And we’re back with our nineteenth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Make: Online, our Facebook page, and Twitter.
On Facebook, R. Joe Brandon had a great idea for what to do with the giant cameras:
1lowlife wrote in to share success with building a DTV Antenna:
We ditched our cable and got DirectTV last week. I wanted a backup antenna to put in the attic in case the satellite went down or was obstructed in a storm. I came across this thread about making your own antenna. I had everything needed to make it lying around the house already. I didn’t think it would work and neither did my wife. I told her if it didn’t work, then I only wasted my time making it. And if it did work, then that saved us $50 for a new antenna. I took all the paint off the hangers, probably a waste of time, but I did it anyway. Put it together, hooked it up to the living room, rested the antenna on the floor leaning against the wall. The TV setup program ran its course and we checked it out. This thing works PERFECTLY. I cannot believe how well it works, it picked up over 20 local stations. Might even work better, if that is possible, when I put it in the attic tomorrow. Granted I’m only about 35 miles from the TV towers, but I am shocked that this antenna worked so well.
Nick had some suggestions about the unicycle with training wheels:
The training wheels are kind of a neat idea, but with that little ground clearance I’m not sure how you’ll learn to balance. I think it would work better if it went vertical as close as possible to the wheel, and leave enough ground clearance to ride fairly normally, so the rider still has to balance and the wheels are only there to give a chance to recover when they get too far out of balance. Afterall, if you’re going to rely on a 2nd wheel to keep you upright, it’s called a bike. ;)
Patience found some inspiration in Sean’s discussion of the care and feeding of ideas:
I really needed this. There are not any other “makers” in my life and there never really has been… so I’ve had no one to relate to. Reading this post makes me feel… (not so weird)? Thank you.. and I definitely need to follow step 6!
Over on twitter, Michael Fitzhugh Michael Fitzhugh from the East Bay Mini Maker Faire:
Got soaked thru having a blast at today’s @EBMakerFaire – Big thanks to parents and staff at Park Day School + the @Make crew!
Rob Cruickshank explained what purpose the coffee served in the Used coffee capsules repurposed as clock batteries:
Q: what do you call the common point in such circuits?
A: The coffee grounds!
Simon is a fan of the Netduino powered Morse code interpreter:
As someone with many apparently completely pointless projects under my belt I can say that in reality, although seemingly pointless to other people, every single one has been very worth while to me. This is actually a neat little project! It’s always good to see other people doing things just for the hell of it. So yes, not useless at all!
and Joshua A.C. Newman is hoping for self-replication by the Lego Mindstorms NXT model builder:
when is there going to be one that can built itself?
Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.
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