Possibly you can save thousands on a designer handbag. For example this Gucci Soho leather hobo has a price tag of $1,980. I know, I know...it's the status of carrying around a pricey bag with a well known brand. But one can always step out of that game into the game of being a creator. Maybe even charge thousands for your own creations. Even design your own brand--but that's another story.
A diverse collection of do-it-yourself purses/handbags/bags can be found at craftgawker. Here's one for a reversible purse from Martha Stewart; her site is a wealth of other types of DIY projects, as well.
Nicole at You SEW Girl! offers patterns in PDF format for sale. She also has a couple of books out, one titled The Better Bag Maker. A business idea, maybe?
For those of you challenged by sewing machines (I learned to lean into it or be stuck with the same old off-the-rack clothes or no new clothes at all), here's a no-sew project by Handimania, a channel on YouTube. One thing about this design that troubles me is the possibility that putting any weight in the bag will cause it to eventually lose the items. It seems a good idea to seal the bottom with washable fabric glue or tape. You can find some at Amazon. (Aleene's Fabric Fusion Tape seems to be popular.)
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Another rich resource for free bag patterns is It's Sew Easy by Maebh Walsh.
Tote bags and simple handbags are an excellent first projects for beginners.
The other day my repair guy installed a new cartridge in the kitchen faucet because it was dripping. Unfortunately, when he was done, the hot and cold streams were reversed. He was mystified; I said I'll check it on the web. Apparently the problem is not unusual. After typing in "moen faucet hot cold reversed" and selecting the Google search result that seemed to most apply, I landed at the terrylove.com DIY forum. There one person said "Pull the cartridge out and reverse it 180 degrees." (In other words turn it over.) Another said "Just remove the handle and turn the stem 180 degrees." The moderator said that reversing the cartridge won't work. So repair guy rotated the stem 180 and -- voila! Now I don't have to doublethink where hot and cold are. Sweet.
This brings me to troubleshooting using the web. There's an article at Wikipedia giving techniques for troubleshooting. On the web it sometimes takes a few tries to get the search terms that will zero in on the information you want. For example, to troubleshoot Firefox, try "troubleshoot Firefox <space>" and see what Google suggests. Check some of the suggestions to see if you're getting close to the problem you have in mind, then rephrase the search as needed. (Note that Firefox may be a poor example because there is excellent tech support at Mozilla support.) ***
While there are happy accidents, most creations start with an idea and proceed to a plan. Here are some ideas for this year's Halloween costume. Mostly I'm offering parts of costumes for you to mix-and-match as you choose. My idea of a cool costume is a black unitard (or tights and leotard) with some cover-up for eye-appeal 'correction' and an outrageous hat. Maybe add an angel wing shrug ($26.80) depending on the theme of the outfit.
At weebly.com there are frou frou tutus--ready-made, custom-made, and kits. Prices average from 15 to 30 dollars. ***
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Relache's lens at Squidoo, "Make Your Own Fairy Wings," has advice and instructions on making and embellishing wings and links for buying them. You can use stuff often found at home (provided you usually have duct tape and pink stockings on hand) in these instructions from DIYnetwork. ***
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My best find of the day, though, is Savers Thrift Stores, a network of thrift shops. There's a store locator (Anchorage has, count 'em, 3 stores listed!) and some really good costume ideas. ***
If you google "diy publishing book," it looks like everyone in the world wants to help you do it -- for a fee. That aside, more and more authors are electing to self-publish. The story quoted below -- about author Theresa Ragan -- is from an article in Huffington Post and explains why authors choose to self-publish.
For nineteen years she was mostly a stay-at-home mom raising four children -- all the while penning romance novels. But she got nowhere with a few agents and was turned down over a hundred times by publishers. Although she knew about self-publishing she dismissed it as a vanity club. In 2010, while surfing the web for a job to help pay the bills, she stumbled on an article by a successful self-published author which prompted her to give it a shot ("what do I have to lose?"). She hooked up with CreateSpace, the self-publishing arm of Amazon.com and self -published her first book in March 2011 in both paperback and e-book formats. Within the first two months she was stunned by the sale of over two thousand copies -- and the sales continued to rise. To date, she has self-published four romance and two thriller novels with sales exceeding three hundred and fifty thousand copies. Theresa expects to cross the million dollar mark in royalties by March 2013. And the good news doesn't stop there. Several top-line publishers are pursuing her.Thomas and Mercer, Amazon's "traditional" mystery and thriller line, will now republish her two thrillers. In my interview with Theresa Ragan on August 21, 2012, she said that prior to venturing into self-publishing, "I would have gratefully signed with any traditional publisher with no advance and a six percent royalty." Lucky for Theresa that all the publishers passed on her.
This article in Forbes reports on the first self-published no.1 best seller, Wait for You by J. Lynn. It also gives some pointers on how to sell your book successfully, that is, make money at it.
Many of the guides available about self-publishing cost -- sometimes in the hundreds of dollars. But you can find good information for free on all aspects of writing at Authonomy. It's interesting to note that Amazon's CreateSpace offers all the information on self-publishing. Nook has also entered the market for self-publishing e-books with NOOK Press.
An intriguing and informative approach to writing could be something like Wattpad, where you can "Discover a World of Unlimited Stories." At this site you can --
Find your audience on Wattpad! Write one chapter at a time, or share your full novel. Introduce us to great characters; explore new genres, entertain us and make us laugh... or cry.
If you built your own drone, what would you do with it? Here's are some suggestions -- and warnings -- from the masked narrator at Danger Info, a YouTube subscription channel, in a video titled, "Citizen Drone Warfare."
According to the TIME Magazine (February 11, 2013 issue) cover story, "Drone Home," by staff writer Lev Grossman,
Businesswise, the Parrot [a drone] is still a product looking for a market beyond well-heeled dronophiles. Unless you find aerial photography extremely personally gratifying (which, granted, a lot of people do), the Parrot doesn't have a lot of immediate practical applications. Which raises the question: What are drones good for, aside from hunting people? The answer, it turns out, is a lot, and more all the time.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been using Predators to monitor the Mexican border since 2005. It currently fields a fleet of 10 and has put in for 14 more. Last fall, NASA used a Global Hawk to study Hurricane Nadine. But flying a drone for purposes other than recreation requires a certificate from the FAA, and those certificates are hard to come by. The government is working to correct that: last Valentine's Day Obama signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which among other things ordered the FAA to establish six drone-testing ranges, fast-track requests for permission to use drones and figure out a scheme for their integration into U.S. airspace by 2015.
With respect to aerial photography it's a valid question to ask what a drone can see. It turns out a lot:
The GAO report also mentioned "privacy concerns over the collection and use of UAS-acquired data." A lot of people share those concerns. Drones are the most powerful surveillance tool ever devised, on- or offline. A Reaper drone equipped with the Air Force's appropriately named Gorgon Stare sensor package, for example, can surveil an area 2½ miles across from 12 angles at once. Its field of view swallows entire cities. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an imaging system called ARGUS that can pick out an object 6 in. long from 20,000 ft. in the air. In a story worthy of the Onion, USA Today reported in December that Air Force officials were so swamped with the 327,384 hours of drone footage taken last year, they consulted with ESPN about how to edit it down to the highlights, Ã la SportsCenter. (Grossman, Drone Home)
And what about personal privacy (if such a thing still exists)? Here's one last quote from Grossman's fine article:
Until actual legislation is passed, it won't be completely clear what information the government can and cannot gather using drones. There are certainly precedents: the Supreme Court has ruled that the police can, under the Fourth Amendment, fly an airplane over your fenced backyard and check out whether you're growing pot back there. It's not a giant leap to imagine them flying a drone instead. But where does it stop? The framers didn't anticipate technology that could hover for days, keeping an eye on exposed backyards and porches, that could work in networked swarms, see through walls with thermal imaging, recognize faces and gaits and track license plates. "If we have a bad guy named Waldo," Singer says, "and we have to find Waldo somewhere in that city, we will naturally gather information about all the people around Waldo, not out of malice but just because that's the way it is. What happens to that information? Who owns it? Who stores it? Who shares it? Big questions."
I guess what I'm trying to say is -- if you're going to build your own drone, be aware of the ramifications. And don't fly it anywhere near my backyard.
Also, please take a look at this TIME article -- it also talks about what can go wrong when flying a drone, the psychological toll of being surveilled, and how drones are, even now, being made semi-autonomous (shade of SkyNet!).
In recent history engineering colleges around the world have sponsored robot competitions, often where robots battle each other and the last robot standing wins. Now ordinary citizens, and their robots, can take part in one (not necessarily a fight to the death). Here's a list of competitions from NASA's, Robotics Alliance Project, last updated today. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, read I-Triple-E) Spectrum has a page reporting DIY robots news.
Kits and parts are available for purchase in building your own robot. A sampling of retailers is dfRobot, "drive the future;" Machine Science Inc., which offers parts and tutotials for all types of electronics projects; and, of course LEGO. Just take a look at LEGO's latest product, Mindstorms EV3.
Not meaning to incite war, insurrection, revolution or anything like that, today I humbly offer simple do-it-yourself, prankish tools. What you do with them may incite office mayhem, so choose your target carefully.
All of the ideas below come from Instructables, where there are several more in this collection by scoochmaroo. You'll notice that a number of the ideas require malice aforethought.
This Lifehacker McGyver Challenge was to "hack something cool with LEGO pieces." Note that the McGyver series is written by fellow Google+ member, Walter Glenn. The mousetrap won this challenge, but the other entries are also notable.
Weston's laptop stand:
BBombers' Rotisserator Refrigerator:
From the Gallery of LEGO docks to hold any smartphone is this Star Wars-inspired iPhone 5 dock by Zombklr (click on the Comments tab to see Zombklr's repertoire):
And did you know there's a First LEGO League that is international and grants innovation awards? -- Marge
Easter is fast approaching (March 31 this year). While you may not be one who celebrates this religious event, who can resist celebrating the profusion of color and renewed spirits of spring. So get your food coloring out and gather any other crafty items you might need and give one of these do-it-yourself projects a try.
At Curbly, a "DIY design community for people who love where they live," user CapreeK has posted a Roundup of "12 Modern Easter Egg Ideas." Below is a sampling of the ideas offered:
Scraphacker, "the hub for 'scrap-cycling' innovation & D.I.Y. innovation 'scrap hack' inspiration," is offering Easy Easter DIY tutorials. This is the perfect site for pack-rats (like me). How about chocolate birds' nests or edible placecards?
