Saturday, July 13, 2013

Homemade Table Saw Sledge - Part 4 - Jig to build Tetrahedrons and Pyramids

In this build I made a jig which fits onto the table saw sledge with the intent of cutting sides to form a regular tetrahedrons and pyramids of various sizes.  I have to admit that the final jig in the video quickly left the realms of functionality because I based the design on the angles of a two dimensional triangle and needless to say I have now re-discovered Euclidean geometry.  That is to say, the dihedral angle of a three dimensional, regular tetrahedron is not the same as the angle of a two dimensional equilateral triangle.  While all the angles of a triangle equal to 180 degrees and that an equilateral triangle individual angle are 60, the angle between two faces of a tetrahedron is actually 70.5 degrees.  For a  pyramid this would be 109.5 degrees.

I haven't had to use pure mathematics for quite a while and we probably all know that in fabrication and woodworking there are many tricks to avoiding sums.  Had my table saw been one which allowed the blade to tilt, I could have compensated for my error but as it stands the gap left inside the tetrahedron is too wide and would probably require hot glue to join.

When I have time I will add a link to a correct sketch up model and write up a step by step with accurate angles.

In the short term, if you have the time to make one and don't fancy the maths, use an online calculator to work out your angles such as the one in the link bellow!

http://www.slyman.org/m_projects_mathematics_pyramids_polyhedra_intersurface_angle.php?alpha=60&n=4&p=45&submit_pyramid_parameter_calculator=Calculate


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DIY Infinity Ring - Simple!

mainimageplain.jpgYou only need a little bit of wire, a round nose pliers and wire-cutting tool to make this cute infinity ring! It is simple to create and looks great! You can also modify this to make an infinity bracelet - which I would have done if I had a silver chain to do so!

Materials: Wire (I believe what I used was 20 gauge) Round Nose Pliers (the one I have is a 3-in one tool) Wire Cutters You'll also need something like a marker or highlighter - something round to wrap the wire around to form the shape So, take out your pliers and grab a hold of the end of the wire and turn inward to form a loop. After doing that, remove the pliers and place it back on the wire to form another loop (please see images for a greater understanding). Bend and flatten as needed, as you go along. Try to get the two loops to look symmetrical. Then, cut off the end of the wire. Push in, bend and flatten anything sticking out - with the pliers.

Next, to form the ring - you'll need to cut another piece of wire - a few inches long to be safe. Then use a highlighter or marker (something comparable to the width of your finger) and wrap the wire around it to form a ring-like shape. Don't go all the way around - leave an opening at the top.

Take the infinity pendant you made and take the piece of wire and thread the wire through the right loop - and use your pliers to carefully bend it over and under - to form a closed loop. Next, try the ring on - to see how big or small you need it to be. You can now snip off the end excess wire - if it is too long. But, be sure to leave enough wire to bend over to form a final closed loop.

To do the final closed loop for your ring, it's a good idea to put the whole thing back onto the marker or highlighter -so you have it keeps its round structure as you create your final closed loop.

After that's done, just clean it up - bend or reshape as needed to give the ring a consistent round shape.
You're done!!! So simple - so cute!


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(vegetarian/vegan) celeriac-schnitzel

allthough i've been a carnivore all my life (mainly for tastyness reasons...) i don't want to eat meat all the time and i also want to have dinners with my vegan and vegetarian friends. and since i come from the homeland of schnitzel why not make a vegetarian one?

this vegetarian schnitzel version is easy, tasty, cheap and (i think) a lot better than a lot of the quite expensive "fake meat" stuff you can buy. while it doesn't really taste like meat, it is crispy on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside - almost like a real schnitzel.
and in contrast with celery who is often too dominant in a meal the celeriac has a much finer and less obvious taste.

it is really easy to make a vegan version of these schnitzels, just replace the egg either with some store bought egg-replacement or just mix starch with a little water.

so have fun with this instructable!

sorry for the lonely little schnitzel on the picture, but i wanted to quickly take a picture and then fry the rest of the schnitzel because i don't really like to take pictures of my food while i eat. just imagine them all in their golden-brown crispiness!


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Vantec NexStar WiFi Hard Drive Dock Review

Legit Storage Reviews

Many of us have extra bare hard drive or two laying around and buying an external drive enclosure only really serves to make one useful as an external drive, leaving you with the mundane task of swapping them out. This is where docking stations come in handy, offering the ease of swapping drives on the fly. Still, most rely on a wired connection which effectively eliminates the use of the storage for smartphones and tablets without some creative solutions. Vantec has released a new NexStar drive dock that not only connects via USB 3.0, but also via wireless. Pretty slick! The USB 3.0 only version of this dock runs $29.39 shipped, so the addition of wireless adds about $60 to the cost of this product as the MSRP on the NexStart WiFi Hard Drive Dock is $89.99.

Vantec NexStar Dock Box

Compatible with both iOS and Android operating devices through apps you can download on the respective platform, the NexStar wireless hard drive dock makes it easy to expand the storage of these mobile devices. In addition, it supports the UPnP protocol so household devices that can leverage it can also benefit from the wireless storage. All of this can be done securely via an encrypted signal through WEP/WPA/WPA2.

Vantec NexStar Dock

Vantec has a nice video that outlines the use of the dock and the many features.

USB 3.0 (Backwards compatible w/ USB 2.0 & 1.1)Windows XP, Vista, 7 & 8 Mac OS X 10.6 or higheriPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS 4.0 & higher
Android Phone Ver. 2.1 & higher
Android Pad Ver. 3.0 & higher
UPnP Compatible Devices802.11 b/g/n
Wi-Fi AP Tethering Supported
Wi-Fi Encryption: WEP/WPA/WPA2
Support WPS
Up to 150Mbit Transfer RateiOS App Supported Media Format:Video: h.264, .mov, .mp4, .mpv, .3gp, .m4v
Photo: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .tif, .bmp, .tiff
Audio: AAC, .mp3, .m4a, .aif, .wav
Document: MS Office 97 or higher, .pdf, .rtf
Supports "Open-In" FunctionAndroid App Supported Media Format:Video: h.264, .mp4,.3gp, .MPEG-TS, .mkv
Photo: .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .webp
Audio: AAC, .mp3, .ota, .imy, .ogg, .rttl, .rtx, .wavMicrosoft Windows XP/Vista/7/8Mac OS X v10.6 and UpUSB 3.0, 2.0 or 1.1 Equipped SystemFor USB 3.0 Speeds, System Must Support USB 3.0 SpecificationsiPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS 4.0 & higherAndroid Phone Ver. 2,1 & higherUPnP Compatible DevicesNexStar WiFi Hard Drive DockUSB 3.0 CablePower AdapterUser's ManualVantec NexStar Dock

In the box is a multilingual manual, a USB 3.0 cable and the AC power adapter. Let's have a closer look!




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How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Hard drives get messy. You save files and forget them, download huge chunks of data that pile up, and change your naming schemes a hundred times. It's spring, though, so why not do a little tidying up?

To make things simpler, we're going to look at this from the perspective of cleaning up a secondary drive that doesn't have an OS installed on it. You can use these same tactics for any drive, but there are other ways to save space on a system drive including clearing caches, eliminating old temp folders, etc. Right now, though, we just want to focus on your junk.

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

When you need to clear up hard drive space in a hurry, the first thing you want to do is find out just what's taking up all that space. WinDirStat is a crowd favorite for scanning a drive and finding out what you can get rid of to get a little extra leg room in a hurry. The results are even color-coded to let you know what are important, system files that you shouldn't delete, and what's cat GIFs and videos of your friend's wedding. If you're on a Mac, our favorite analyzer, Disk Inventory X, has a lot of the same features for the same price (free!).

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Whether they're big or small, duplicate files take up unnecessary space. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can all use the handy Duplicate File Searcher to track down any files that you've downloaded more than once. Windows users can also use Duplicate Commander to remove the extra copies and replace them with hard links. This clears up the space while still making sure that any apps referencing the files are able to continue to operate without interruptions. Duplicate Cleaner Free also offers a nice, three-tabbed interface for finding duplicate files without all the mess.

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Finding the big stuff isn't always helpful. After all, you probably downloaded those giant videos for a reason. If you'd rather just find the old stuff, you can do that with simple search operators in the search box for Windows 7 and up. You can search for the last date modified, accessed, or when a file was created, and further sub-filter by size or type. Unfortunately this method lacks the nice visualization of file size that WinDirStat has, but it can go a long way in whittling down the stuff you don't need or use anymore. There are bunch more search operators you can use to narrow down your searches here.

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Okay, so you definitely want to keep those 12,462 wedding photos, but wouldn't it be nice if they were named something better than IMG01827.jpg? Batch rename apps allow you to bring a more uniform sorting scheme to your collections. Apps like Rapid Streams (Windows) or Name Changer (Mac) are straightforward utilities for doing simple renaming tasks. However, if you want to crank it up a notch or ten, Bulk Rename Utility for windows has more options than you could ever use. On OS X you can use the built-in Automator tool to accomplish many of these same tasks as well.

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Now that all your files have meaningful names, put them somewhere equally meaningful. Apps like TeraCopy will allow you to quickly move a bunch of files around and set batch settings for overwriting or renaming duplicate files. Ultra-copier is a cross-platform solution that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and is frequently much faster than the built-in solutions you find on most OSes.

How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Most of us have something that we'd rather not share with the world. Sensitive work documents, birthday gift ideas, etc. You can hide files in both Windows and OS X, but this only really makes your folders slightly nicer to look at. There's no real security there. You can use apps like TrueCrypt to lock down files, or even simple zip applications like 7-Zip to keep a collection of files under lock and key from anyone who may stumble on to your machine. These only really help protect against casual access to your machine, of course. If you want more powerful protection in case your hardware is ever seized or stolen, you may want to create a hidden, encrypted partition to store sensitive files on, using your main volumes as a decoy.

If you're like me, you probably have years and years worth of files laying around on your system that need to be cleared out, but it's not necessary to go through them by hand to clean them up.