the grid-connected residential market.

A combination of new technologies, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, resulted in a product that quietly produces electricity for a fraction of the cost of current technologies. Skystream’s low cost and low profile provides homeowners an affordable energy supplement that’s appropriate for installation in many residential areas around the country. With no batteries, Skystream 3.7 connects directly to the home to supply power. When the wind is not blowing, the home is powered by the electric utility. Depending on the local utility, excess electricity can be sold back to the utility or used at a later date.

Here’s your chance to save yourself some money on power bills.  According to the press release, typical payback is 5 to 12 years.  Of course, if you are thinking about getting one, you might want to check your local zoning codes before trying to set one up in the back yard.  And the company recommends at least an acre of land to install your new windmill  So those of you in major metropolitan areas might not want to buy one.  If you do get one, be sure to protect it from knights who might tilt your way.
[tags]Wind power, Windmills, Don Quixote[/tags]

MAKEzine blog link dump

Here’s a big collection of projects from MAKE that I’d love to have time to do.

Build your own phase-change cooling system

(via Hack-a-Day)

Big geek site-maintainer editor alert here, folks – I love computer fiddling. I have all the parts for a water-cooling set-up at home (no time to actually assemble, install and test it – but I have the parts if the time ever shows up). All kinds of high-end cooling get-ups tickle my fancy. I have half a dozen different kinds of CPU coolers and nearly as many video card coolers just waiting to be put to some use in some system in my house.  In my rare spare time, I sand the bases of my coolers with fine grain sandpaper just so they mount and cool better.  I spend extra money to buy high-end cooling pastes.  I do case modding.  I paint cases.  I build computers for friends because I enjoy it so much that any excuse to build works for me. So naturally, with all that geekiness in my system, I have to point out this write-up on how to build your own phase-change cooling system. Now if I can just find the time and money to buy the parts so I can put it all together.

[tags]DIY cooling, CPU cooling[/tags]

Print your own flashcards

(via Lifehacker)
Tons of downloadable/printable flashcards for all kinds of things you need or want to learn. Personally, I’m considering it these for the work on my older son’s reading skills. But I can also see some usable categories for my own study. Just look at some of the high-level categories with printable cards:

  • Early Eduction
  • Elementary School
  • Science
  • Information Technology
  • Medicine

There are a few more areas of study in addition to those above.  I do think they need to fix that spelling error in the first category though. 🙂

[tags]Flash Cards, Study helpers[/tags]

Build your own kite

(via Lifehacker)

Get out and build a kite for fun project. This is the kind of thing I need to work on with my children. They’d love having a kite, especially one they got to make themselves. Yes, I’m turning my children into geek/DIY-ers.

[tags]DIY, kite[/tags]

ReadyMade magazine food selections

Following are a few recent food items from the ReadyMade magazine blog. All of these caught my eye for various reasons. Let me just say now that I plan on making the last one with my kids some time (as in, I plan on getting my kids to help me make them, not I plan on using my kids as the ingredients necessary to make them).

  1. Vegan Twinkies – vegan_twinkies.jpg This selection comes to ReadyMade from the Vegan Lunch Box blog. Perfect for all you ingredient conscious twinkie consumers.
  2. DIY Girl Scout cookies – The ReadyMade folks link to a knock-off of the well-known Girl Scout Thin Mints. These are my wife’s favorites. I figure I should make some for her.
  3. Spicy Hot Cinnamon Marshmallows – cinnamon_marshmallows.jpg This is the one I need to make for my kids. Of course, since I work nights, my wife might not appreciate me making some on the week-end with the boys and then leaving her to hold the children off the marshmallows during the week. And I am certain they don’t need more sugar in their systems after she gets home from school with them.

Build your own hovercraft

(via MAKEzine blog)

Parts list, instructions, build motivation, blueprints, and loads of pictures to guide you at the builder’s site.  Even some guidance on mistakes to avoid if you decide to build your own/

So I you are planning a project like this here are a few tips so you do not make the same mistakes I make:

  1. Use more powerful motors or motor if you build a single engine craft
  2. Get already made fans do not try to build you own
  3. Use light components, this is the most important it has to be a light as possible
  4. If you do not know what you are doing, get some plans off the internet, try Universal Hovercraft they have got some good stuff

[tags]DIY, hovercraft[/tags]