Steve Hoefer is one of my favorite makers (check out his other projects for MAKE here). He writes: "I built this mini blind minder to open and close [my window blinds] automatically. It’s powered by an Arduino microcontroller, which uses a temperature sensor to read the room temperature and then activates a servomotor to open the slats when it’s too cool and close them when it’s too warm. It has an adjustable thermostat and it can also be operated manually to open or close your blinds with a push of a button."

Here's how to build your own Mini Blind Minder Read the rest

Infographic by Curtis Whaley. (Via Mental Floss) Read the rest

The mosquito on the left is a male Aedes aegypti mosquito. The mosquito on the right is his female counterpart. Viva la difference— and the difference is in the antennae.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield shows us how to clip your fingernails in space! It's a bit different in zero gravity.

In this short video, Jane shows how to use the Sukie Button Factory to make fabric-covered buttons.

I invented the Monkey Couch Guardian, and wrote a how-to so you can build one, too.

Combine an Arduino with a proximity sensor, and make an obnoxious device to discourage cats and other fur-shedding pets from jumping on beds and couches. This project will also introduce you to the SPDT relay, a fundamental component of hobbyist electronics projects.

Monkey Couch Guardian: complete instructions Read the rest

[Video Link] You aren't supposed to lift the pan. You're supposed to slide it back and forth. Thanks, Chef John! (Via Doobybrain) Read the rest

Abstracts are summaries — the short paragraph that usually explains the question a study was asking and the answers it found, plus a brief overview of what methods the researchers used. Because most peer-reviewed scientific research papers sit behind big, awkward pay walls, abstracts are often the only part of the paper that you, the general public, can easily read. That's why it's important to know what to look for in an abstract and how to interpret the information you read there. Noah Gray, a senior editor at the journal Nature, put together an introduction to abstracts. It's online at The Huffington Post. Read the rest

[Video Link] I like using Instagram when I'm traveling (see my photos here). David also is an Instagram user. I picked up some good tips on this video, "Casey Neistat's guide to not sucking so bad on Instragram." I especially liked the part where he compares Ricky Rozay's Instagram feed (very good) with Justin Beiber's (bo-ring).

But do I really have to go easy on the tilt-shift filter, Casey? Read the rest

A couple of years ago I was on The Colbert Report showing some fun projects from MAKE, and Stephen fell in love with a project called "The Most Useless Machine." (Watch the episode here.) The Most Useless Machine is a box that shuts itself off when you turn it on. (After the show Stephen hinted that he wanted to keep it, so I gave it to him and he was really happy.)

Make:Projects just posted complete instructions for making your own Most Useless Machine. It's the simplest version yet, and is sure to bring a smile to the face of anyone who tries it.

Last year I saw a video of the "Leave Me Alone Box" built by Michael Seedman. Flip its switch on, and an arm reaches out of a door to turn the switch back off. To paraphrase The Terminator, that's what it does, that's all it does, and it will not stop until its circuit is dead.

I had to have one of my own, so I made one. Seedman's design uses a microcontroller to run two servomotors: one to open the lid, and another to push the switch. This makes for an impressive performance, but seemed too complicated, and actually, his circuit remains powered even when the box is idle.

For existential purity, I wanted a super-simple machine that really turned itself off. So I came up with a single-motor design controlled by a 555 timer chip, with a curved arm that both lifts the lid and flips off the switch.

Read the rest

[Video Link] Our pal Becky Stern shows you how to make LED bike handlebars using nifty LED tape. Read the rest

In 2007, my husband and I were privileged enough to take a month off and travel around Europe. Given that we spent most of our time in Western Europe, there really wasn't a whole lot of cultural confusion, with a few notable exceptions*. Chief among them, the squat toilets we stumbled across at a very inconvenient moment in Italy. "Inconvenient moment" here defined as "actually having to use the bathroom."

My friend Frank Bures is a travel writer and he understands the squat toilet problem all too well. Frank is, after all, somebody who has traveled extensively in places where squat is all you got. In a piece from 2006, he shares some hard-earned advice on squat toilets. How I wish I had read this before my venturing into small towns in coastal Italy.

Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth is probably the world’s foremost expert on excretion, a real Buddha of Bowel Movements, and she’s not afraid to get into the details. “My technique when I’m teaching volunteers about to go abroad,” said the author of How to Shit Around the World from her UK office, “is that when you’re learning, you need to take everything off below your waist: socks, shoes, pants, underwear. Then squat over the toilet. Pour water over your bum, and with your left hand, just whittle away with your fingers and try to dislodge any lumpy bits while pouring water. And that’s actually not too unaesthetic, because any mess that goes onto your fingers comes off in the water.”

What to do: Most important: Cultivate the right mindset.

Read the rest

Photo:Eric Niiler

I spent last weekend in the Harvard Forest, participating in hands-on science experiments as part of the Marine Biological Laboratory's science journalism fellowship. The goal was to give us an inside look at what, exactly, scientists actually do. When you're reading a peer-reviewed scientific research paper, where did all that data come from?

Sometimes, it comes from a swamp.

On Saturday, we walked into the Forest's Blackgum Swamp to take core samples out of the muck. There was no standing water in this swamp, at least not when we visited. But I wouldn't call the ground "solid", either. Instead, it was more like a moss-covered sponge. With every step, the ground beneath me would sink and smoosh. In some of the lower patches, that meant a shoe-full of water. In other spots, it was just a disconcerting sensation.

Taking core samples involves a little machine that's like a cross between a shovel and a straw. Made of heavy, solid metal, it has an extendable handle on one end. At the other, there's a hollow, cylindrical chamber that can be opened and closed by turning the handle counterclockwise. You drive the chamber into the ground, turn the handle, and then pull it back out. Once everything is back on the surface, you can open the chamber and see a perfect cylinder of earth, pulled up from below. That cylinder is removed from the chamber, wrapped in plastic wrap, labeled, and put in a long wooden box. Then you do all of that again, in 50 centimeter increments, until you hit stone. Read the rest

[Video Link] Thanks ClintonD!

Check out all the wonderful things people send us over at Submitterator. Read the rest

I stumbled across this randomly on YouTube today and had to share. The first 3/4 of the video are a chemistry experiment breakdown of what goes into a glow stick and what each of those ingredients is meant to do. But what makes me LOVE it is that, at the end, all of this coalesces into a fine explanation of the difference between light-absorbing dyes and fluorescent dyes. Come for the glow-stick "how to", stay for the better understanding of how light works and how it influences what you see!

Video Link Read the rest

I'm going to bookmark The Debunking Handbook, a quick-read pdf with all sorts of great advice for effectively countering misinformation. It's put together by the same people behind Skeptical Science, my go-to source for detailed, easy-to-understand debunkings of pretty much every climate-science-related myth you can rattle off. Read the rest

This custom silver ink, developed by materials researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, allows you to draw working circuits out on paper. It's extremely cool, and the video shows you step-by-step how they make it. Bonus: This ink provides an actual reason to use cursive.

Video Link (Via Aaron Rowe) Read the rest