You may not be familiar with the company Tronical but you will know their work because they are responsible for Gibson’s Robot Guitar tuning systems. Well judging by this video it appears that Tronical are about to launch some standalone systems that can be retrofit to pretty much any guitar be it a Les Paul [...]
Category: Projects
Top 5 DIY iPhone Stands
You’ve already forked out plenty for your iPhone or iPod touch, so why tax your wallet further by buying an expensive stand?
Whether you want to save money, keep your personal drain on the planet’s resources to a minimum, or are looking for a quick-fix solution at your desk, we’ve found five fantastic iPhone stand designs that require no more than everyday objects — and some MacGyver-style skills.
Have a look-see below at our homemade docks, then have a go at making your own and let us know the results in the comments box below!
1. The Paper Clip Stand
What you’ll need:
Overview:
This solution utilizes a large paper clip, cunningly straightened and then twisted to make an impromptu stand for your iDevice. Depending on how strong you are, you might need pliers to help manipulate the clip, but the principle is pretty darn simple — and pretty darn effective. Mods include wrapping a rubber band around the ‘legs’ to aid stability.
In the immortal words of MacGyver himself: ‘A paperclip can be a wondrous thing. More times than I can remember, one of these has gotten me out of a tight spot.’
MacGyver Rating: 5/5
2. The Cassette Case Stand
What you’ll need:
Overview:
We love that this takes (almost) obsolete tech and upcycles it into a useful object. You can use either a cassette case from an old camcorder tape, or an old audio tape (which, if you’re of a certain age, you’ve almost certainly got lying around at home).
Put the tape and the cardboard sleeve to one side, open the case, flip it around, and — presto! — a minimalist desk stand. To make it a super-stable solution in landscape, you might want to use a file to make a nice neat groove for the iPhone to better sit in.
This really works for us as an easy way to keep our iPhone out of calamity’s way on a desk surface.
MacGyver Rating: 4/5
3. The Pencil Stand
What you’ll need:
Overview:
This easel-esque stand can be created from five pencils and several rubber bands. It will require some dexterity to get the pencils in the right place, as you use the bands to hold it all together, and then a little more to get it to stand up straight. However, it is a strikingly simple design once made, and can be collapsed down to nothing again, should the occasion require.
Although this requires the most stuff to actually make, the Boy Scout-style binding process keeps it firmly in MacGyver territory.
MacGyver Rating: 4/5
4. The Sticky Tape Stand
What you’ll need:
Overview:
Perfect for those ‘I just want to catch ten minutes of [insert favorite show] while I eat lunch at my desk’ moments, this devilishly simple solution requires only a roll of sticky tape to work. Simply stick a bit of tape to the back of your iPhone or iPod touch — and voila! — your iBuddy is propped up at a nice angle while you consume both your lunch and choice of video-based media.
It’s not quite duct tape, but damn!
MacGyver Rating: 5/5
5. The Paper Stand
What you’ll need:
Overview:
The instructions call for the use of at least a 270 gsm paper or card stock, so assuming you have that, simply print out the template (available for both A4 and U.S. letter size paper), cut, fold, and faster than you can say ‘origami,’ you’ve got yourself a new dock.
And this one really is a dock (rather than just stand), as it includes space for the iPhone’s cord underneath. We would suggest that anyone not old enough to have a Facebook account should find a responsible adult to take care of the craft knife elements.
(Via Mashable!.)
How To Create Stunning Presentations Using Text Images
I guess it’s true that there’s a first time for everything. After years of watching people doing presentations, I finally got to create my own.
I wanted my first time to be special, so I tried to find ways to make sure that mine was not going to be ‘just another boring presentation’. I noticed that most people paid too much attention to data and sacrificed the appearance. On the other hand, there are others who create a presentation that is too ‘flashy’ which distracts the audience from the real content.
The perfect combination would be to use related beautiful images to complement the content of the presentation. Then your audience can digest your content without getting bored.
Creating The Perfect Images
There are many ways to acquire perfect images that go along with the content of your presentation. You can create your own, or find and use somebody else’s.
If you are a good photographer with lots of stock photos, then the first option would not be a problem. But for those whose image capturing skills are below par, the easiest method to create your own image is to make the text itself as the image.
This is a trick often used by one of the greatest presenters out there: Steve Jobs.
The key is minimal use of text and extra time on tinkering with font properties and background. For example, I would like to present the statistic of blogs from Technorati. Some copy and paste routines would give me something like this:
To modify the data into text images, I cut out the fat and deleted most of the text. I also changed the written numbers with real numbers to add some drama.
Then I did a quick change of the font type, size and color using ‘Formatting Palette‘. I assigned white for the title and dark grey for the content.
You can also use the ‘Format – Font’ menu for more comprehensive options.
I added some shadow and reflection to spice things up a little bit.
Centered text is so static and boring, so I moved them around.
And the last step was changing the background using right click and ‘Format Background’
I chose a simple 90 degrees linear gradient color fill from dark to light to further emphasize the text.
I clicked ‘Apply’ and here’s what I came up with.
Be sure to add real life context to the presentation. Using the blog statistic example, I’d show my audience the stunning slides while saying something like this: ‘In 2009, Technorati said that there were more than 130,000,000 blogs out there. That’s as much as all Japanese people in the world.’
Adding Real Images
To take things a little bit further, you can also use real stock photo images. My favorite way to get free to use and free to modify photos is downloading them from Flickr. Just be sure to use the Creative Commons licensed ones.
To find photos within that category, you can use Flickr Advanced Search while ticking on the CC boxes.
Or you can use Quix and ‘fc’ command for faster results.
Use the downloaded image(s) for the background of your slide(s), and you can get something like this:
Using text images (and real images) is just one of the simple and easy tricks that will boost your presentation several levels above boring.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
How to Access the BBC iPlayer from Outside the U.K.
Non-U.S. users frequently encounter the annoyance of geo-blocked content when trying to access popular sites like Hulu, but every now and then we feel the burn in the States, too. Reader hengehog details how to access BBC’s iPlayer from outside the U.K.More »
(Via Lifehacker.)
Guitar slide from glass bottle
We’ve discussed numerous methods for making a cup from a glass bottle, but I don’t recall seeing anyone use the neck before. Brookelynn from CRAFT has us covered, though, with this guitar slide made from a wine bottle:
One interesting historical example of upcycled crafting is the bottleneck guitar- or as it is now widely known, slide guitar. The unique resonant sound of slide guitar was originally formed by playing with a glass bottleneck over one finger and running the slide up and down the strings. While the materials for making slides have evolved, bottles are still a popular choice of material. We were given one, and as it has been used over the years, the piece has developed some lovely scratches that give the glass beautiful character. Slideplayer.com has two great ideas for making your own, including a ‘Burning Twine’ method that sounds really cool (and drunkenly dangerous).
(Via MAKE Magazine.)
How to clean your Mighty Mouse
Apple’s Mighty Mouse (now also called an Apple Mouse) has a dirty little secret. While the scroll ball performs its duties as intended when the mouse is new, it can become clogged with dirt and grime over time.
Its performance then deteriorates dramatically, with the ball sticking and failing to scroll. There are a number of things you can do to try and free the ball, and return it to its full 360-degree scrolling glory.
First of all, try turning it upside down and rolling the ball around. Roll it on a piece of paper, hoping the debris and dirt will rub off onto it. Give it a blast with a can of compressed air, or a rub with computer-cleaning solution or a wet wipe. But if all else fails, a drastic course of action may be required.
Removing and cleaning a Mighty Mouse’s scroll ball isn’t particularly easy. A considerable amount of disassembly is required before you can clean the ball and its housing.
In this tutorial, we show you how to get inside your Mighty Mouse without damaging it, and how to clean and reinvigorate your scroll ball to get everything up and running again. It should take approximately 20 minutes, but be prepared to invest a little more time if needed, especially the first time you clean your mouse in this way.
A word of warning
Caution! Disassembling your Mighty Mouse involves breaking off a component that’s glued into place. It’s not easy, and if you make a mistake, you’re extremely likely to damage or even ruin the device.
We can’t take responsibility if your Mighty Mouse is broken while following this tutorial, and as a result we can only recommend that you attempt it if your mouse is in such poor condition that you feel you’ve nothing to lose, if you give it a go.
It is recommended that you read the whole of this tutorial before you start, especially Steps 2 and 3.
How to Install WordPress on your PC
WordPress is arguably the most popular and the best blogging platform out there. You might have installed WordPress on your site, but you might be scared to experiment with WordPress worrying that you could break your site and WordPress.
Experimenting is one of the best way to learn new things and if you break your site, you probably might not want your visitors to see the fault as it might leave a bad impression. So, it is necessary to have the ability to learn WordPress and try new themes, plugins and other items without putting it online where people can see.
So, the best solution is to install WordPress locally on your computer. It will save you quite a bit of time since you can just put your files inside your WordPress folder without having to upload it to FTP. You can do anything you want with WordPress without a worry which surrounds you when you put it online. The possibilities are endless. Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to install WordPress in localhost using XAMPP. I hope it will become a great use to you.
1. Go to the official XAMPP website. We are going to use XAMPP as it is one of the best Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is very easy to install and use.
The Sweet Sound of Particleboard
Looking for a fun, functional, low-cost project to knock out during the holidays? Check out this clever repurposing piece from the pages of MAKE Volume 10, offered up by David Battino with help from George ‘the Fat Man’ Sanger.
Use Zip Ties to Repair a Broken Ethernet Plug
We’ve all been there at some point, you’ve got a perfectly functional Ethernet cord that somewhere along the line had its tab broken off. Don’t buy a new one or re-terminate the cord. Fix it with zip ties.
While were no stranger making our own Ethernet cables—you can probably find a few RJ-45 connectors hanging out with the dust bunnies under our work bench—sometimes its not convenient or you dont have the tools to strip an Ethernet cable, strip and reposition the pairs, and re-terminate it. Its an even bigger annoyance when the only reason you find yourself having to do it is a missing plastic tab on the connector plug.
Over at the ever-growing tutorial blog Instructables they have a tutorial on how to fix a broken RJ-45 connector using two zip ties, a razor knife, and a pair of pliers—although if youre going full MacGyver you could skip the pliers. When youre done youll have a functional tab on your Ethernet cable. Check out full tutorial at the link below and if you have your own clever use for zip ties or other inexpensive tools—duct tape anyone?—we want to hear about it in the comments.
Repair a Broken Ethernet Plug [Instructables]
(Via Lifehacker.)
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