Shoot salt at flies

Lorenzo had a great idea. In stead if being one of those “having fun at the bar” ideas that never actually see the light of day, Lorenzo followed through. Did you ever have that urge to just take a gun and shoot that fly that is constantly buzzing around your head or food? Well now you can. Check out his invention at www.bugasalt.com.

Seeing his gun, I remembered making pea-shooters at high school from a roll of tape and a party balloon. I adjusted the idea for flies (smaller nozzle), and it works beautifully. It only holds one shot, and it looks not nearly as cool as the shotgun idea of Lorenzo, but if you can’t wait to start shooting those flies, here’s how to make your own low-budget, one-shot salt shooter. Enjoy!

The Useless Machine

The past year, you may have seen me tweeting some “#secretproject” tweets. Last week, the project was finally revealed, and here is the video, in case you’ve missed it:

This is what is known on the internet as a “Useless Machine” or “Leave-me-alone Box”. In case you want to make one, there are plenty of instructions online. I think you can build a basic version of this in about a weekend, and it will cost you less than ten euros. 

Catnip Watering System

Here’s a one minute how-to on growing catnip without having to water your plants every day.

Problem Solving for Dummies

Some people can not seperate cause and effect when solving problems, and every now and then you run into a great example.

If this is your problem…	this is not your solution

The towel bin is next to the sink. Why would anyone walk all the way back to the toilet to throw their paper towel in there? Well maybe it’s because they have nowhere to put it? There is a simple solution to solving problems with other people’s behavior, without having to put up signs and making up silly rules:

Make the right thing to do

the easy thing to do.

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How to share Garmin routes with your friends

I’ve been struggling to get routes into my Garmin Zūmo® in such a way that it matches the plans of the original author, while at the same time setting the Garmin to “recalculate” so that when I take a wrong turn, it will send me back to the track. After reading a lot on the Garmin forums, and experimenting with this on my two recent road trips (one to Eifel and one to Sauerland in Germany) I can say I have found a way to do this. It’s a bit of work, but it will make your trip a lot more trouble-free. Here’s the recipe.

Needed:
- Nice motorcycle route in a GPX or GDB file
- Garmin BaseCamp (BaseCamp 3.0.1.0 for OSX at time of writing)
- Garmin Zūmo® (model 660 at time of writing)