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New Electronics Series from Becky Stern
My old Make: colleague, Becky Stern, has a new video series that she’s doing for the electronics component company, Digi-Key. Becky has always done an impressive job of explaining what can be intimidating technical information in an entertaining and digestible way. If this first installment, an introduction to LEDs, is any indication, this series looks to deliver more of her welcome brand of accessible tech education.
How to Get Clearer and Stronger Transparent FDM Prints
In this CNC Kitchen video, Stefan shows the special settings you can use to create superior-looking clear prints using an FDM (Fused deposition modeling)printer and clear filament. He also looks at how these parameters make your parts super strong.
Making Your Own Vinyl Stickers
If you’ve been attracted to the idea of creating your own custom vinyl stickers, this video shows you how. All you basically need is a crafting vinyl cutter (a few hundred dollars) and some sheets or rolls of vinyl material.
CA Glue Accelerator from Baking Soda and Water
One of the best takeaways from this Bill Making Stuff video (where he celebrates his 50th episode) is his tip for creating your own accelerator for CA glue. As you likely know, there are commercial accelerators, but they smell funny, have nasty stuff in them, and are combustible. You’re even supposed to wear eye protection when using them, though nobody does. You may also know about using baking soda as an accelerator. It works great, but it leaves a dusty powder on everything that you have to clean off. Bill mixes his baking soda with water in a spray bottle and has found that it works great and creates less mess. I will definitely be trying this.
How a Gas Pump Knows When to Turn Itself Off
If you’ve ever wondered how a gas pump nozzle knows when to shut off when your tank is full, this video reveals the clever design. Venturi tubes, Bernoulli principle, negative pressure — it turns out the design is far more complicated that you might expect. I always assumed it was some sort of an electronic sensor, but it’s purely mechanical.
“I was surprised to see a recommendation for the OXO sink strainer. I love OXO products, but that strainer is a disappointment to me. I do like the inversion feature, but stuff still gets stuck in and around the holes. The silicone gets slimy. I have black slime after a week in my kitchen drain, probably from teensy bits of lettuce and herbs and salad dressing. UGH. (Cleaning out the bowl with a paper towel before washing it seems to help.) I don’t know that a standard issue strainer would make me any happier (though I’d love to quit using so many paper towels). I’m glad yours pleases you; my experience is just different.”
This is a great example of that adage made popular by early hacker culture: “Your mileage may vary” (YMMV). When I posted my review of the strainer on Boing Boing, the first few responses were similar to Candy’s and I got nervous, thinking I had prematurely decided a tool was a winner without giving it an honest testing myself. But then the positive reviews came and they were the overwhelming sentiment. And on Amazon, it has 17.5K reviews at 4.7 stars. After a month, we are more than happy with ours, but, as in all things, YMMV. Thanks for sharing your experience, Candy!
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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.
CarMax is a great source for when you are in the market for a certified, warranted, used vehicle. I don’t know of any other dealership where you can test drive a used car, in excellent condition, and not have to go through a hard sell sales pitch, or a torturous bargaining phase when you decide to purchase it. The no-bargain price is right on the vehicles, and is often quite a bargain (with notable exceptions, so you have to do your independent price-point research ahead of time). The salespeople have no incentive to make a hard sell because of the way their commissions are set, and the fixed prices (so don’t bother bargaining). Additionally, if you decide within five days of your purchase that it was not the right car for you, you can return it for a full refund, regardless of how much you drove it (and yes, I have actually tested this out) with no reason needed beyond simply that you didn’t like the car. They also make a similar no-bargaining, no-low-balling offer for your trade-in, and let you know with 30-45 minutes exactly what they are willing to pay you for your car. And, as it should be, the two transactions don’t have to be tied to each other. They also have a decent website that lets you find the car you want nearby, or sign up to be notified via e-mail if a car matching your criteria shows up in their lots. Their Service Centers also seem to be squeaky clean and very impressive. They seem to be the elusive Car Dealership with a Conscience. My advice to anyone looking to buy or sell a used car, it behooves you to at least see what CarMax has to offer before making your final decision. — Surkhab Niazi
To find the best deal when buying a new car I use The Autoline. I can’t recommend them highly enough. For a modest fee they will find the car you want (or recommend the car you should buy based on your budget and requirements) and call you back with the best no-haggle price they can find. (They also do leases.) I’ve used them four times now and am very happy with the results. Each time they’ve arranged for dealer to deliver the car to my house, so I never have to set foot in the dealership or hassle with the guy who pressures you to buy useless “clear coat” and other pure profit add-ons.
Don’t be put off by their 1993-style website — all business is conducted by phone and email. — Mark Frauenfelder
Getting quotes from Get Used Parts is nice and all but for the more hands-on “just give me the info” approach, Car-Part.com is a better fit. It actually gives you a list of all the places that have your part, their prices, condition etc with contact information for the seller and you can filter the results by area or state. A lot of parts are too big/heavy to ship or cost prohibitive so it helps to find nearby sellers. They even have a handy tool to help you figure out what a part is called if you don’t know.
The prices quoted online have been accurate and the parts are almost always available when you contact the seller. Most places have 800 numbers so its no big deal to call a few if need be or to find the best shipping prices. My dad has found several items to repair our family’s cars and has been happy with them. Of course the shipping costs, accuracy of item descriptions, etc will vary depending on the seller, but we haven’t had any issues to date. — Isaac Good
After recently being involved in a minor fender-bender that resulted in a cracked tail light on my Subaru, I found that replacement parts would cost about $300 brand-new. A thorough web search confirmed that no lower prices could be found for new parts. Then I thought of trying to find the parts from a junkyard, but soon realized that would involve calling all of the junkyards in my area and then traveling to get the part, if one could be found. So I did what any person would do in this day and age and searched Google for used or salvaged auto parts and found this website. Once I entered in the year, make, model of my car and the exact part I needed, I received a phone call a half our later from a junkyard in Alabama that had exactly what I needed. They sent me the part for $95, including shipping.
There are several other sites that do essentially the same thing, i.e. use a standardized format to send a parts request to multiple junkyards and salvage lots around the country. I use this one because it has the nicest interface and I received the best and fastest quote on the parts I needed. One thing I noticed in using these sites is that they all used the same software for selecting the year, make, model of the car and parts needed. Some entrepreneurial software company must have identified this niche and they now monopolize the market for this specialized type of software. — Jason Spitzer
For the last five years I’ve used a synthetic chamois called The Absorber to dry my boat and cars. It is so good I can’t bear to use anything else. It holds more water and absorbs faster than towels or real chamois. The chamois I used years ago had to be thoroughly dried out after use or it would rot, and when dry, was hard to store. Then you had to get it wet before use and wring it out frequently since it didn’t hold much water. A towel, once wet, doesn’t leave a dry surface (all those spots). The Absorber when moderately wet leaves your surface utterly dry. It’s kind of amazing, really.
After you’re done using it, just fold it in half, roll it up wet and tuck it in its hard plastic storage tube. It says you can machine wash it but I haven’t tried that myself.
On the company website, you can read details on its PVA open-cell material. The company claims that the product is “the best drying tool you’ll ever discover” and I have to agree it is — it is superior drying technology. I now own four of them in different colors. The site says you can use it to dry pets but I have never tried it on my dog (she’s a short hair model and doesn’t really need it), but I will try it on myself. —Steve Leveen
Winding Road is a free digital car magazine that arrives once per month — you can either view it online in flash or download it in PDF. Apparently the magazine hired away some of the good writers from the other well-known car magazines. They are doing a pretty decent job. The magazine has cool videos and audio interviews throughout, and the photos are very good. They also have a daily news site. With Winding Road I can get all the car magazine stuff I need, without having to pay, and they never asked me for a credit card number or any of that. I’ve cancelled my Car and Driver subscription because I don’t need it anymore. — Roy Nesseth
We had the Smart EV for several parade loops around Brooklyn and Manhattan, and certainly the cars were 100 percent in their element here. We do completely adore the in-cabin sitting-at-the-wheel relationship; it’s still near perfect and tremendously comfortable. The spatial attitude of the driver and our view out of the car are both near perfect in urban situations as well.
Acceleration to 37 miles per hour is quoted at 6.5 seconds, and top speed is capped at just 62 mph. That speed cap will keep drivers from routinely sucking the 16.5-Kwh, Tesla-Daimler lithium-ion battery pack dry, and thus falling way short of the quoted 82-mile range. The transmission is just an on/off switch really, with a single-speed system overseeing things. This automatically makes the ForTwo ED better than the gas-powered sibling, as the five-speed simplistic SofTouch automatic is, frankly, quite an awful experience.
Another mixed message: until the 2013 model year, these initial Smart ForTwo ED cars are available only on exorbitant 48-month leases at $599 per month. That’s $28,752 total, but the federal income tax credit is bound to be for the full $7500 possible,thus bringing the take down to $21,252 or, in the end, about $4,000 less than the base Nissan Leaf.
Evo has gotten an early drive of the BMW i8 prototype in northern Sweden.When driving, there is a whine from the three-cylinder motor, but it isn’t what one would consider bad. They describe it as sounding a bit like an early Porsche 911.
Volvo has introduced a new engine family called Drive-E with two offerings, one of which is both turbocharged andsupercharged.
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