custom printed roller shades

Rock Made Shades

The talented and multidisciplary husband and wife team of Rebecca Odes and Craig Kanarick at Rock Made have a new product to brighten up kid's rooms. Their line of custom printed roller shades transforms windows, bunk beds and can be innovately hung as dividers. They come in several original designs and can be custom ordered to your specs.

Bacteria gardens

Trees and ferns often grow in fractal forms. Bacteria colonies can, too.

Which is why someone should market them alongside these Gardens-in-a-Bag and the equally portable Flowers-in-a-Can. Certainly our reliably adventurous and near-future spacefaring sheiks can be convinced to invest in these instant landscapes, perhaps even finance viral hunting expeditions to new Edens, where not only new bird and frog species lay uncatalogued but also prized super-strains of Avian flu and Ebola-HIV hybrids await collection and classification by CDC-licensed landscape architects.

via Pruned

Invisible Loudspeakers

Invisible Loudspeakers by Sound Advance

Sound Advance a division of Sonace offers a loudspeaker solution that is hidden inside walls.

Once installed the Sound Advance SA2 can be covered with latex paint or water-soluble wall coverings which make them literally disappear entirely into the room surfaces.

The Sound Advance SA2 flat-panel loudspeaker features a flat panel, expanded-polystyrene foam diaphragm driven by dual, specially developed voice-coil assemblies. The arrangement yields both extended low-frequency reproduction and very wide dispersion of mids and highs. Read more

PixelRoller

PixelRoller is a paint roller that PixelRoller is a paint roller that paints pixels, designed as a rapid response printing tool specifically to print digital information such as imagery or text onto a great range of surfaces. The content is applied in continuous strokes by the user. PixelRoller can be seen as a handheld “printer”, based around the ergonomics of a paintroller, that lets you create the images by your own hand. Go on their website to watch an actual video of the pixelroller in action. Link

How hard is hardwood?

When considering wear and tear, the hardness of the wood becomes important. The Janka Hardwood Test measures the pounds of force needed to embed a steel ball halfway into various woods. Here are the results, from the hardest to the softest woods:

Brazilian cherry - 2,350

Mahogany - 2,200

Merbau - 1,920

Hickory, pecan - 1,820

Wenge - 1,620

Maple - 1,450

White oak - 1,360

Beech - 1,300

Red oak - 1,290 (Red oak is the industry benchmark, durable enough for most uses and by which other woods are measured.)

Birch - 1,260

Walnut - 1,010

Teak - 1,000

Cherry - 950

Alder - 590

Aspen - 350

via bookofjoe

Alternatives to portland cement

With the growing awareness of the environmental harm of greenhouse gases, one major culprit in the construction industry is beginning to attract attention. The production of Portland cement, a key ingredient of concrete, releases substantial amounts of carbon dioxide (C0₂) — 8 percent of greenhouse gases worldwide. The United States consumes 110 million tons (100 million metric tons) of Portland cement annually and China now produces and places five times that amount.

Alternatives to Portland cement are available and are becoming easier to implement. One compelling innovation is the substitution of coal fly ash. Fly ash is a by-product of coal-burning power plants. Up to 22 million tons (20 million metric tons) of fly ash is removed annually from U.S. coal plants.

Historically, this abundant material was considered a nuisance waste product and left in huge piles near coal plants or in landfills. Left exposed to the elements, and in particular to percolating water, fly ash can leach trace amounts of heavy metals into the ground, posing an environmental danger. However, once locked in concrete, these small amounts of heavy metals are rendered relatively harmless.

Fly ash consists primarily of tiny beads of silica, which act as a binder in the hydrating process. These beads can make concrete more workable and fill voids better than Portland cement-based concrete. Fly ash also allows for reduced amounts of water in the mixture. The result is a material that is stronger and less permeable to moisture and to agents like sulfur that can degrade the integrity of the concrete. >>>

Terminate

Home Command Center

Economical Solution for Both Multi-Family and Single Family Homes

Use for Existing Construction or Small Installations of Telephone and Video

Up to Four (4) Telephone Line Inputs and 8 Ports (or Rooms) Output

One (1) Video Input and Eight (8) Outputs (or Rooms)

Surface Mounted

Cutouts

Several variations at HomeTech

Home network wiring

Cable straps from DeepSurplus plus
Thomas and Betts Releasable Ties

cable tracing kit:
B&K Model 262 -- a tone generator terminating in alligator clips and RJ11 plug and a tracer probe, for a little under $70 (including shipping) from Tequipment.net.

Locking pliers and the TL252 stripper costs $10 from DeepSurplus

TIP: Some folks like to use a small-blade screwdriver to do their termination. But I wouldn't recommend taking the risk of widening the terminals and creating an intermittent, or worse, high resistance connection that would be miserable to troubleshoot.

Cable test kit from Altex Computers and Electronics

Font your walls

Unlike a photo or painting, words allow you to use your imagination.

May our home be warm and our friends be many...

There is no end. There is no beginning.
There is only the fininite passion of life. -Federico Fellini.

Wall of Words provides authentic fonts, deep customization and many selections to add unaccustomed flair to our world of walls. Severals choices are chosen by loving parents specifically with children in mind. Take a look.

WashDryIron

23-year-old Inventor Oliver Blackwell has created a machine called the WashDryIron that does exactly that: It washes clothes, then dries them, then IRONS THEM.

Items are each processed while on a hanger.
The machine eliminates color runs and shrinkage.

New Washing Machine Also Dries, Irons

Affordable housing in Mexico

Consolidated update

Construction accounted for nearly one-fourth of the new 193,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

That means the industry has increased employment for 12 straight months, ( 4.9%) to a record 7,460,000.

All five BLS construction categories added jobs. Heavy and civil engineering employment grew 6%; residential specialty trades 8%; residential building, 5%; nonresidential building, 3%; and nonresidential specialty trades. 2%.

Yet the average hourly wage in construction rose only 2.2%, to $19.65, compared to a 3.3% rise for most other private workers.

The value of construction put in place reached $1.16 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, up 1.0% from November and 8.1% from December 2004, the Census Bureau reported on Wednesday. The figures are not adjustef for inflation.

Spending in 2005 as a whole totaled $1.12 trillion, an increase of 8.9% from 2004.

As was the case for most of the year, growth was well distributed among the major construction segments. From December 2004 to December 2005, public construction grew 10%, private residential rose 9%, and private nonresidential was up 6%. For the year, those categories increased 8%, 11%, and 5%, respectively. Both single- and multi-family construction increased in December, despite bad weather in some regions and worries that housing had finally begun to turn down. Compared to November, the two segments were up 0.2 and 1.0%, respectively. That was consistent with the full-year totals, which were respectively 12 and 21% higher than in 2004. The biggest public category, highway and street construction, dipped in December, perhaps because of worse than normal weather for the month, but for the year was 11% ahead of the total for 2004.

The best-performing large private nonresidential segments in 2005 were multi-retail (general merchandise, shopping centers and shopping malls), +26%; manufacturing construction, +21%; and hospitals, +13%.

Mike Holt Newsletters

battery powered heated gloves

Zanier Heat-GX gloves
Powered by a rechargeable 4 oz. lithium battery in three heat settings -- 86º, 98.6º and 131º.
Batteries last for 10, 4.5 and 2 hours respectively. $250

Two–Person Home Sauna

Unlike most home saunas, this unit fits into small spaces and can be set up in a few hours without the inconvenience of extensive home remodeling.

Made from kiln–dried red cedar and stainless–steel hardware, the sauna is large enough to seat two people and can be set up in a bathroom, bedroom, recreation room, garage or an outdoor location such as a backyard or by a pool.

Free air flow design uses natural convection to bring fresh air into the heater from below and to disperse it inside the sauna, promoting quick warm–up time and energy efficiency.

Plugs into a dedicated 230V-30A circuit.

Weight: 530 lbs.

$3,000 at Hammacher

Rapid Prototyping

Belgian Rapid Prototyping and Software specialists, Materialise, cutting edge company, more than any other, appears to be leading the charge toward a wholesale shift in how products are manufactured. That’s no small thing. Neither is the speed at which it could occur.

"The borders you used to believe were the right ones will be crossed. You will meet people you never believed you would ever meet, do stuff you never believed you could do. We must re-think from square one and break down borders.

All of our beliefs are going to change," said Cage Hvid, INDEX:, Denmark.