Build Your Own Electric Guitar – A List of Instructions and Resources
Building your own musical instrument is a project of immense pride and skill. And there aren’t many instruments cooler than the electric guitar. Here are some great sites with instructions on how to build your own:
Rick Eesley’s page – Lots of detail and info. Shows three kick ass looking guitars he’s built.
Instructables – Very highly rated set of notes
Project Guitar – Tons of resources for anyone undertaking this type of project
How to build a Les Paul, the hard way – The GOD of electric guitars. Warning, some links are broken
DIY Lamp From Translucent Vinyl 45s – Instructable
Found another great instructable at instructables.com. Perfect project for the music fan.
Lamp made from translucent 45 records – More DIY How To Projects
Remote Camera Triggering DIY Hack Using Long-range Walkie Talkies
Want to snap photos from a remote location, up to a kilometer away from your rig? Here’s a fairly cheap and easy project using common walkie-talkie radios to allow you to trigger your DSLR from long distance. The comments on DIYphotography.com have some suggestions on how to minimize the lag time, too.
The Awesome Foundation Gives you $1000 to do Something Awesome
Have an awesome idea and need $1000 to make it happen? Apply for the awesome grant – http://awesomefoundation.org/
Submit an awesome idea. If we pick it, we’ll give you $1,000 in cash. Yup, $1,000. Cash. Maybe even in a brown paper bag. You’ll also get access to coworking space at BetaHouse for the month of your grant. The only condition is that you be willing to tell us (and some of our friends) about what you did a month later. If we don’t pick it, don’t stress, we’ll pick a new awesome idea next month.
Train Versus Tornado Video Clip – Frighteningly Awesome
Not much to “do” through this video, but maybe something not to do: be on a train during a tornado.
My Interview with Diana Eng in Wired Magazine
(Shortcut to the article here.)
A few years back while working at Wired magazine, I put together a “Project Runway Fantasy League” so that the staffers and I would have an interactive way to discuss the show during our breakfast TV recaps. It was a fun and challenging competition that I designed to lampoon the boneheadedness of sporting fantasy leagues. And it was a huge hit in the office.
This led the editors asking me to find and interview Diana Eng, the awesomely techie P.R. contestant/designer from RISD who was striving to meld fashion with technology. The overview: with no budget or time constraints, what would her three top design projects be?
Turns out that Diana was a big Wired fan (no surprise) and happy to contribute. Her answers were wonderfully geeky and she sent in gorgeous sketches of the designs, which got the article a full page in the magazine. It’s still one of my favorite accomplishments. Here is the content of the article.
When aspiring designer Diana Eng got bumped from the fashion-design reality show Project Runway a couple months ago, geeky hearts sank. Who else could turn an interest in wearable computing and a flair for biomimetics into a chance to hang with Heidi Klum? Now that Eng’s out, she’s thinking about what to do next. We seized the opportunity and asked her to come up with three fantasy outfits that take advantage of technologies still in the lab – free of budget restrictions and 12-hour deadlines. – Mike Senese
Another Awesome Instructable Project: Solar Powered Trike
Soon as production ends on the current season, I’ll be building this. Totally rad.
Tomato Garden, Week Three
At the start of march, I planted eight tomato plants. Let’s check in and see how they’re doing.
For comparisons sake, here’s Roma 1, the day it was planted.
iPhone Headset Won’t Work? It’s Stuck in Headphone Mode – Here’s the Fix
Discovering that the person on the other end of the phone can’t hear you talk, especially while driving on the freeway, is frustrating, scary and dangerous. Is your headset broken? Is it the iPhone itself? Do you need to repair or replace? Very frustrating.
However, as I recently learned, it’s likely a simple issue called “headphone mode” – the setting the iPhone automatically switches into when you listen to music with standard headphones (not the headset with the microphone and button). If the headphones are removed the wrong way (what that is, I do not know), the iPhone might think you still have them inserted and won’t respond correctly when you try to use the earpiece.
A call to the Apple technician recommended rapidly plugging and unplugging the headphones. However, that didn’t work for me. The other option was to restore the iPhone, erasing all my contacts, photos, etc.
Before doing that, I tried one last thing that worked immediately. Here’s what to do:
- Put your iPhone into iPod mode with the headphones plugged in
- Unplug the headphones. iPhone goes back to regular mode.
Voila, the problem is solved. Enjoy.
Hi, I'm Mike. I’m the executive editor of Make: magazine, and host of Discovery channel’s Punkin' Chunkin' and Catch It Keep It, TV shows where I build and explain crazy machines that crush stuff, blow things up, shoot fire, all in the name of science.
I've previously worked at Wired and ReadyMade magazines, writing about how to utilize new technology in our everyday lives.
This site is where I keep a list of instructions for fun projects I've done, am working on, or draw inspiration from. I encourage everyone to get involved — get up and do something!