In this TronicsFix video, Steve buys 7 broken NES game cartridges, priced from $5 – $30, to see how hard it is to fix them. Most of the repairs come down to cleaning the “golden finger” contacts on the edge of the circuit boards and Steve finds that a combo of pink eraser, IPA on a Q-tip, and a metal polishing cloth does the trick. One game had badly corroded pins on a chip and was therefore DOA, another had a short in one of the chips (same), a few required jumping wires to repair broken copper traces. But, in the end, only a couple of the games were beyond basic repairs.
Awesome Woodworking Tips from Lloyd Khan
When I was a teen, I was obsessed with the Whole Earth Catalogs and completely enamored with the work of often-featured designer-builders like Jay Baldwin, Greg Baer, Malcolm Wells, and Lloyd Khan. Khan was responsible for the very WEC-like outsized Shelter publications, featuring crazy, cool, and arty owner-built dwellings. Lloyd is still around, still doing his thing. His Instagram is worth a follow. This particular post is loaded with a number of high-quality construction tips.
Getting to Know the 555 Timer Chip
In this DroneBot Workshop they provide a clear and concise 42-minute introduction to the ubiquitous and versatile 555 timer chip. They discuss how the 555 works, its various modes, and some of the basic projects you can use it in.
A Chemist Explains How Super Glue Works
Brent, of the excellent game crafting and miniature painting channel, Goobertown Hobbies, also has a Ph.D. in chemistry. In this video on his channel, he explains the chemistry behind cyanoacrylate (aka Super Glue) and how the glue actually works.
Electroplating 3D Prints
Via Donald Bell’sMaker Update comes a recommendation for this article on Makezine about how to create faux chrome finishes on 3D prints. The process involves lots of sanding and smoothing of the print, a spray with a copper conductive paint, then an electroplating bath. The results are pretty spectacular.
Testing and Ranking Heavy-Duty Staplers
In this Project Farm video, Todd tests out 14 different brands of heavy-duty staplers. He looks at units from Makita, Milwaukee, Ryobi, Arrow, DeWalt, WorkPro, Bauer, Neu Master, Ework, Bielmeier, Stanley, and Citadel. The staplers were compared for resistance to jams, stapling speed, capability to drive staples into spruce, oak, and composite decking. Bottom line? The Ryobi performed very well and offers the best value, at $84 (at time of testing). The stapler that tested best overall was the Makita, at a whopping $210 at time of testing.
Shop Talk
Newsletter reader Paul Cryan asks:“How do you know if a tip you’ve come across is original enough to report?”Good question, Paul. A lot of it comes down to experience and intuition. I’ve been writing in the DIY space for over 30 years, so I have some sense of the saturation of tips and techniques that are shared. But ultimately, I don’t sweat “originality” as much as I do practicality. If it’s a great tip, even if it’s been around for a while, even a very long while, it’s worth sharing with those for whom it’s new and as a reminder to those who may already know it. I see tips all the time that serve as a reminder for me to finally break down and try it out (or bring it back into my work flow).
***
I got a lot of responses to my “Shop Talk” post about areas of DIY where you say “Hell, no, get me a pro.” Everyone seemed to be on the same page. Reader Craig best summarized the responses I received:“My dad did almost no home or auto repairs. Not because he didn’t know how, but because he freakin’ hated doing them. Mom, however, might have been able to build a house with a pocketknife and a pair of vise grips. She just had skills…lots of them.”I have done a wide spectrum of things but as I’ve gotten older, I triage everything:If I want to try something, I do.If I don’t want to, I don’t.If it absolutely must be done and I don’t want to do it, I hire it out.No guilt, just a depleted treasury.”
Become a Patron!Support our reviews, videos, and podcasts on Patreon!
Cool tools really work.
A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
In 1958 and ‘59, an unprecedented study was conducted by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley. The idea was to apply the latest psychological tests on the world’s most famous and accomplished architects to try and determine what makes them so creative and successful. In studying them, could some magical key to creativity be discovered?
Astoundingly, some 40 major architects volunteered, including Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, George Nelson, Louis Kahn, and A. Quincy Jones. The group spent three days being subjected to a battery of tests, sitting for interviews, even evaluating the creative and design prowess of each other. While the idea was to publish the results of the tests at the time, besides some news and fluff pieces about the study, and some superficial conclusions about the nature of the creative impulse that drove these design superstars, the full results of the study have remained unpublished until this impressive new release from Monacelli Press.
The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study is a lovely and thought-provoking time-capsule of a book. Through its numerous black and white photos and reprints of the research materials, correspondences between the subjects of the study and the psychologists, and news clippings of the day, the book paints a surprisingly evocative picture of this unique study and the era in which it was conducted. Reading the test results, in the architects’ own hands, and the evaluations of the researchers, is fascinating.
So, what conclusions did the study finally reach? Nothing earth shattering. Going into the study, the research group had circulated a list of “genius” attributes from a 1957 book about Freud, which included things like “the power of deep concentration, tremendous patience, and self-discipline…” and “ability to generalize from the particular and to separate the significant from the unimportant…” Drawn from the data, the conclusion of the study: “What propels creativity is the unfettered expression of the self,” “finding the solution to a problem is not sufficient to bring them personal satisfaction: there is a further demand for the solution to be elegant,” and the discovery that creative individuals “consistently safeguard their self-determination in order to stay their course and pursue what interests them no matter what, in a fierce escape from conformism of thought and behavior.”
The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study doesn’t contain any easy, replicable recipes for living a creative life, for becoming a design god. But what it does do is curate a captivating collection of literal and figurative snapshots from a peak time in design history and the creative genius that drove it. And that is ultimately very inspiring.
HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES – NEIL GAIMAN AT HIS BEST WITH FANTASTIC CHARACTER MOMENTS
How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neiman Gaiman (author), Gabriel Bá (illustrator), and Fábio Moon (illustrator) Dark Horse Books 2016, 64 pages, 6.9 x 10.5 x 0.4 inches
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name, originally published in his collection Fragile Things. As adaptations go, this one tells the story pretty exactly as it was done by Gaiman. Two teens named Enn and Vic go to a party with the intention of picking up girls. Vic is handsome and confident, while Enn is shy and awkward. Enn doesn’t know how to talk to girls, and this becomes the central problem of the story. His attempts to seem cool and desirable are both humorous and relatable to anybody who has ever tried talking to a potential love interest. As the night moves on, it becomes clear that something is amiss at this party, but exactly what is unknown to Enn, and a little ambiguous to the reader.
I really like this book. At first glance it might seem like an odd choice for a comic – the story doesn’t reach the heights of some of Gaiman’s other work, for example. But it’s short and sweet and so unique. The story is Gaiman at his best in terms of information release and character moments. You’re never completely ahead of the plot and it is so easy to sympathize with Enn’s awkwardness. The charm of the original story was Gaiman’s ability to play with a young man’s feeling that girls were practically another species, and that aspect thrives in this version. In terms of visual storytelling and artistic prowess, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá are absolute masters, and I cannot recommend their work here enough. They have an incredible ability to draw worlds that look like reality, but maybe just a few degrees more fantastic. What perfect partners for Gaiman’s work.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties gets my highest recommendation, both for fans of Gaiman and/or Moon & Bá as well as fans of unique sci-fi. It’s a short book you can breeze through pretty quickly, and then immediately restart to find more hints of what’s really going on. A film adaptation directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Rabbit Hole) is set to debut in 2017, so at the very least this interesting comic will prepare you for the film. – Alex Strine
