In attempt to get a long range signal temporarily, I rigged up a DirecTV dish with a small directional antenna I had. Being just a hack I first used tape to tape the antenna to the LNB. Hoping to improve the signal I removed the LNB and clamped the antenna in approximately the same place as where the LNB was. Moving the antenna didn't really seem to help much. I could only get a signal of about 1-3 on average. Fortunately the Netgear card I'm using will actually move data with such a...

I didn't take any pictures of this before Christmas because I kinda forgot and I kinda thought there would be plenty of pictures at Christmas. Turned out no-one took any at all! I made 3 of them and I guess people were too busy fighting over who gets one. The big difference between this one and the other is that I redesigned the back and the top so that I didn't have to use an expensive hinge. At $1.50 a pop I just don't have that kind of money right now. When I came up with the...

The new house I moved into has lots and lots of fruit trees. Four (five, six?) are all in season right now and they have lots of stuff I'm not going to eat. Seemed like a perfect Christmas gift! But, what to wrap all the fruit in that I can make? I thought about weaving baskets, but that would be way too time consuming. All my time was dedicated to getting the dinosaur built. I had already been planning to make some simple crates to use to organize all my computer cables and parts but...

Christmas is over so now I can finally post my woodworking projects. I didn't dare post them earlier since my family reads this and I didn't want them getting a sneak preview of their gifts! This one is the big one. I stumbled on a picture of one while searching the internet for ideas on stuff to make back in October. My dad loves dinosaurs and my sister just had a baby so I had to make it for Christmas for my parents. 2 weeks ago I realized I better get started if I was gonna have...

I whipped this up last night. Probably didn't take more than an hour, it's really simple. I based it on some plans I found on the internet. Instead of putting in the strips to hold the plastic I just cut a groove in the sides. Much simpler. The window is dark because it's the only piece of plastic I had around. The plastic actually came from one of those little plastic file sorter bins that you stack on your desk. The groove made by the regular blade in my table saw was exactly the...