Make it Easy
The weekend project appears to be making a comeback. Our Dads and Granddads, to hear them tell it, lived in the age where when you needed something, you didn’t buy it, you just made it yourself-bookshelves, extra bedrooms, summer homes, and other minor projects were drawn out on legal pads with pencils, and Dads would disappear into the garage or the basement for a few weeks, and then would emerge the finished project. I grew up in the generation of kids whose skills with tools were passed on, father to son, in the form of “Don’t touch anything. Ever.”
But I am trying now to make up for lost time, and fortunately, I don’t think I am alone, as DIY seems to be making a comeback. Even better, the online projects that are online these days are written with the inexperienced klutz like me in mind.
At the so-easy-a-child-could-do-it end of the spectrum, there are the Howtoons, a series of one-page comics that each outline a simple-but-cool project, including a PVC-pipe marshmallow gun, a hovercraft made from a CD, a soda cap, and a balloon, and my favorite, the simple electric motor made out of a battery, some wire, a magnet and a couple safety pins. I’ve had great fun doing these with my kids.
Instructables is a community site where anyone can post a howto for a simple project. Their database is searchable by keywords, like cheap, easy, or USB, and others. The site is very good with step-by-step instructions and photos of the project at the different stages.
If you are looking for projects that are particularly pointless and silly that will make your girlfriend roll her eyes, go to Evil Genius Labs. Where else can you learn how to build a trebuchet made of Lego, or how to turn a cheap RC car into a poor man’s Roomba?
There is also a whole magazine devoted to the idea of making it yourself called Make. They’ve got a great daily blog and a podcast, with super-geeky Bre Pettis putting out a series of video podcasts called Weekend Projects. Link is here, and you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcasting software.
I’ll be getting a head start on this weekend’s projects myself by reviewing some great instructional DVDs… the complete MacGyver.
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[…] Mr. Alex on Geekfoolery believes that DIYers and weekend projects are making a comeback: But I am trying now to make up for lost time, and fortunately, I don’t think I am alone, as DIY seems to be making a comeback. Even better, the online projects that are online these days are written with the inexperienced klutz like me in mind. […]
Hi Boys and Girls,
Some of this stuff looks fun and within my price range – especially the pop-up 3D words and messages on the Instructables site. I’m not gonna have a chance to work on anything this weekend, and I don’t really have anything relevant to say, but that won’t stop me. Picking up on your introductory stuff about Dads and Granddads disappearing into the garage or the basement for a few weeks and then emerging with a finished project, here is a portion of an edited essay by Chuck Close (I couldn’t locate the unedited original.):
Handicapped people hate phrases like physically challenged. We like to call ourselves cripples and gimps. It helps take the sting out of it. It helps us accept the handicapped part of us.
I became a quadriplegic thirteen years ago, at the age of forty-eight, when an artery in my spine collapsed. I had already had a great career as an artist, with paintings in museums around the world. I knew who I was. The problem was getting back to what I loved. The two great fears of any artist are that you’re going to lose your eyes or you’re going to lose your hands. I [had] always thought of them as equally bad. [It] turns out, if you’re going to lose one, it had better be your hands. Which is exactly the way of thinking that helped me in my life, weighing out what makes any situation positive relative to another state of affairs.
My father died when I was eleven, so I think I learned early on that you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again. We didn’t have any money but my father was extremely handy, and he made all my toys (bicycles from scratch and model trains). It was very intimidating because he could do anything with his hands.
I’ve always been a gimp in some sense. When I was a kid, I had a lot of problems. Back then, no one thought there was such a thing as learning disabilities. You were just dumb, or lazy …. I couldn’t memorize anything, didn’t know the multiplication tables, didn’t know how to add six and seven without using my fingers. I couldn’t even recognize faces. I was a klutz. [I couldn’t] … catch a ball. But art gave me something to do that made me feel special. Probably, had my father lived, I might not have even tried a lot of projects, but when he died I inherited his tool kit and all his power tools, and I [tried] to make stuff myself.
…
…
In life, you have to deal with your fear, the part of you that says, “I can’t do it.†You have to rely on the part of you that says, “Well, it doesn’t look that bad.†And you have to keep going even though there are no guarantees. I’ve found a way to work for myself by breaking everything down to the smallest pieces. I just keep working at each little unit of the painting. Today I’ll do what I did yesterday and tomorrow I’ll do what I did today, the same thing in pieces small enough for me to handle.
I hope that that wasn’t completely irrelevant.
B’bye,
Mr. Monkey
Thanks for the great comment, Mr. Monkey. The one thing I have found is that I will look at a project , and start figuring out how long it is going to take, and then I start factoring in that it will probably take me longer than that, and there’s a part I’ve never done before, and I need a new tool for that, and in five minutes I’ve talked myself out of it. Here I am, full use of my hands and opposable thumbs, my sense of sight and hearing, by tool-using primate brain in good order, and I’ve convinced myself I can’t do it.
I’ve learned now that it doesn’t matter. A half-finished project may not yeild a useful prototype at the end, but it was process in which I learned and had fun, and the next time I have a project, there will be one less process I’ll be completely unfamiliar with.
Nike is right… just do it.