Feral Gifter

Get Your Hands Dirty: 100 Killer Tutorial DIY Websites

Read the list on Free Geekery

Do you yearn for self-sufficiency? Is your time and talent larger than your bank account? Then the following sites will appeal to you, as we’ve gathered some of the best and some of the most eclectic do-it-yourself sites and tutorials on the Web for your convenience. The first category contains general DIY network sites that help you learn about any project under the sun. From there, you can learn more about anything from how to raise goats to how to wire your house for sound. In between, you can revel in the fact that you save money when you tackle parenting and herbal remedies on your own.

Good Blogging Tool for Wordpress

Found on addons.mozilla.org

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) 1.4.0.1

by Christopher Finke, Performancing

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

Works with:

• Firefox: 1.5 – 2.0.0.*

Install Now

3D Printers to Dip Below $5,000 USD This Year

Found on DailyTech

Desktop Factory to introduce 3D printer for $4,995 USD

3D printers have been around for industrial use roughly a decade, but they have been matched with outrageous price tags. The first models to hit the market were priced at about the same as a fully loaded Mercedes S-Class, while models today can be bought for about the price of a Honda Civic. The price erosion is expected to continue in the next few years with prices dropping below $5,000 USD by the end of 2007.

3D printers are already in use by doctors, dentists, architects and even the U.S. military. The high price tags of existing 3D printers may have not been a turn-off for the aforementioned group, but was completely out of reach for consumers.

Desktop Factory — a company founded by IdeaLab –  is aiming to bring to market a consumer-oriented 3D printer this year for $4,995 USD while the cost of materials is expected to be $0.50 per cubic inch. “We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” said IdeaLab chairman Bill Gross.

The Desktop Factory 3D will build models layer by layer from bottom to top. The models are constructed using nylon which is mixed with aluminum and glass and then hardened by heat. The Desktop Factory 3D printer will measure 25″ x 20″ x 20″ and weighs less than 90 pounds. It can build 3D models up to 5″ x 5″ x 5″ constructed of layers 0.010″ thick.

“In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home,” Cornell University Professor Hod Lipson. “You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?”

The possibilities are endless for the consumer according to Desktop Factory director of sales Joe Shenberger. “You could go to Mattel.com, download Barbie, scan your Mom’s head, slap the head on Barbie and print it out,” said Shenberger. “You could have a true custom one-off toy.”

“When laser printers cost more than $5,000, nobody knew they needed desktop publishing,” added A. Michael Berman, CTO for Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. “The market for 3-D printing isn’t as big as for laser printers, but I do believe it is huge.”

Images courtesy The New York Times

Print Electronic Circuits with HP Printer

Found on DIY Live

Here is a cool DIY that will let you print from your HP printer onto a circuit board.

“A desktop printer loaded with a silver salt solution
and vitamin C has been used to produce electronic circuits. The UK
researchers behind the feat say their experimental device could pave
the way for safer and cheaper electronics manufacturing. PhD student
Seyed Bidoki loaded a standard Hewlett Packard ink-jet printer with a
solution of metal salts and water. After a pattern is printed using the
solution, a chemical known as a reducing agent is then printed over the
top to make solid silver form.”

[Link][via]

Add GPS data to your Nikon DSLR

Found on DIY Live Too bad I have a Sony!

Well apparently some Nikon digital SLR camera have a data transfer
cable that will allow data to be input into the camera, and maybe even
recorded in the EXIF data of the images. It also appears that this data
cable operates on the standard RS-232 serial algorithm. A cable of this
nature can be made using a Max-232 chip (or a RS-232 receiver chip), and connected to a PC. Instructions on how to do this for the Nikon F-100 can be found here.

Now all of this is just a little background work to make this DIY
project make a little more sense. I was a little confused after reading
the article because a lot of the necessary information was not there.
This little hack takes a standard Garmin etrex gps, which outputs the
GPS coordinates, and stores it in the data file of the picture. Now,
you will know the exact location of where each picture was taken. I am
sure you could then incorporate this into Google Earth, or do whatever
you want with it.

Above you see the schematic used in this device. Click on the pic to go to the original.

This page describes the steps I went through in
my project to connect a Garmin eTrex Summit GPS device to a Nikon D200
camera body in order to record location information in the EXIF data of
images captured using the setup. While this procedure worked fine for
me, I do not take any responsibility for you or your equipment should
you try this yourself.

You can read more about this cool project here.

[via]
Too bad I have a Canon!

DIY Scanner Desklamp

Found on DIY Live

Got an old scanner that you don’t know what to do with? Well, you could always remove the scanner bulb and turn it into a custom built desklamp. Joe sent me this DIY project that he wrote on instructables. He simply tore apart his scanner, and used some pvc pipe for the base. He is using a variable power supply to output 12vdc. That is something important to note on his project. Be careful not to connect his AC cord to 120vac. Or you will have the magic blue smoke, and my hurt yourself.

This instructable shows you how to make a desk lamp out of scrounged scanner parts and a few extras from Home Depot.

I have set up a small solar array, controller and a storage battery. I wanted to make some low power lighting that I can use in my office that would not consume a lot of power.

I had a bunch of scanner parts lying around and decided to put them to good use.

New Version of XAMPP

Found on apache friends

New Linux, Windows and Mac OS X versions of XAMPP

The first XAMPP release of 2007.

Updated in all three XAMPP versions: Apache 2.2.4, PHP 5.2.1, PHP 4.4.5, MySQL 5.0.33 and phpMyAdmin 2.9.2.

Get the downloads and more details on the specific XAMPP project page.

 [Oswald - February, 19th 2007]

CSA issues tips for using gas-fired turkey fryers

Read the rest on Yahoo! Finance.

CLEVELAND, OH, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire/ - For many Americans, autumn is synonymous with football, tailgate parties, and holiday meals consisting of turkey and all the trimmings. During Thanksgiving alone, more than 46 million turkeys are served in the U.S. and increasingly, the southern tradition of deep frying turkeys using outdoor cookers is gaining in popularity. Before attempting to master this culinary cooking method, users should be aware that use of outdoor gas appliances to prepare these crispy birds could also pose certain risks and may result in fire or injury.

CSA International, America’s leading certification and testing provider for gas-fired products, offers users of turkey fryers the following tips to help ensure their Fall season and Thanksgiving is a happy, hearty and healthy one:

CSA International can be found online
at www.csa-international.org.

DIY Live 1 yr old

Happy Birthday DIY!

Filed under: Logs — Greg Lipscomb @ 8:05 am

DIY How-to

ReadyMade Blog » Blog Archive » DIY How-to

wikiHow
is a collaborative project to build the world’s largest how-to manual.
It contains articles written, edited, and maintained primarily by
volunteers. You can join and ad how-to instructions of your own. Some
articles that caught my eye: how to taste dark chocolate, how to carve a coconut, how to dress Emo for girls, how to make invisible ink with baking soda and how to change a mortise lock cylinder.