If you live in a certain area with high temperatures and humidity, your house might be prone to attract a lot of fruit flies.  They are harmless but sometimes you will need to control them using DIY methods such as this involving a water bottle, apple cider, and more simple household materials.

It seems our house has been overrun with fruit flies this fall with all the garden vegetables fruit in the house. So we built a DIY fruit fly trap to try and reduce the “herd”. My wife read about making a fruit fly trap from a water bottle so we gave it a try.

via homeconstructionimprovement

Drink a lot of beer in the bottles and have too much recycling every week?

Don’t worry, you can turn your empty beer bottles into powerful solar-powered LED beer lanterns that will light up your house at night for free.

Al Gore and company have helped us to see that our planet is in peril. Lend a hand, make a toast, and help illuminate ways for saving Earth — all at the same time! It’s easy to do your part: recycle, refill, and recharge. Just take your fave beverage bottle (keep the cap), drop in a flexible solar panel, a step-up switching regulator circuit, a rechargeable battery pack, and a powerful LED, cap it, and you’ll have a self-sufficient garden lantern that is ideal for shedding some light on solving environmental issues. You will have to choose your bottle carefully, though. Clear glass rules. Also, wide-mouth bottles are easier to convert than narrow opening long-neckers. Like your grandfather who built ships in discarded bottles, put a modern spin on bottle building while being conscientious of your world. Cheers!

via popsci

You know that cat’s litterbox can become potentially dangerous to your health with its deadly fumes, especially for pregnant women.  Now, here’s a cool way to make a self-ventilating cat litterbox so you don’t have to worry about all that invisible bad-for-your-health fumes.

I recently saw a post on Apartment Therapy showing a homemade “Cat Jet” ventilation solution (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/at-email/tools-for-pet-living-the-cat-jet-and-the-roomba-email-from-9108-062199) using a bathroom fan to vent the noxious fumes of a litter box from the inside of the house to the outside. As a home automation geek I immediately was inspired to take it up a notch by combining similar hardware to a series of timers.

Behold: Alan’s Automated Cat Jet! Total Cost? $80.

Consisting of one bathroom fan, one bathroom vent kit, one Smarthome Appliance module, and my home automation system, Alan’s Automated Cat Jet shows once again that with technology, anything is possible.

via bb gadgets

For those of you replacing your kitchen with brand new appliances and fixtures, you might want to consider demolishing the kitchen yourself using a sledgehammer and crowbar as this person has done.

One quote for replacement cabinets actually included a $1000 charge to do what we did today. That being, taking a crowbar and a 16lb. sledge to a 48 year old kitchen and matching defunct oven.

via moneygulch

Here’s a great way to turn your monotonous T-shirt into a very fashionable cut-out T-shirt using simple tools such as scissors and some planning.

This might be helpful those of you who are struggling in these hard U.S. economic times but still need a new shirt without buying one.

Ever since seeing Zana’s cutout skull sweater by Pleasure Principle, I’ve had a major crush on the label. From their fantastically simple split knee jeans to their knot dress, their designs are extremely covetable. Anyway, to the point of this article (which wasn’t to gush about the brand), I’d been lusting over Pleasure Principle’s cut out spine tee for what seems like ages when I realized that it would make a rather simple DIY project.

via chictopia

Here’s a cool hack I found on Yahoo News, it’s a hack that lets you watch free Amazon videos using the security hole:

(I don’t think this will last too long once Amazon finds out so we suggest you to take advantage before they close the security hole)

The free demo version of Replay Media Catcher allows anyone to watch 75 percent of anything recorded and 100 percent of YouTube videos. For $39, a user can watch everything recorded.

One Web site — www.tvadfree.com — explains step-by-step how to use the video stream catching software.

Amazon.com’s Adobe-powered Video On Demand service allows viewers to watch the first two minutes of a movie or TV show for free. It charges up to $3.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours and up to $14.99 to download a movie permanently.

Amazon starts to stream the entire movie during the free preview — even though it pauses the video on the Web browser after the first two minutes — so that users can start watching the rest of the video right away once they pay.

“It’s the traditional trade-off, convenience on the one hand and security on the other,” said Ray Valdes, analyst at research group Gartner.

However, even if a user doesn’t pay, the stream still sends the movie to the video catching software, but not the browser.

via YahooNews

Check out these cool Skatebrakes that will add brakes to your skateboard.  Of course, this isn’t really practical for freestyling on the streets but it will definitely help if you live in area like San Francisco where steep hills will make it impossible for you to ride continuously.

With this brake kits, fear no more 45 degree hills in San Francisco, just apply the brakes if you happen to slide down too fast.  I think even if you are an advanced skateboarder, this will help in really steep hills as it’s annoying to put your right foot down everytime you are going too fast.

And yes, this would be really great for picking up chicks on your skateboard.

via cg, skatebrake

You know when it comes to New Years and Independence Day, you always get to see some really exotic, beautiful fireworks.  Well, all those fireworks are nowdays controlled by an ignition control system but here’s how to make one for yourself.

At the heart of my firework ignition system is an SX48 running at 50 MHz. I was able to make full use of the SX’s 36 IO pins. Thirty lines are dedicated to the 30 channels. Two lines connect to a MAX233 chip for serial port control. Another line is connected to a 7805 (TO-92) which monitors the state of the arming key. The remaining 3 lines are used to communicate with the PIC A/D converter via an SPI interface. The system was built with cost as an important factor. At $10 the SX48 Proto board was an easy choice with its incorporated 5V regulator, led and all the difficult surface mount soldering already done for me. I also designed 2 pc boards using the freeware version of Cadsoft’s Eagle. The interface board connects the SX48 Proto board and contains the MAX233 chip, A/D converter and 30 LEDs to represent the state of each of the 30 channels.

via hackedgadgets, DIY Page

Well, it’s not that often I tell my readers/newcomers about my money making secrets but here’s a heat map that I’ve created to maximize income from my blogs.

Now, this is a proven heat map for making the “most” money online with blogs.

It’s a rather “in-your-face” type of advertising where you force your visitors to really read your Adsense or Chitika ads.

Why do I do this type of “before-content” advertising?

Because it gives you the most bang for your buck.  Of course, if you have a million dollars of funding and you are simply trying to promote your brand, you could go without advertising.  But for people like me who depend on Adsense and Chitika to pay rent, it’s crucial that money keeps rolling in the bank, otherwise this site wouldn’t be paid for and there would be no more websites.

If you think it’s too much advertising, think of it this way.  (Provided you live in the U.S.,) Can you tell me how many full 20-second advertisements you see on every TV show?

Yes, probably 3 or 4 and you don’t mind it because you need to keep watching the TV show.

It’s the same thing in blogging and you need to really force ads down the readers throat per say.  It’s not the most nice way to make money, but heck, sometimes you gotta do what needs to be done.

Anyway, I hope this heat map helps you make more money online as I have worked on this for last 5-6 months or so optimizing it.  (Yes, I did the analysis and optimization for you so all you have to do is follow it.)

Now, please don’t complain there’s too many ads on this site unless you would like to pay for my rent and credit card bills.

via Insider Adsense Secrets Blog