MetaFilter posts tagged with diy

Window Farmers

chasing — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:08:59 -0800

Window Farms is a DIY urban agriculture project started in New York. It's not just about changing the way we think about plants in urban contexts — it's also about creating a kind of "open-source" approach to solving eco-urban challenges. (Treehugger has some more context.)

The folks behind Window Farms are now trying to take it to the next level using everyone's favorite new funding platform, Kickstarter. (Including a cute intro video which is worth checking out.)

And if window farming ain't your thing, maybe one of their other DIY projects is more up your alley...

Got a push broom? Here's some Beethoven.

jeanmari — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:33:39 -0800

Atrapa-sons, an amusing and educational television show from TV3 Catalonia in Spain, entertains you with musical numbers creatively composed using ordinary household objects, including rakes, potatoes, surgical gloves, forearm crutches, and brooms. Grab some pots and spoons and join in!

Changing your change

quin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:52:35 -0800

Turn a silver coin into a ring with a hammer, an anvil (or something similar), and a drill.

Roll your own Solar Cell

mccarty.tim — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:04:58 -0800

Make your own solar cell out of powdered donuts, Everclear, Tazo Passion tea, and other common ingredients. (slyt) Sure, it's not practical for anything, but hey, at least you get an idea of how solar panels are made and work.

DIY Forge

plinth — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:15:21 -0800

DIY Forges: not forgery, but making your own smithy. There are plenty of variations available, but there's something special when a teenage boy builds his own forge and teaches himself black smithing.

Road...Passive-Aggressiveness

Taft — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:54:58 -0800

Crafty driver tries to curb road rage. The result: the "Sorry" and "Thanks" blinkers.

NOLA Cycle Project

liketitanic — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:10:31 -0800

One effect of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was to render existing bike maps of the city obsolete and incomplete. The NOLA Cycle Bike Map Project is a grassroots effort to create a comprehensive, freely-available bicycle map for New Orleans (like those that already exist for Chicago, Portland, and other cities). Because the project is driven by DIY maps produced by individuals and by volunteer social events organized around mapping different locations that can then be added to the project's database, it's been described as "Wiki-style involvement in the real world." (Here's some video of the project.) The project began as an undergraduate capstone project for planning student Lauren Sullivan at the University of Cincinnati. Sullivan moved to New Orleans as part of Cincinnati's innovative co-op education program, and, once there, found the city difficult to bike in without a good map--"We do have a lot of fast roads, a lot of dangerous roads and roads with a lot of potholes," she told the Times-Picayune when the project began in 2008. "But then we also have a lot of good hidden neighborhood roads." She modeled the project on Youthline America's Mapping America project, in which high school students are sent out to map their neighborhood resources. By June of this year, most of Orleans Parish, including the 9th Ward, was mapped; data is now being entered into ArcGIS while Sullivan and volunteers design and release prototypes. A mini-grant from the Crescent City Farmers' Market's Crescent Fund has defrayed some costs. This initiative, along with the 2009 Louisiana DOTD Statewide Pedestrian and Cyclist Master Plan and the efforts of homegrown bike co-ops and advocacy organizations, are all gradually making New Orleans a friendlier place to bike.

My scraper bike go hard / I don't need no car

aniola — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:28:12 -0800

"There's people from literally across the world making these bikes, from Portland, Oregon, to Japan to Australia to Jamaica." The "Scraper Bike King" talks about the DIY community-oriented movement (YT), which started in Oakland was popularized with this video and covered by NPR.

Reuse, Recycle, and ROCK

ocherdraco — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:07:59 -0800

Electric Junkyard Gamelan is the brainchild of bandleader and composer Terry Dame, and fuses Dame's passions of composing, inventing and building. Originally inspired by traditional Gamelan music from Bali, the group recycles and repurposes everyday objects into musical instruments. While some of their songs do indeed resemble the hypnotic percussive melodies of a Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra (The Nutbutter Challenge), other tunes strike out into new, distinctly urban American directions (Ode to Fred Beans). Following the band's motto, "Reuse, Recycle and ROCK," instruments are fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters, clay pots, saw blades and truck springs. The "Big Barp" rubber-band harp makes a particularly unusual sound. Watching the band play is a fundamental part of enjoying their music:

At the Cleveland Bridge Project (Part 2, Part 3)
"Cark Nogg" and "Big Barp" in Baltimore at the Metro Gallery
At the Chicago World Music Festival in Daley Plaza

Brooklyn Independent Television interviewed the band, with lots of great description about how they play; there's another great interview (with lots of great music) with David Garland on WNYC's Spinning on Air (where I first heard of the band). You can find photos of the band on Flickr to get a closer look at their instruments. Electric Junkyard Gamelan has three albums (Life on Marz, Live from HERE, and the self-titled Electric Junkyard Gamelan). Live in New York? They're performing tonight at Joe's Pub. Sources for the descriptions in the main part of this post: EJG's about the band page, this post on Music for Maniacs, and yesterday's epsiode description at Spinning On Air.

Wonderful, cheap musical instruments

mecran01 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:41:36 -0800

From bagpipes to xylophones, Dennis Havlena's legendary website will show you how to make musical instruments, cheaply. Some of them sound pretty good [YouTube].

Vintage Cycling Board Games

OmieWise — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:35:34 -0800

A huge collection of vintage cycling board games. The main site also has resources for rolling your own cycling game.

Sesame Street - 35 years + DIY = Sunshine Again

not_on_display — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:02:19 -0800

Sunshine Again is a lo-fi/DIY public Access re-imagination of oldschool 1970's children's television, produced by Heather Ferreira, an independent producer whose mission is to "ignore what network television is doing and start a New York-based cable net of my own, specializing in shows that look and feel a lot like shows on Nick@Nite and TV Land used to – except these will be all brand-new shows." [ more info | appreciation and funky video | Youtube Search for more Sunshine Again ]

seeking to incite select individuals from the public at large, perhaps you

Potomac Avenue — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:53:05 -0800

Under the rainbow: an introduction to the off-kilter world of Mark Jenkins. Since Tapemen in 2005 (previously on Metafilter) he's progressed to more realistic individuals embedded in strange and stressful situations.

I'm just a boy with a new haircut (and that's a pretty nice haircut)

porn in the woods — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:03:52 -0800

With today's economy, DIY haircuts are gaining in popularity. Flowbees and electric clipper sales are up. Did you see the drummer's hair?*

Bottle rockets. No punks.

loquacious — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:30:05 -0800

Pssst. Hey, kid. Check out these bottle rockets. You can make them yourself . Via: Make.

1990s dance music covers: reviled, acclaimed, maimed and shamed

filthy light thief — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:21:29 -0800

Free Friday Frantic (Music) Fun: Ergo Phizmiz & The Midnight Florists cover five 1990s chartbusting, dancefloor filling smash hits with arrangements of acoustic, electronic, homemade, and toy instruments. [More musical mischief inside] The five tracks are hosted on WMFU's Free Music Archive, discussed last year when the FMA started up. This EP is via Music for Maniacs, who previously was the source for a link to the J Marimba Ponies performing Khachaturian's Sabre Dance. Original versions: Deee-Lite - "Groove Is In The Heart" (1990) Culture Beat - "Mr Vain" (1993) Eiffel 65 - "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" (1999) (plus the intro to Fresh Prince of Bel Air thrown in for good measure) (1990) C & C Music Factory - "Gonna Make You Sweat" (1990) Lou Bega - "Mambo No 5" (1999) Snap - "Rhythm Is A Dancer" (1992) Ergo Phizmiz was discussed previously, first for his groups cover of "White Light, White Heat" (the songs can now be found on this newer blog post, which also includes 9 covers of Aphex Twin and 6 modern R&B [Arff & Beef] covers), and later for his collaborative work on the 14-part podcast about the history and practice of sound collage and mashups. Still looking for more audio oddities from Ergo Phizmiz and associates? His discography on F.M.A. includes: - five scenes from Cervantes' "Don Quixote" in an imaginary ballet setting - 55 minutes of instrumental music from the forthcoming 10 part Ergo Phizmiz radio-art cycle "The House of Dr Faustus" - three short pieces of "personal agitprop" that formed as a "result of increasingly frequent comings to verbal blows with intrusive and arrogant neighbours" - a pilot for a project-in-progress in children's radio that features Ergo's daughters - a short little something that is a tribute to Nicolas Cage Oh, and almost 6 hours from the Collected Radio Works by Ergo Phizmiz.

Bonus Level

boo_radley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:26:14 -0800

bonus level is a new flash gaming portal. Games include Captain Dan V Zombie Plan, reminiscent of Berzerk, Push, an unusual platformer that combines level manipulation with quick-reflex timing and jumping, Jump Gear, an acrobatic timed racer and a ton more I haven't even tried yet. What sets bonus level apart from other gaming portals is that it's headed by three great names in game development, Wouter Visser (Wouter), Tõnu Paldra (tonypa) and Jean-Philippe Sarda (JP). Part of their philosophy is allowing anyone who registers to make and share levels for their games, as well as giving budding designers access to the flash APIs used to create all of bonus level's games.

Duct Tape FTW

fearfulsymmetry — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:54:43 -0800

There, I Fixed It - "Epic Kludges + Adventures In Home Pwnership"

"All I got in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break either of 'em for nobody!"

bigmusic — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:43:12 -0800

Before the mouse, there was the trackball. Built for DATAR in 1952, DATAR turned out to be a complete failure. The next user interface device that used a ball was the mouse at Xeroc Parc in 1972. Trackballs are a dying breed of interface devices. But sometimes a trackball just seems more natural choice for certain applications - not so obvious for others. Would you sit on one?

Let's go in the kitchen and make a game.

tula — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:00:49 -0800

Pencil Rebel is a little bitty point-n-click interactive adventure hand-wired with LEDs and simple circuit boards, and made with hand-cut and decorated cardboard, plasticine, string, and other household odd and ends. The artist, Grzegorz Kozakiewicz, has also made a (with spoilers!) video showing his process.

Return from orbit is simply the reverse of takeoff.

1f2frfbf — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:12:09 -0800

The Haynes Workshop Manuals are a series of practical instructional repair manuals aimed at both the DIY enthusiast or shade-tree mechanic and the professional garage repairman. In that spirit, they offer the following guides to repair and service the following: The Spitfire Fighter (no, not that one), The Lancaster Bomber and the Apollo modules.

Technomadics

Ogre Lawless — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:45:59 -0800

Inspiration to do something with your holiday weekend: Steven K. Roberts is an interesting guy with a bit of a hobby problem. In 1983 his recumbent bike sported "only" a security system, lights, a CB radio and a state-of-the-art TRS80/100 laptop. Winnebikeo would eventually evolve into BEHEMOTH, the "Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine... Only Too Heavy". BEHEMOTH incorporated (amongst other things) HUD, cooling system, small Sun SPARCstation, HAM Radio, credit card verifier, bubblejet printer, hydraulic disk brakes... Eventually Roberts discovered that BEHEMOTH was developing a life of its own as he worked through trade shows and talk circuits. Feeling that bicycling still constrained one to roads and rest stops, he turned to kayaking. Of course, not much room in a kayak for modding...well, enough. Roberts has more recently turned to a number of larger vessels, including the S/V Nomadness. In between kitting out vehicles he's made a portable universal comm device for the modern era, written a bunch of tech articles and keeps up a blog on his multitudinous ongoing projects.

Feeling all the bumpers, always playing clean

caddis — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:27:18 -0800

Make your own pinball machine. The art of pinball machines is in decline, but some folks endeavor to keep it alive. From the basic, to the the full blown experience, these guys do it their way. DIY pinball goodness.

Summer's coming. Time for invisible dye.

Ery — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:20:38 -0800

Sunscreen's a pain, but sunburn is worse. UV-protective clothing is expensive and not to everyone's taste. Instead, treat your own cotton, rayon, or silk clothing to make it sun-protective. Some clothing is inherently protective, but you can easily burn right through a new shirt, especially if it gets wet. A couple of boxes of either of two different brands of a wash-in UVA/UVB blocker will invisibly increase the SPF of a whole washer-load of clothing from 5 to 30 (repeat for an SPF of 50). The stuff wears off after a season's worth of launderings, so use a permanent marker to note the year of treatment inside the collars.

I, Zombie

debord — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:47:42 -0800

Colin is a new British horror film told from a Zombie's point of view. It was made for £45 and apparently it went down well at Cannes . Peter Jackson's first film Bad Taste did a similar thing. This documentary features Jackson's parents talking about taking the film to France.