Technology

Botanicalls Twitter: flora tweets

With Monday finally wrapping up, it’s time to start thinking about next weekend. Why not spend it Twitter-enabling your house plants? Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs […]

DIY metal detector

I was really surprised that this simple hack doesn’t even require taking anything apart! Just use a calculator and AM radio to make a metal detector – [via] Link. UPDATE: This one might be plausible, folks. Debate in the comments; the first one to prove it’s real/fake gets a MAKE pocket ref! Related: Metal detectors […]

Touchkeyer on Altoids-based HF radio

Touchkeyer on Altoids-based HF radio

Check out this nifty touchkeyer (for CW or “continuous wave” Morse code) ham operator Jonathan Haynes ( KC7FYS) built into his Altoids-housed ATS-3b high-frequency CW radio transceiver: I put whiteboard marker on my fingers and pressed them on a piece of paper to get this footprint. The idea of sculpting them from PCB material came […]

Excel Hacks: Reduce workbook bloat

Here’s Hack #15, Reduce Workbook Bloat, from David and Raina Hawley’s Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel’s sophisticated capabilities without spending […]