Archive for 2006
How to Get Rid of Ants
In general, I don’t like killing bugs. If I can simply send them back out into the world, so much the better. We periodically get ants in the house where I live. If one ant finds our cat food dish or a pizza box sitting on the counter, suddenly 20 ants, then 50, then too many ants to count are marching through the house on the way to the first ant’s discovery. You can never squish or drown ants fast enough to stop the dozens more that also learned about food. Poisons treat the problem, but not the source. The best way to cut off a steady stream of ants is to find where they are entering and seal it off. I do this with baby powder. Think about all those bad horror movies with voodoo where they pour brick dust across an entrance to keep out enemies. Baby powder works the same way by blocking the ants scent trail. Ants already in your house walk around lost until they die, unable to find their way back to the colony. Ants outside your house won’t ever come in because they hit a dead end at the baby powder. Using this method of prevention often takes detective work to see where ants came from – if you put baby powder at the wrong opening, they’ll just keep coming.
Anyone got a favorite method of eliminating ants?
ants, baby powderHow to Install Wooden Shelves
I haven’t watched This Old House in years, but I can remember a number of cold Iowa winter afternoons spent watching Bob Villa yammer as Norm Abram did all the real work. The show typically involved projects no mere mortal would attempt alone, but their Web site is loaded with tips and home improvement projects that don’t require hiring a contractor. This particular tip walks you through the process of adding shelves to any room in the house.
bob villa, improvement projects, norm abram, shelvesHow to Open a Mac mini
I need to add more RAM to my Mac mini, so this suddenly became an important topic in my world. If you can survive the cheesy branding for FastMac in the first 10 seconds, this video is the best of several I’ve seen on showing you how to safely remove the case so you can access Mac mini internals.
computer upgrades, mac miniRe-Using Old Computer Parts
I recently purchased a product called Easy IDE. This is a USB devise that allows you to externally use any IDE device on a computer having USB 2.0 (all Windows XP support this). I found an old computer at the dump and had removed the drives and various other parts. Using Easy IDE I am able to use the recovered 20 gig hard drive as a back-up device on my computer. I can connect any type of IDE disk drive (CD, CDRW, DVD, etc) and use it with my computer as an external devise. Not being a computer “geek”, this product makes me feel like one. I purchased mine through MCM electronics, but I am sure they are available elsewhere.
Note: Easy IDE is available online from Amazon.
external hard drive, hard drive upgrade, usb 2 0How To Screen Print a T-Shirt
Getting t-shirts made at a printing house is expensive, especially in runs under 500. Sure you could make a design and put it on Cafe Press, but that won’t give you the hand-crafted feel of a true screen print design. Instead of paying through the nose to set up a press for a handful of shirts, do-it-yourself. Craftgrrl presents a cheap screen printing tutorial to show us how using MS Paint, cheap brushes, an embroidery hoop and some Speedball ink. Go forth and make shirts.
Make Your Own Wallet Out of Anything
DIY wallets are a popular form of individualism and creativity online. I only recently ran across the Three Card Monte wallet, but there are plenty of other neat wallet hacks to be found online. Seattle hacker Nate True added lights to a standard leather wallet to make it easier for muggers to find your cash in a dark alley. And Bre Pettis made a wallet out of tape based on plans designed in Google’s Sketchup. Got any other crafty wallet ideas?
How to Test if Your Light Switch Works or Not
This one hits close to home because we just had a ceiling light stop working in my house (and no, new lightbulbs didn’t fix the problem). The house is 80 years old, so there could be one of several things wrong, but I was leaning toward a defective dimmer switch. Gilchrest Electric offers some good advice on how to test the light switch to see if it’s broken. Some knowledge of voltage testing required.
How to Open a Beer Bottle with a Piece of Paper
If you can’t find your bottle opener, or you happen to be sitting next to a computer printer, here’s a clever way to open a bottle of beer using a single sheet of 8.5×11 paper. Certainly safer than using your teeth.
How to Start a Business in Your 20s
As someone who started two different companies in my twenties, I know exactly how hard starting a business can be. Being entrepreneurial in your thirties isn’t exactly a cakewalk either, but a few gray hairs goes a long way toward getting some respect. StartupJournal has some common sense advice for anyone thinking of leaping into the path of starting a company, including these wise words:
1) Get help
2) Don’t live like a millionaire at 25
3) Build your resume – fast
All three are good advice at any age, especially not living like a millionaire (unless you are one). Before you launch your first (or next) company, it’s worth it to review The Journal’s wisdom on How to Launch a Business in Your 20s.
DIY Shift Booth Hanging Solution
The last time I modded my car was to pull out the factory stereo and put in an aftermarket one with support for an iPod. That said, there’s a whole universe of ways to customize (dare I say pimp) your ride, including modifying the shift knob. s2k 3.11 over at Club RSX offers a handy tip for those leaving their shift booth hanging after installing an aftermarket knob. Or as he puts it: Those of you that have aftermarket shift knobs, might have your shift booth hanging down, for instance if you have the Type R knob and stock shift booth. Read on for the shift booth hanging solution.
club rsx, shift knobsHow to Board Southwest Airlines Faster
The Consumerist has somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek idea for boarding Southwest Airlines faster. For those who’ve never flown them before, Southwest uses a first-come, first-serve ticketing system, so the first people to check in online or in person get the “A” designation, and get to board the plane first. “B” and “C” follow, depending on how many people are on the flight. Their process entails of checking in online, and then modifying the boarding pass in Notepad or similar text editor. You can read the full article here.
Disclaimer: We have no idea what the legal implications might be for altering an airline ticket.
airplane, boarding pass, flight, southwest airlines, ticketing systemHow to Use WordPress as a CMS
This one’s for all the WordPress geeks out there. An ongoing set of tutorials over at http://www.marialanger.com detail how to make WordPress act more like a CMS (content management system). WordPress is the popular blog engine that powers over 111,000,000 blogs, including Lockergnome’s own Doing It, for which anyone can register and contribute.
Part 1: Discovering that WordPress makes a good CMS
Part 2: Finding and modifying just the right theme
Part 3: Planning the site’s organization and creating the pages
Part 4: Category-specific posts in the sidebar
Build Your Own DC Converter
I’m comfortable rewiring basic household circuits, but this steps outside my electrical comfort zone. Pedro shows us how to build a Direct Current converter, which, according to the site, uses the CMOS 4093 IC to build an oscillator that drives an audio power transistor to pilot the primary of a small transformer…which output give us about 200 to 220 VDC. This is enough power for things like Neon lights, nixie tubes and a variety of transmitters. If anyone knows of a better way to make a DC converter, pass it on.
dc converter, direct current, neon lights, nixie tubes, oscillator, power transistor, transformerHow to Make a Muslin Photography Backdrop
Photography studios generally have a ton of backdrop choices at their disposal. One common common backdrop is a slightly textured background with a subtle tie-die like pattern of variations on the same color. If you purchase backdrops from a photography supply store they can be expensive. With some RIT dye and a large section of muslin cloth, you can accomplish the same thing for under $20. DIYPhotography.net shows us how to make a Cheap DIY (Homemade) Muslin Photography Background.
backdrop, photography background, photography supplyHow to Create the Perferct .htaccess File
Or how to prevent unwanted scraping of your content. On a Web server, the htaccess file is sort of like a keyless entry system for visitors. With the right credentials, you walk right in. Wrong creditinals, you’re left standing on the porch waiting for someone to answer the door. That’s not exactly a perfect analogy, but that’s sort of how it works. Good sites, like Google want to search your server for pages to index. Bad sites might want to summarily scrape your content for a spamblog. Using an htaccess file, you tell these visitors whether they can pay you a visit or whether they get kicked to the curb. While the scraping tools are constantly a moving target, JavaScript Kit provides something close to a perfect resource (for now) on building an htaccess file to defend your site by blocking bad bots and site rippers.
bots, htaccess, javascript, scraper, web scraperHow to Plant a Tree
The rules for tree planting vary by climate, but the basics are the same. While the nursery you purchase trees from should have some instructions, it’s always good to double check with other experts before proceeding. The Virgina Forestry service offers some good information on planting a variety of trees depending on how they were packaged for delivery from the nursery, including balled and burlapped trees, bare-rooted trees, and container trees. Before you start digging a hole in your yard, review the steps on how to plant a tree to make sure your tree gets a long healthy life.
How to Save Money on Car Insurance
Car insurance is one of those necessary evils you can only live without if you don’t own a car. Even with a clean driving record you’ll still pay several hundred dollars every year, in some cases a couple hundred dollars per month. The most common tip I’ve seen for reducing car insurance bills is to raise the deductible. Many other factors play into how much you pay and with careful examination of the bill, you can drop your rates even further by eliminating stuff you don’t really need. Over the life of owning a car, these dollars start adding up. Get rich slow offers advice from someone who works in the insurance business on how to cut cost on car insurance.
car insurance, driving record, insurance, insurance bills, insurance businessHow to Boost Cell Phone Reception with an External Antenna
My house is a cell phone dead zone. Particularly my basement office, which munges most conversations and renders Cingular’s BroadbandConnect service nearly useless. The only solution I can think might work is an external cell phone antenna to boost signal strength. I hesitate to purchase one of those external car antennas, because I’ve never found them truly useful. Graeme at Earth: Mostly Harmless offers a compelling alternative by boosting his cell phone signal strength with a modified WiFi antenna, taking his house from cell phone dead zone to functional. I have tons of WiFi gear laying around; this just might do the trick.
car antennas, cell phone antenna, signal strengthHow To Compose a Great Looking Picture Almost Every Time
Shot composition is one of the hardest things to learn about digital photography. You need to start with things like being in focus and finding decent lighting. But once you’ve mastered the basics, composition is what takes a photo from good to great. Total Image looks at a series of steps you can follow to compose great looking shots almost every time. You may still get a dud every now and then, but burn these photography rules into your brian and you’re well on the way to undertstanding how to compose great looking photos.
How to Publish iCal Calendars without .Mac
Apple offers an awesome calendar sharing feature as part of the OS X Calendar app, but it requires a .Mac account or some other WebDAV enabled server to make it work. Unless you’re an ubergeek, setting up WebDAV is really tricky. System Boy found a slick solution for sharing iCal calendars online without the hassle of configuring WebDAV or the fees of a .Mac account. You do need to sign up for a free Box.net account to get on the iCal bus, but that’s a minor inconvenience for major calendar accessibility. System Boy offers detailed instructions on publishing iCal without .Mac.
apple, calendars online, ical
