Make A Cheap &Easy Solar USB Charger With An Altoids Tin : TreeHugger - StumbleUpon
Photos by Joshua Zimmerman The craftster behind the very popular $3 solar-powered emergency radio is back with a new awesome project: a cheap solar battery charger with a USB plug. Zimmerman wrote, saying that he saw a lot of small solar powered chargers being talked about over Earth Day, but there was a big problem: "They're all quite nice, but also quite expensive. So, he came up with his own, using one of our favorite reusable items -- the ever wonderful Altoids tin. In looking for the cheapest way to accomplish the task, Zimmerman found that he could build a USB solar charger for under $30 (or $10 if be buys parts in bulk, though it's not likely you'll be buying bulk solar cells and DC-to-USB converter circuits). Zimmerman states, "The central brain of our project is a DC to USB converter circuit. It can be done with a Minty Boost kit, a premade circuit off of ebay, or grabbing one from a cheap USB charger.
DIY Continuous Ink Printer = Unlimited Free Printing | Hack N Mod - StumbleUpon
Instead of paying for absurdly priced printer cartridges, build yourself a Continuous Ink Printer (CIS) which can be made by hacking an old printer to suck ink from external reservoirs. You can get the raw ink for dirt cheap so it’s essentially like unlimited printing for free (besides the paper). So now you can actually print your collection of pirated books! A CIS is relatively easy to create, just take an Epson Stylus 760 (a surprisingly hard to find printer) and make a few modifications to it. More Printer Hacks:
The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better
We’re big fans of hacking the Windows Registry around here, and we’ve got one of the biggest collections of registry hacks you’ll find. Don’t believe us? Here’s a list of the top 50 registry hacks that we’ve covered. It’s important to note that you should never hack the registry if you don’t know what you’re doing, because your computer will light on fire and some squirrels may be injured. Also, you should create a System Restore point before doing so. Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer We’ve all been at our computer when the Windows Update dialog pops up and tells us to reboot our computer. There’s a couple of ways that we can disable this behavior, however. Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer How to Clean Up Your Messy Windows Context Menu One of the most irritating things about Windows is the context menu clutter that you have to deal with once you install a bunch of applications. How to Clean Up Your Messy Windows Context Menu
100 Amazing How-To Sites to Teach Yourself Anything | Rated Colleges - StumbleUpon
Posted by Site Administrator in Online Learning May 7th, 2009 Learning new skills and expanding your knowledge doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. There are loads of free resources on the Web that can help you find instructional videos, tutorials and classes to learn a wide variety of skills from fixing basic car problems to speaking another language. General Tutorials These sites offer a wide range of tutorials and videos. Around the House Want to know how to fix that broken cabinet or hang up some great wallpaper? Business and Management If you feel like you’re seriously lacking on business and management skills at work, no need to worry. KnowThis? Language and Writing Those who want to learn a new language, improve their writing skills or just learn more about literature will be well-served by these instructional sites. Technology These tech-focused sites offer help to both technophiles and beginners alike. actDEN: Never learned how to use Microsoft Excel? Math S.O.S. Science Creativity
Wild and Woody
Related Content Woodworking Basics Learn the basics of woodworking with this book — or buy it for a young friend or family member with ... "I capture the power of saplings. . . and want some chairs to dance." "I'll tolerate anything in my chairs that's not a hazard to my body." Creating Rustic Twig Furniture From Natural Wood As the tree grows, so the chair goes. I make my living designing and building rustic twig furniture. The main roots of rustic furniture making in America reach to the so-called Romantic Movement that flourished in the nineteenth century and was marked by the attitude that contact with nature had a soothing, spiritually healing effect. Making Rustic Twig Furniture Many of these characteristics contribute to the appeal of creating contemporary rustic furniture today. You make what you are. Secondly, I want to bring humor and illusion to my work. Choosing Wood Use wood that's available. Pick wood with character. Think about the scale of the work. Use dry wood.
9 Tactics for Rapid Learning (That Most People Have Never Heard Of) &... - StumbleUpon
Whenever the subject of why some people learn faster comes up, I get a whole host of common answers: Some people are just naturally smart. (Often implying you can’t improve)Everyone is “smart” in their own way. (Nonsense, research indicates different “intelligences” often correlate)IQ is all in the genes. There may be some truth to these claims. Considering the upcoming launch of my rapid learning program, I wanted to share my favorite tactics to learn faster, retain information better or just enjoy the process of learning more: #1 – Pegging (or How Mental Magicians can Perfectly Recall Hundreds of Numbers) One of my favorite learning tactics, that is rarely mentioned, is pegging. The systems I’ve seen typically work with a special cheat sheet. From there, you can translate any series of numbers into a series of letters. Then, once you have your string of nouns, you just need to create a story that combines each of the nouns in a sequence. If you want to speed read, the basics are:
Turn Your $60 Router into a User-Friendly Super-Router with Tomato
10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About (But Should) | MindShift - StumbleUpon
This week, the OCW Consortium is holding its annual meeting, celebrating 10 years of OpenCourseWare. The movement to make university-level content freely and openly available online began a decade ago, when the faculty at MIT agreed to put the materials from all 2,000 of the university’s courses on the Web. With that gesture, MIT OpenCourseWare helped launch an important educational movement, one that MIT President Susan Hockfield described in her opening remarks at yesterday’s meeting as both the child of technology and of a far more ancient academic tradition: “the tradition of the global intellectual commons.” We have looked here before at how OCW has shaped education in the last ten years, but in many ways much of the content that has been posted online remains very much “Web 1.0.” But as open educational resources and OCW increase in popularity and usage, there are a number of new resources out there that do offer just that.
