Kerime B. Toksü's 2literal.com

Yes, it was just Halloween but Hanukkah/Xmas/Kwanzaa (in order of appearance) are just around the corner. So here are three DIY projects to get started on, in order of difficulty (though none of them is truly difficult). Two of them require a minimal amount of sewing and one involves duct tape. Take your pick:

Cellphone Beanbag Chair
Why does your cellphone need a beanbag chair? Because it needs to relax after getting poked all day by somebody’s gigantic meaty fingertips. Never made a beanbag before? It’s easy: 1) cut out 2 circles of fabric, 10 inches in diameter each; 2) put the “right” sides (the sides you want to show) of the fabric facing each other and sew the edges together, except for about 2 inches; 3) turn the fabric rightside out; 4) pour in dried beans until the bag is about 75% full; 5) stitch up that 2-inch hole. Now if this is too much work for you, ThinkGeek is selling them for a mere $9.99. Be sure to check out the customer action shots. Those are some happy, relaxing devices.

RFID-Blocking Wallet
What’s RFID and why do you want to block it? RFID is radio frequency identification — the technology used to tag and track animals in the wild. It’s also used in some credit cards, many corporate IDs, and in U.S. and Euro passports. Why should you care? Because an RFID can be hacked with $8 worth of gear. So for $8, a thief can steal your credit card name and number or any other information stored in your RFID-enabled card. Or weirder yet, your movement could be tracked if someone wanted to know where you were.

But with a little aluminum foil and duct tape, you can make your own RFID-blocking wallet. Yes, I know, this sounds suspiciously crazy, as though I’m telling you aliens are reading your brain waves — beware! But RFID isn’t alien; in fact it’s pretty simple technology. And the ease with which it can be hacked is well known. In fact, there are RFID-blocking wallets and cardholders on sale at Amazon for as little as $14.39. But wouldn’t it be more fun to Macgyver your own? (My husband wants one of these.)

Touchscreen Gloves
It’s getting cold here in Vermont, which means I’ve switched from my zip-up fingerless driving gloves to my boring-but-vastly-warmer fleece-lined gloves. This also means that in order to use a device with a capacitive touchscreen, such as my iPod Touch, I need to take off said fleece-lined gloves. Brrrrr. Instead, I would prefer to be able to control my device with those toasty gloves still on my hands. And no, I don’t want sew some funky fingerhoods on fingerless gloves and have to fool with them every time I want to poke my device. What to do?

Easy fix. Sew patches of conductive thread on the tips of your gloves. This allows the conductive property of your fingertips/thumbtips to reach your device. I must admit, this is my favorite project of the three here and I will soon be updating all my winter gloves. You can find full instructions at GirlieGirl Army. And yes, you clever cheap geek, conductive thread is not cheap compared to everyday cotton thread. But there are many fun things you can do with conductive thread. For example, you could mod gloves for your friends, make a robot t-shirt with LED eyes or create a winter hat that lights up from front to back. To see more projects, go to Instructables.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under fashion-tech, Geek on the Cheap, geekcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.