Last last year I ran across the following article in IEEE Spectrum: Tools for Would-Be Biohackers. Since I have a daughter with interests in Biology, I considered getting her one of these “mini-labs” as a Christmas gift. The high cost had me wondering if this was an outrageous idea. It works out that adjusting for inflation, …
Continue reading “Is DIY-BIO the Personal Computing of the 21st Century?”
We purchased a Rigidbot during their Kickstarter campaign last year, and it arrived in the middle of last week. It took 8.5 months longer than projected, but frankly by Kickstarter standards that’s not bad. Since it was so close to the end of the kids’ school year, I saved it as a project for the …
About four months ago I mentioned that we were having the Kim’s bathroom remodeled. Here we are 4 months later, and I’m still fixing problems the contractor left after ‘finishing the job’. The amount of time is my fault, but the amount of FAIL is his. Mis-installed light switch – works…sometimes Missing toilet gasket – …
Ok, I admit that I enjoy making things with my hands, but I also suck at finishing DIY projects. Therefore, I usually punt on anything that is time/mission-critical to life, and just pay someone to do the work. At the moment, we have contractors at Kim’s house remodeling the upstairs bathroom. Anyone who’s been in …
We’ve been having problems with our Toyota Highlander temperature controls. The system would blow hot/cold air randomly. Messing with the controls would get the correct temperature for a few minutes or seconds and then back to random temps. Luckly, the Internet has lots of documentation on this problem: http://www.devalcourt.com/2010/03/fixing-2004-toyota-highlander-ac-and-heat-issue/ http://www.tundrasolutions.com/forums/highlander/32217-heater-quit-sort-of/ I followed the directions online …
The best thing about the iPad is that it removes the clutter from reading. Traditionally, there’s a stack of books next to my bed that I’m currently “reading”, which is to say that I’ve started them, and not finished any. With the iPad (and the iPhone before it), I have that stack of books in …
I’m a bit odd when it comes to car repair. I like to get my hands dirty, but I’m not really reliable enough to accomplish all the work I need to do on the cars. The result is that my Corrado is constantly in need of some attention, and recently that attention is almost exclusively …
For years I’ve been looking for a good screw extractor. So far I’ve had the most success with these: Grabit Screw Removers. While working with several stripped screws (mostly small aluminum and light steel), it removed all but one when used as per directions. I don’t think I’d try removing a screw that has the …
I get too much spam. Specifically, my home account gets close to 500 spam messages a day. Normally, I rely on SpamSieve on my Macbook Pro to filter all that noise, and it does a pretty good job (on average 1 spam a day makes it through). But now that I’m also getting my e-mail …
Since I’ve started running Leopard the backup situation on my computer systems has gotten much better. It’s not just that Apple has created a slam-dunk solution in Time Machine (trust me it rocks). Or even that Time Machine is a complete backup solution (it isn’t). But that Time Machine has inspired me to get all …