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Amazing old HOWTO book: "Lee's Priceless Recipes, a collection of famous formulas and simple methods."

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:57:59 +0000

My mom recently found and scanned this fantastic family heirloom, a 1917 edition of "Lee's Priceless Recipes, A Collection of Famous Formulas and Simple Methods For Farmers, Dairymen, Housekeepers, Mechanics, Manufacturers, Druggists, Chemists, Perfumers, Barbers, Chiropodists, Renovators, Dyers, Bakers, Confectioners, Woodworkers, Decorators, Painters, Paper-hangers, Metal-workers, Hunters, Trappers, Tanners, Taxidermists, Stockmen, et cetera, and all people in every department of human endeavor."

A quick internet search shows that the book was published starting in the late 1800s, and was reissued in later editions through the 20th century. You can buy a 1990's reissue here.

More scans below. Click on each to view larger size. Note the particularly grody use of Pomegranate root extract!

(Thanks, Mom!)

Instructables based on Little Brother and Homeland

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 22:41:22 +0000

The awesome people at Instructables have launched a series of HOWTOs based on my novel Homeland, written from the point of view of Marcus, the novel's hero. They previously posted 11 of these for Little Brother, and the new Homeland ones should be kicking off any day. Watch this space!

m1k3y's Instructables

HOWTO make a set of junk-bagpipes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:22:40 +0000

Instructables user smartin014 wants to show you how to make your own set of bagpipes out of PVC pipes and a plastic bag. It's Fat Albert chic:

Having played the highland bagpipes for a couple years now and having just finished a course on maintenance, I was greatly interested in building my own set of pipes just for fun. A few days later, a duct-tape and CPVC bagpipe emerged!
Assembly (from having taken out the parts to having a playable instrument) takes roughly 4-5 hours.
Here's a video of a seasoned piper giving the membrane pipes a spin! (Just a side note... the drones were HORRENDOUSLY out of tune in this video. They can sound better, really!)

Build your own Smallpipes for a few bucks! (Membrane Bagpipes) by smartin014 (via Neatorama)

HOWTO make a DIY bioprinter out of an old inkjet

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:55:40 +0000

Karen from Instructables sez, "Instructables author Patrik has rigged up a homemade bioprinter, a 3D printer that 'prints' in biological material. Check out his amazing project. This is one of the many creative entries we've seen come in for our SciStarter Citizen Science Contest, where we are challenging our users to create solutions for real scientific problems."

As our first real "bioprinting" experiment, we wanted to start with something simple, instead of jumping straight into printing with live cells. We decided to print with a solution of arabinose onto filter paper. Then we cut out the filter paper, and put it onto an agarose plate on which we had grown a lawn of E. coli that we had engineered to carry the pGLO plasmid. This plasmid carries the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), under control of an arabinose-sensitive promoter. (Stay tuned for an instructable on how to make your own GFP-expressing E. coli).
As a result, wherever we had printed arabinose on the filter paper, we now saw the E. coli light up green under UV light! Note that the beauty of this experiment lies in its simplicity: we only had to print with a simple sugar solution, rather than with bulky live cells; and we were printing on paper, so we didn't even have to change the paper handling machinery. You could also try printing with antibiotics, or even proteins, such as enzymes or growth factors.
The second-to-last image above shows our first test print, where we has printed arabinose over half of the filter paper - and half of the plate lights up under UV light. In the second image, we had printed the BioCurious "eyeball" logo. Success! Unfortunately the sharpness of the image definitely leaves much to be desired. Presumably, the arabinose tends to diffuse through the filter paper, which smears out the printed pattern. We should be able to do much better by printing directly on the agarose.

DIY BioPrinter by Patrik (Thanks, Karen!)

HOWTO convert an MP3 to a playable, 3D printed record

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 13:39:45 +0000

Instructables user Amandaghassaei has posted a HOWTO for making a 3D printed record that plays on a regular turntable. Her method converts any digital audio file to grooves ready to print. It's a bit fuzzy, but still rather exciting! I'm waiting for the way when taking a snapshot of a vinyl disc can be the first step toward deriving its audio content, converting that back to a shapefile, and printing out a high-fidelity duplicate.

In this Instructable, I'll demonstrate how I developed a workflow that can convert any audio file, of virtually any format, into a 3D model of a record. This is far too complex a task to perform with traditional drafting-style CAD techniques, so I wrote an program to do this conversion automatically. It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to the STL file format (used by all 3D printers). Most of the heavy lifting is done by Processing, an open source environment that's often used for coding interactive graphics applications. To get Processing to export to STL, I used the ModelBuilder Library written by Marius Watz (if you are into Arduino/Processing and 3D printing I highly recommend checking this out, it works great).
I've uploaded some of my complete record models to the 123D gallery as well as the Pirate Bay. Check Step 6 for a complete listing of what's there and what I plan on posting. Alternatively, you can go to Step 7 to download my code and learn how to make your own printable records from any audio file you like.

3D Printed Record

How to make a powered speaker for your MP3 player

Mark Frauenfelder — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:48:37 +0000

Boing Boing reader Ross "rossindetroit" Hershberger created the Monobox, a nice speaker with a built in amp based on the venerable LM386 IC. MAKE produced a nice how-to video about it for its Weekend Projects program. This is a great project for parents and older kids (I'm guessing 9 and up).

MonoBox is a small, inexpensive powered speaker that amplifies the output of your headphone music player. It's little but it's loud! All the circuit parts are available from RadioShack. The speaker and cabinet are left to your preference.

You'll learn how to assemble and solder an audio power amplifier using an integrated circuit (IC) chip, and how to choose a speaker and install it in a cabinet with the amplifier.

The core of MonoBox is a compact and efficient audio amplifier based on the LM386 power amp chip. It will run on 200mA of current using power supplies from 6V–15V DC. This gives you the flexibility to power it from a wall adapter, a 9V battery, or a car accessory outlet.

You're probably thinking, "Sure, but it's so small. Does it rock?" Fair question. The prototype has been exhaustively tested and it does indeed rock. Maximum volume output is 90dB, and with the added bass boost your socks will be rocked clean off!

Complete step-by-step instructions for making a MonoBox

How to draw Space Invaders-style characters

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:00:12 +0000

Pixel Dude is an image editing app for the iPad. Like the name suggests, it's pixel based, and is good for drawing chunky graphics. The drawing area is a 32 by 32 grid of squares, which I find to be more than enough for my purposes.

I've always liked the look of the Space Invaders aliens, and by using Pixel Dude's symmetrical drawing tool, it's very easy to create characters that have that Space Invaders look. The application has a lot of other features, like layer support and unlimited undo and redo.

Once you are done drawing something you can email it or save it to Dropbox.

Eventually, I would like to use these patterns to silkscreen onto t-shirts. Keep an eye out for my how-to project on this!

Candle-Powered Electric Candle (via Neatorama)

Funny & profane guide to digital inking

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:42:10 +0000

On DeviantArt, Mayekoposted an indispensable and profane guide to digital inking called "Lie, cheat, steal your way to better art." The tl;dr is: work at very high rez (then shrink), and use texture brushes set to 100%. But the commentary is hilarious and convincing -- go read it.

LIE-CHEAT-STEAL LIKE A FISH by *Mayeko on deviantART (via Making Light)

HOWTO make a Minecraft Herobrine costume

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:45:00 +0000

Matt sez, "Here's a link for the Herobrine costume I made for my son. After a bunch of requests, I put up the PDF files and instructions to make your own. It was a huge hit with the kids at his school. Even bigger than when we went as Finn and the Ice King last year!"

(Thanks, Matt!)

HOWTO make a machete wrench

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 02:31:45 +0000

EV Builder and friends were in the midst of refitting a vehicle to be of use in a zombie apocalypse when it occurred to them to turn a machete into a variable hex wrench. They liked the result so much that the published the HOWTO on Instructables.

Perhaps one of the more useful tools I have ever owned was a flat bar with a series of hexagonal cutouts in it. While minimally useful as a wrench because of its long length, it proved invaluable as backstop for holding nuts in place while I was tightening them down. Not to mention that when my wrench set was annoyingly missing just the size I needed, my hard to misplace flat bar always had me covered.
It therefore stood to reason that a Katana with a similar series of hexagonal cutouts would be valuable both for taking down Zombies/Mutant wildlife and complementing any set of tools used for post apocalyptic DYI projects. However, after a bit of research it became apparent that in addition to being expensive to make, “Katanas are notoriously high maintenance”* and at ApocalypsEV we hate the idea of high cost high maintenance (www.ApocalypsEV.com).
So seeking a simpler more affordable concept, we created the Mechanics Machete. It combines the Zombie fighting power of a machete with the utility of a set of wrenches. Also when using stainless steel for the blade, it eliminates the maintenance hassle of trying to keep the blade rust free.

Every time I see a hex-wrench made by cutting a shape out of a piece of metal, I remember the time Gatwick airport security stole my belt-buckle, including the little loop that held the belt's tongue, because the loop had a hexagonal cutout that was a "wrench."

Apocalypse Mechanics Machete (via Neatorama)

HOWTO separate eggs with a plastic bottle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:39:43 +0000

This Chinese-speaking woman has a cool tip for separating eggs, using the suction of a slightly compressed water bottle. That's a pretty clean separation. I could watch it all day.

如何巧妙分离蛋清蛋黄 (via Kottke)

HOWTO survive a DDoS attack

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:00:11 +0000

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a comprehensive, multi-lingual guide to keeping sites that are undergoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks alive.

Denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasingly common phenomena, used by a variety of actors—from activists to governments—to temporarily or indefinitely prevent a site from functioning efficiently. Often, the attack saturates the target with server requests designed to flood its bandwidth, leaving the server unable to respond to legitimate traffic.
Though the owners of major sites often have the resources to fend off or even prevent such attacks, smaller sites—such as those belonging to small independent media or human rights organizations—are sometimes permanently disabled due to a lack of resources or knowledge.
This guide aims to assist the owners of such websites by providing advice on choosing an appropriate webhost, as well as a guide to mirroring and backing-up their websites so that the content can be made available elsewhere even if their site is taken down by a DoS or DDoS attack.

Keeping Your Site Alive

HOWTO bake a cake inside the skin of an orange

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 03:26:02 +0000

Here's a cute idea from CHOW and Chris Rochelle for baking chocolate cakes in campfire coals, using scooped-out orange peels as molds:

Cut the tops off about 10 oranges and scoop out the pulp. Fill the oranges three-quarters of the way with chocolate cake batter (cake mix works fine), then put the orange tops back on and wrap each orange in aluminum foil. Place directly onto the smoldering coals of the campfire, avoiding any intense flames, and cook for about 30 minutes, turning once or twice.

I've had sorbet served in an orange and pate served in an orange (AKA "meat fruit). Both were delicious. You could probably do a whole meal inside of citrus peels.

Step Up the S'more: 7 Ideas for Campfire Treats by Chris Rochelle (via Neatorama)

HOWTO use skateboards as ceiling-fan blades

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:45:11 +0000

Converting three skateboard planks to act as the blades on an electric ceiling fan is surprisingly straightforward, as Notcot's NOTlabs demonstrates: "staring at the ugly, boring ceiling fan that hung above us led to the idea of of skateboards as fan blades! And sure enough a few days later, skateboards and a nice simple ceiling fan was acquired to test with!"

NOTlabs: The Skateboard Fan- 07.05.12 (via Neatorama)

HOWTO make unicorn poop cookies

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:00:09 +0000

In case the Epic Poop post has you reaching for a unicorn chaser, I bring you...unicorn poop. Specifically, DIY unicorn poop from Instructables user kristylynn84. The secret ingredient is love. And poop. And "sugar cookies, rainbow dragees, rainbow star sprinkles, white sparkle gel, and rainbow disco dust."

Unicorn Poop!

HOWTO make Star Wars vehicles from 3.5" floppies

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:15 +0000

Instructables user Jetpack5 created a series of Star Wars space vehicles out of floppy-disk parts and office supplies. There's even a rubber-band-ball Death Star! Also in the set: a Millennium Falcon and a truly spiffy X-Wing fighter. This is a potentially productive way of using up the 5-billion-odd 3.5" floppies kicking around, slowly decaying. Better than my idea of a massive Beowulf cluster of 486s with four floppy drives each, rack-mounted and spanned to create a massively inefficient, room-sized virtual ZIP cartridge, which would be serviced by a dozen rollerbladed teenagers who would whisk around, swapping out corrupt disks.

Millennium Falcon and X-Wing from Floppy Disk (with Special Guest Appearance: Death Star) (via Neatorama)

Casemod that grows wheatgrass

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 12 May 2012 03:00:10 +0000

Mike Schropp's "BioComputer" is a PC casemod that actually grows wheatgrass, using waste-heat from the computer to provide a hospitable hothouse environment. He's posted detailed build-logs from the project, and plans more ambitious horticulture.

I can’t exactly recall when the idea came to me, but at some point I started wanting to use the heat from a computer as a way to warm the soil and help with germination/growth. I’m about as far from a botanist as it comes, I did some reading online and became pretty interested in the effects of soil temperature on germination/growth. I read different studies and papers from various universities. It was not too long into that process that I became hooked on the idea of using computer heat as a way to control the soil temperature of some sort of living plant life.
As the idea developed further I started looking into wheatgrass as a plant option. There is something clean and natural about the look and idea of a piece of grass growing in my basement. I thought the look would alter the space a little bit and add a bit of color along with something more than just metals and plastics. After reading enough studies and papers on the effects of soil temperature and germination with wheatgrass I felt like I had a good enough handle on the basics to tackle this.

Bio Computer (via Neatorama)

HOWTO make a CAT-AT Star Wars cat-condo

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:04:25 +0000

Redditor BillyAppletini surprised a friend with an "Imperial CAT-AT (All-Terrain Armored-Transport)" -- a cat-condo/AT-AT walker. His Imgur gallery , which documents the build, has some rudimentary plans as well.

I wouldn't consider myself a great woodworker or an artist - but I will take credit for being committed to a joke. I wrecked my house for a month building this, which was about 27 days longer than I wish it would have taken. The trickiest part was keeping any of my friends from coming inside my place for that whole time - I knew they wouldn't be able to keep it a secret!
The inside of the CAT-AT has a fully furnished luxury cat condo.
I was originally going to forge an Amazon receipt and make it look like my buddy's cat ordered it on his Amazon account and have it delivered while he was at work, but enough was enough - when it was complete, I had to get it out of my loft and clean up.

My buddy loves Star Wars, and has two cats. So I built him this, and put it in his apartment.

HOWTO make a very tiny kitchen knife

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:00:59 +0000

On EnglishRussia (and apparently ganked from ~~a possibly defunct~~ LiveJournal -- It looks like LJ had an outage earlier today), a wonderful detailed HOWTO for making the tiniest, most adorable kitchen knife you ever did see.

A kitchen knife may become an end in any argument… This knife is made on a scale of 1 to 12 from flat stained steel sheet 1.5 mm thick. Other elements are made of plastic and the clinchers are from aluminium wire 0.6 mm in diameter.The needed tools: a vise, 2 files, 3 broach files, abrasive paper of two types, a drill fixed on a vertical support – 1 set, a drill bit 0.6 mm, a piece of thick felt for polishing the handle, an extra wooden bar.

How To Make a Tiny Kitchen Knife (via @jwomack)

HOWTO make a novice-baker TARDIS cake

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 02:12:31 +0000

Bruce sez, "How Stella made her own Doctor Who themed TARDIS cake at home on her own with no previous experience. Includes pictures throughout the process."

I wanted a TARDIS cake that actually had the shape of the police box. I didn’t want to just draw a TARDIS on top of a cake. The TARDIS is vertical, not horizontal, so I knew I would have to stack cakes to make it work. Without wanting to make it too impractical or large, I decided to make a flat cake and cut smaller square pieces until I got to the right height. This would be my TARDIS, and then I’d put this on top of a second cake to make a scene featuring the TARDIS landing on a grassy field, which would also ensure I’d have enough cake for the guests, since the TARDIS itself might not be big enough.

Geeky Homemade Doctor Who TARDIS Cake (Thanks, Bruce!)

HOWTO make zombie chocolate bunnies and undead eggs for Easter

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:18:42 +0000

At the Criminal Crafts blog, a fun tutorial on "pairing zombies with a fuzzy pastel holiday," through delicious zombie bunny rabbits and haunted eggs. There's a photo gallery here.

(via Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

HOWTO make a disco-ball helmet

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:30:42 +0000

On Instructables, Natalina explains how she turned her motorcycle helmet into a disco ball: "This disco ball helmet uses real glass, as it is intended as a costume piece (to be paired with a disco backpack, coming soon!). If you want it to be functional, acrylic mirror would be safer and lighter weight (though not as shiny and reflective)."

Disco Ball Helmet (Thanks, Karen!)

Prolific Instructables maker creates robotic claw business cards, spaghetti yetis, and more

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:58:23 +0000

Instructables user PenfoldPlant creates fascinating projects! I love the robotic-claw business card (video above), but I'm also extremely partial to the Spaghetti Yeti (right), and who could say no to a giant papercraft Trojan Horse (below)?.

PenfoldPlant

HOWTO turn a loved one's head into a laser-cut 3D model with a secret compartment

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:00:59 +0000

CarlBass on Instructables (who's also the CEO of Autodesk) created a 3D modelled, laser-cut version of his son's head, designed to have a secret compartment instead of brains.

We made a box in the shape of my son’s head. We laser cut pieces of taskboard (corrugated cardboard works well, too) and laminated them together. The heads pivots on a dowel and is held in place by two magnets... Round magnets have been added on the top and bottom of the head so it snaps close and conceals the secret hiding spot.

Making a cardboard head with a secret hiding spot (Thanks, Karen!)

HOWTO Make your own Lucky Charms marshmallows

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 03:01:08 +0000

If you can make homemade corn syrup, you can make homemade marshmallows. If you can make homemade marshmallows, you can make homemade Lucky Charms marshmallows. If you can do that, you are become death, destroyer of worlds.

That said, making homemade Lucky Charms is not for everyone.
You can read that sentence as a warning or as a challenge to be one of the few who are up to the task. I will never make them again. That's not because they turned out poorly. No, quite the opposite - they were amazing! However, homemade Lucky Charms were so labor-intensive that both Jonathan and I are still recovering - we have blisters on our thumbs from continuous pressing on cookie cutters (Jonathan had to take over after my fingers hurt so much that I couldn't cut anymore).

Homemade Lucky Charms - Are You Up for the Challenge? ~ Cupcake Project (via Geekologie)

HOWTO make a molded portrait-gourd

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:39:36 +0000

Instructables member TimAnderson has a great HOWTO for growing molded "portait gourds," a technique from China and would work with other vegetables. He starts with a 3D sculpture of his subject, creates a mold, and then coaxes the veg to grow within the mold's constraints.

This mold has a flexible rubber lining which makes it easy to remove from the gourd. A plaster mold adheres to the gourd more tenaciously and usually the mold is destroyed in the course of removing it from around the gourd.
The gourd is then allowed to dry slowly, and the outer coating called the "cuticle" is removed. Then the finishing steps, if any, are done.
On this gourd, the details of the face and hair were then traced with the point of a jade knife to enhance the detail, It was dyed with dark tea, and a coat of varnish was applied to make it shiny.

Portrait Gourds Grown in Molds (via Make)

HOWTO make a shamrock shake at home

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:34:31 +0000

Bethany Nixon's husband claims to have found the exact proportions of peppermint extract, green food dye, and vanilla ice-cream to reproduce the seasonal McDonald's Shamrock Shake year round. This will certainly come in handy for those out-of-season snake infestations!

Dan is one of those people that run out the door to get a Shamrock Shake the day they are back at McDonald’s. You too? Well, today my husband created his own version in our kitchen, and I thought I’d share his recipe with you. Now both of you can have that minty goodness without ever leaving home & all year long!

Homemade Shamrock Shakes (via Craft)

HOWTO make an Internet of Things camera

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:29:51 +0000

Following on from their Internet of Things Printer, the good folks at Adafruit have produced a set of plans and a kit for making an Internet of Things Camera -- a tiny, standalone gizmo that turns an Arduino, a webcam's guts and an EyeFi card into a device that can wirelessly transmit photos to a computer, with complimentary software for processing, uploading and filing the images it captures.

Here’s our Arduino based “Internet of Things” camera. It’s a simple remote monitoring using the Eye-Fi wireless SD card and Adafruit Data Logging Shield for Arduino. The Eye-Fi card is a tiny wireless memory card. It stores photos and fits inside a camera just like a regular SD card, but also has built-in WiFi transceiver that can upload images to your computer, smartphone or to various photo-sharing sites. We use one here when taking pictures for our tutorials — it’s a great timesaver, eliminating the extra USB transfer step that’s otherwise necessary. Can the Eye-Fi card work in an Arduino SD card adapter? You bet! Adding a TTL Serial JPEG camera, together with some minimal prep work, we can then create a self-contained wireless monitoring camera with motion-sensing capabilities. Hide it inside a hollowed-out book or a plush dinosaur toy and discover who’s been eating all your Thin Mints cookies!
What makes this combination way cooler than just a normal SD card or a USB cable to a computer is all the infrastructure provided by the Eye-Fi service — not just transferring images to your computer, but pushing them to your smartphone, photo-sharing sites like Flickr, issuing email or Twitter notifications, etc. This is all configured through the Eye-Fi application — there’s no additional coding required.

An “Internet of Things” Camera

HOWTO make a 4,000-volt infrared "snooperscope"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:01:10 +0000

From the August 1951 ish of Mechanix Illustrated, a modest HOWTO describing a "Snooperscope" that requires a 4,000 to 6,000-volt power-supply to fire infrared light at and through the materials around you.

Construction of the snooperscope: The image converter tube is mounted in a plastic drinking cup 3-1/2 in. high by 2-1/2 in. in diameter. The optical system required depends upon your intended use. We used a small tripod type magnifier lens of 10 power (1 in. focal length) for the front lens and objects from three inches to one and a half feet can be focused. There is no reason why a greater range cannot be had with this lens by moving it closer or farther away from the tube.
After selecting the lens system mount it in a hole cut into the bottom of the cup. A jeweler’s saw or coping saw is ideal for cutting the hole. Paint the inside of the cup with black paint. Black airplane dope works fine. No light other than that from the lens must be permitted to hit the tube. Place an infrared filter between tube and lens to reduce effects of stray white light.
The image converter tube is inserted with the graphite side toward the front lens and the metal ring toward the mouth of the cup. A thin flexible lead from the metal ring connects to the positive side of the power supply. Some tubes were manufactured without this lead, in which case a piece of spring metal pressed against the metal ring will work just as well. The front end of the tube has a graphite ring around it. This is the end where the infrared image is to be focused. The graphite coating is the cathode or negative lead. Connect this lead to the B minus side of the power supply. A piece of spring brass or even the flat sheet metal carefully removed from a tin can should be formed with the fingers so it fits snugly around the cathode terminal.

make this SNOOPERSCOPE and see in total darkness (Aug, 1951)