February, 2009

Here's one for all you hipster PDA users - our friends over at Worldlabel have done it again with these downloadable, fill-outable, printable, life-organizingable pocket calendars, task lists, planners, and note pads. You can fill in your info right on the computer and print it out and write in any changes as your week progresses. You can definitely tell they've put some good thought into these - making them both useful and attractive.

PDF Planners.

Turn a blank wall opposite any window into a live action wallpaper by effectively turning the entire room into a giant camera obscura. The view from your window will be projected (upside down) onto the opposite wall with the use of only a bit of cardboard, tape, and a lens available from your local optician. The effect is pretty cool - but wouldn't it be possible to flip the image right side up again by using a second lens? [via]

Web Service yourfonts provides a software package for creating your own fonts. Although it's commercial, they offer a free web service that allows you to design your own handwritten fonts in a jiffy! Simply print out the template, fill it out, scan it and upload it back to the site. [via]

Are you sick of losing at Scrabble? Show that board who is boss by repurposing it into a cool picture frame complete with Scrabblicious tile captions. Next time your friend wants to play Scrabble you can point at the wall and say "Oh, sorry, I'm using the board for something else now."

Scrabble Board Picture Frame.

Okay so those two squares might not look like much, but within them is hidden a secret message! To see the message, you will need to open the images in Photoshop, go to the image/adjustments menu and select "levels..." to bring up the histogram. First do the small one, then the big one.

You can generate your own secret histogram messages using HistoFace, based off of a concept by David Friedman.

Here's another image and what its histogram looks like:

What you are (hopefully) looking at is the result of millions of dollars of investment and billions of man hours. The all new DIY:happy now with twice the Do-It-Yourself goodness and only 5% of the blue color that the other one had.

Along with a new interface and logo, we are proud to introduce our new user forum. To help get the ball rolling, we are offering prizes for participation. Details will be coming soon, but participation can start now! So help us bring the DIY:happy community together by checking out the forum!

The new site is might have a lot of bugs or other weirdness. If you encounter any such thing, please don't hesitate to let us know.

We have many more features in store, so stay tuned!

 I saw this pen that is said to double as a Yawara stick.  I didn't know what that was so I looked it up. 

Apparently it is a type of self defense weapon that helps with holds and pressure points or something.  I was going to look into it a little more to see how it was used but wondered if anyone had any DIY yawara solutions.  It seems like something that is pretty simple.