“The 12 Days AFTER Christmas” Giveaway: Day 21 – A DIY delight: USB Drive enclosure and Tools
This contest is closed. Congrats to faithful Macenstein reader Connor.
On the Twenty First Day After Christmas, Macenstein gave to you (or, more accurately, gave you a chance to win…) an OWC Express USB drive enclosure and a NewerTech 11-Piece Portable Toolkit to help you build it!
Yes, there’s nothing quite like the geeky satisfaction that comes from building your own stuff. Sure, it usually doesn’t work as well, isn’t as sturdy, and ultimately often costs you more than the store-bought version, but building your own gear makes you appear smart to your friends, and you can’t put a price on that!
So to that end we have two geeky items up for grabs today to help you get started on your way to DIY geekdom. First up we have the OWC Express 2.5″ Portable USB 2.0 Enclosure for SATA NoteBook HDs, an easy DIY project that will help you add portable, USB-powered storage to your Mac.
Add a 2.5″ drive from an upgrade or build your own with a new drive. Pocket-sized USB bus powered ventilated enclosure for 2.5″ drives. Offering the ultimate combination of style and value in portable data storage and backup.
Of course, no TRUE Do-It-Yourselfer would be caught dead without a spudger, and we’ve got you covered there too! Behold the The Newer Technology 11-Piece Portable Toolkit
Toolkit Contains:
Straight Blade 1.8mm
Straight Blade 3.0mm
Phillips #00
Phillips #2
Torx T6
Torx T8
Torx T10
Scissor Clamp
Tweezers
(2) Nylon Pry Tools (aka “Spudgers”)*
To enter: There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction that comes from building your own stuff. So to enter, leave us a comment telling us “What’s the best thing you’ve ever made? (without help)” Did you build your own computer or hovercraft? Or is the best thing you ever made that slopey, misshapen coil pot in 1st grade for Mother’s Day? Winners will be picked randomly 7 days later and notified (kind of like in The Ring, only with less killing… we hope). Open to ALL readers WORLD-WIDE. Good luck, and thanks for reading Macenstein! (Oh, and be sure to enter ALL our “12 Days AFTER Christmas” Giveaways!)
Please note: Comments may take a while to show up, please do not double-post. Thanks!
A sudoku
Some furniture.
Culinary speaking, I make awesome pizza.
Literary speaking, I have written some pretty good poems.
Decoratively speaking, I have made some nice polymer clay rings.
I built a car out of 2 skateboards and a box spring.
I’ve built a computer multiple times but it was a WinTel. worked until it got zapped by a virus.
I rebuilt a 1976 Triumph TR-6
my desk
my thesis
computer
My internet connection
Pretty proud of my abilities in the computer building area
My kids
my BA thesis
IMHO I don’t know if it’s the best thing that I’ve ever made but my Thai green curry is pretty damn good, even if I do say so myself.
Crab stuffed mushrooms.
my report
A loft bed for my son.
Everything I try to make just goes horribly. So, nothing.
Place mat holder for my Mum; despite the lousy workmanship, she insisted we all use it for years.
Shelving for the basement
I make great pancakes
My kids. Oh and a play house for my kids.
the best thing I ever build was the Lego frame there was holding the screen of my laptop. Something in it was broken so it was no longer cable of being open on its own. After some months that way the graphic card burned of and nothing more could be done to save it…
A mess, a big fat mess! (according to my wife)
Ghostbuster Proton pack out of wood and something else for the gun (it was so long ago, I can’t remember what it was). But it did have a place to hang the gun and you could store things in it. I was the cool kid in the neighborhood.
Apple II clone
A bookshelf when I was 8. Still sits on my mom’s wall 45+ yrs later.
I helped build a house.
A snow bungalow 🙂
a bow and arrow
A reputation for being someone you want to work with.
Tie my shoes
I’d have to say a slingshot 🙂
I built some Gundam models while I was in Japan. Very detailed stuff!
Saurbrauten. Complete from the brine, to the cooking, the sauce and to the table. And it was almost as good as the ones from the high end German restaurant Imlike going to here and there.
A 5ft CD and DVD cabinet wit a glass door…upside down
self-promo direct mail piece that i hand delivered.
it involves chinese carryout container, inside is a menu and some fortune cookies. the menu turns out to be a tiny version (teaser) of my print portfolio. then, the fortune in the cookie reads, “you’ll find great fortune in calling ron cross.” the lucky numbers were my phone number.
I was going to say my two daughter’s but I suppose my wife had something to with that….I did make some browns this morning…had no help…
My first computer i built was a Heathkit 8088 with a 20 meg hard drive, 8 megs of memory and a external 300 bps modem. It was cool with it’s ega graphics.
I built a huge library wall ladder included.
a wood table
wireless headphones, for my 5th grade science project
About 6 years ago, when I was younger, even more penniless, and and a more impulsive, I got it into my head to build one of those “turn your old CRT into a projector with a fernel lens” get ups. My family had lumber and 1/4″ plywood laying around, so all i had to do was spend a few bucks on a fernel lens and some project screen material.
After I built the box out of plywood and cut a perfectly circular hole and backed the lens with cheapy plate glass I realized I had a few problems:
1. The rig wouldn’t stay against the TV very well, nor did it look very good.
and 2. The picture was flipped left to right even if I turned the TV upside-down to make the picture right-side up- not good for playing playstation on the bigscreen.
Then I went and spent more money and effort buying more parts and building a different rig:
1. a double-silvered mirror out of an old arcade game, sold on ebay for $30+
2. a structure to hold the magnifying box 90 deg. from the TV, allow the mirror to bounce the image before it hit the lens (flipping them image and then fliiping it back) and suspend both of them from the ceiling
After I had that set up, I got a great picture, but there was another problem: I realized I couldn’t get the damn thing to focus at the center and edges and vice-versa. I realized it was because the image needed to be projected on the inside of a sphere to be in focus. Is your head hurting yet? Mine was. Undeterred, I came up with a way to make a screen shaped as such.
It required me to rip 2×4’s into 1/4″ thick slices, soak them in the bathtub for a few days, and then I screwed some blocks on a piece of plywood on a perfect arc and laminated them together by glueing them and then screwing them into the blocks until it dried. I ended up having 10 perfectly matching arcs, and then made a grid of them. I didn’t got the fiberglass route (too messy and expensive) so I just stretched out my screen material over this grid and glued it in place.
I ended up with a nice projected image, but the room had to be really dark for it to be of any use. Figure over 100 man hours and $75 for a crappy projector that took up waaaay too much room.
I’ve since scrapped the rig, reused the lumber and plywood, but I’ve kept the screen. It makes a nice interior architecture element when it’s mounted on the ceiling. I make due with a 50″ LCD in my own house now that I’m married, out of school and have a real job.
How’s that for geekiness?
1,000 paper cranes, it took a few months, but it was sweet
It’s got to be the Pegola that kept the top 20 feet of the tree in my back yard away from my windows last year during Huricane Ike.
The best thing I have built was an single seat airplane. It took me 2.5 years of working on it almost every evening.
Although I have moved on to other aircraft, the lessons learned from the dedication it took to get this done, have served me well through life!
I built a set of computers for family members
A Heathkit CB Radio in the 70’s…
Scenery for multiple plays.
Dinner!