DIY Life

If you've ever had the chance to play with a vibrating robot toy, you'll understand just how fun they can be. Most of the ones I've seen are of the wind-up variety, typically with long metal lets and rubber feet. They tend to be noisy, bouncy, and definitely unpredictable.

While I've played with various different versions of these wind-up toys for hours, I never really considered that I might be able to actually make one of my own. I certainly didn't think I could make one that is not only just as neat, but a significant upgrade.

Imagine my surprise when I happened across this article explaining how to make a battery-powered vibrating robot toy out of the head of a toothbrush! With the right supplies on hand (including an appropriate toothbrush, pager motor, and watch battery) this project can be completed in about five minutes.

It's really worth watching the video to see just what this little critter can do. I imagine it would enthrall my children, but even more fun would be to watch my uncle's cat go crazy trying to figure out just what this thing is!

It's shopping day, you've got the whole family at the mall. Come lunch time, where do you go? The food court, of course!

Have you ever noticed that going to the food court causes people to scatter in 10 different directions? Each person wants something specific, and since the options are seemingly endless, they can get exactly what they want.

But what if you're alone, and you're craving a gourmet meal? For the purposes of this example, we're going to assume that you're a connoisseur of fast-food, and define "gourmet" as "consisting of multiple courses". Can you see where I'm going with this? You got it.

If you're craving a fancy burrito, some salmon sushi, and a slice of pizza with an Orange Julius to wash it down, chances are you can get exactly that at the mall's food court. Keep in mind the following handy tips to make sure that you have the best multi-course fast-food experience possible.

There was a time when I had such a huge collection of empty beer bottles, I didn't know what to do with them all. I was too lazy to recycle them and get the deposit, so they just keep kept sitting there, mocking me. And it's not a cool collection, you know? My brother-in-law has all sorts of unique beer bottles from all over the world, many unopened (but most of them empty, of course). He displays them proudly, and I feel jealous. Not an intense, burning jealousy, but more of a mild, passive-aggressive jealousy. But this isn't about him and his cool bottles, it's about me and my regular ones. Well, I guess it's about anyone that has beer bottles, but please stop interrupting and let me finish my story.

Okay!

So back in the day I had lots of beer bottles, and didn't know what to do with them.

That day was yesterday.

But today I have a mission! I turns out that you can make some pretty cool shelves out of beer bottles. Don't believe me? Have a look at Hacknmod's gallery of beer bottle shelves, suggested to us by a reader, Joe.

The ones like those pictured here that have holes drilled out for the necks of the bottles look like they would be more stable, but they also look like a lot more work. My shelving unit is going to rely on gravity and balance. And epoxy. Lots of epoxy.

As a lifelong avid gamer, I had never really considered the "problem" of staying abreast of my children's video game -playing habits. I simply figured that I would likely be involved in any gaming that they did, so I'd be able to monitor it from the inside, so to speak.

What I didn't account for was the fact that being a husband and father takes some serious wind out of my figurative video game sails. Aside from the odd game of NHL hockey with my son, my personal gaming has all but disappeared. This is probably going to sound overly dramatic to those of you that have never experienced the loss of an important hobby, but it feels like a part of my brain is atrophying and a significant part of what made me, well, me is disappearing. I'm no longer on top of the latest in the gaming world, and I'm in serious danger of losing touch with what I once considered to be a culture I was very much involved with. Plus, my four-year-old is regularly kicking my butt at video game hockey, a game at which I used to be able to dominate against all challengers.

While this is certainly a very easy DIY project, I beg of you, please don't do it. But if you do, please send us a photo so we can all point and laugh.

The project in question is, as you've probably guessed from the picture, creating a wooden spoiler for your car.

Now, not all wooden spoilers are bad. (Okay, stay with me here!) Years ago my dad raced sports racing cars, and he had one in particular that was very difficult to handle. Before shelling out for a wing, he decided to fabricate one out of plywood to see if it would make a difference. It made a huge difference, and he ended up being quite a bit faster with it. So much so, that he never did replace the plywood version with a real wing.

Everyone knows how to ride a bike, right? But amazingly, not very many people know how to teach someone how to ride a bike. If you're considering taking the training wheels off of a youngster's bike and teaching them how to ride a two-wheeler, your first step should be to make sure they want to learn it. Children run on very different clocks, and some will want to learn at very early ages, and others will be content to wait a year or two.

Today my 4 year-old came home from a group play date where almost all of the other kids were riding their bikes without training wheels, and announced that he wanted to learn to do so too, this instant! So we made plans to head over to the local park with a nice flat paved area to practice. After the jump I'll share some of the ideas I used to make the experience fun for both him and me.