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I recently “inherited” a terracotta army, unfortunately not of the ancient warrior persuasion. (How cool would it be to have a few of those as yard ornaments? Really says: “Stay off the lawn!” like you mean it.) But no, this troop of terracotta is of the standard garden pot variety, in a wide range of shapes and sizes. So while I love to garden — and won’t turn down free stuff lightly — this slightly worse-for-the-wear collection was a little drab for my taste and I decided to take some time to pretty them up.
Spirulina is a blue-green algae that is supposed to have some amazing health effects when you eat it. It is sometimes referred to as Superfood when sold in a dried form. This article describes some of the potential benefits but also contains a word of caution about the hype: Spirulina Spirulina is a type of [...]
How Bonsai works – growing tiny trees that are beautiful
by Marshall Brain | April 19, 2011
Last weekend, Irena and I were driving home from a math fair. We spotted a guy with a van selling Bonsai trees on the side of the road, and decided to stop and take a look. He had specimens ranging from 3 years old to 35 years old, and they were beautiful. Most of them [...]
These two photo galleries bring up a great point: Is it really possible to build a cheap, DIY/homebrew supercharger using a leaf blower? – Leaf Blower Supercharger Driving The New Corvette Hack – Wait, Did This Corvette Just Become More Fun? Once you see it, it makes sense. A leaf blower pumps lots of air, [...]
Yesterday I put up a post about a company that has the potential to completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels: The impossible has happened: the solution to global warming and foreign oil dependence has arrived They have created bioengineered creatures that produce diesel fuel on demand. They claim they can produce 15,000 gallons of [...]
The world’s easiest-to-build potato cannon (spud gun) – now combustion free!
by Marshall Brain | December 30, 2010
This is a classic HowStuffWorks article that describes the construction and operation of the traditional potato cannon: How Spud Guns Work The traditional potato cannon is a combustion device – it uses hairspray as its fuel and the spark unit from an outdoor grill to ignite it. This works fine but it is a little [...]
We have a home humidifier sitting in the living room of the Brain household. It happens to be the older version of this model, which can put more than five gallons of water into the air each day. It’s big enough to handle the whole house, and the fan is not silent, so it is [...]
Before buying a used car, check the check-engine light
by Marshall Brain | December 28, 2010
Leigh and I have been looking at used cars. There seem to be four options in our area: Late-model used car lots like Carmax (which tend to sell 3 to 5 year old cars, all of which are $10K and up) Used car lots that are attached to a new car dealership (ditto) Less expensive [...]
If you have ever looked at the prosthetic marketplace, you know that things like prosthetic arms are expensive. This page lays out the cost factor like this: Depending on the degree of amputation, today’s state of the art prosthetic arms can cost patients about $100,000 or more. DEKA’s goal is to keep the cost of [...]
How to fix a smelly kitchen sink – clean the garbage disposal
by Marshall Brain | December 22, 2010
We’ve seen two other posts on smelly sinks: 1) Why does my bathroom stink? 2) Funny… and gross – a drain cleaner that actually works This one involves the kitchen. Here is how I discovered it… This weekend the kids and I were moving the fish to a new, bigger aquarium. And we needed to [...]
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