Recommended Kit: MintyTime Binary Clock


My wife gave me a Wicked Devices MintyTime kit for Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday. It’s a great lil project, well within the reach of anyone with basic soldering skills and a steady hand. The instructions are clear (although, I swear to God, there’s no mention of placing resistor R17 on the board–I missed the damn thing on *two* separate builds of this kit [more on that follows]). Conclusion: A fun, geeky project with attractive result and a graceful design; recommended for anyone with basic soldering skills, or more advanced hobbyists who want a very tidily executed binary clock.
That said, what really pleased me was Wicked Device’s excellent customer service. After I built my first MintyTime, I discovered that it was keeping terrible time (loosing several minutes from every 24 hours) and burning through batteries like a lunatic. In fact, the behavior was *exactly* as bad as the extreme beta version they describe here (scroll down to point #4 on “Keeping Good Time”), back when they were trying to use the chip’s (crappy) onboard RC oscillator rather than a dedicated crystal oscillator.
I emailed Wicked Devices and got a reply that same morning. Evidently a chip with the old software had slipped in among the current batch. Vic was happy to reburn it for me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t socketed the chips when I built the kit (contrary to *my own damn advice!* Always socket your chips, kids!), and drove myself nuts trying to desolder a 16-lead DIP without destroying it (which is basically impossible with a standard soldering rig). I shared my grief with Vic, who suggested I mail the finished project to them, and they could reburn the chip onboard–which they did. Then the damn thing got lost by the USPS on the return leg, and so Wicked Devices sent me an entirely new kit *plus* the an extra little jumper board and jack so that you can run the clock off of a USB wall-wart instead of batteries.
The new clock runs *perfectly*: not a lost minute over the course of *weeks* of operation.
So, the final verdict: This is a good project from a great company; totally worthwhile purchase or gift.
[FYI: I’ve mounted the LEDs on the “wrong” side of the board here for my own aesthetic reasons.]

A Valentine’s Day Sock Cthulhu

I received this email two days ago, but decided to sit on it so as not to inadvertently spoil any Valentine’s surprises. Cirsten writes

Hi David: I found your sock Cthuhlu on ManMade and had to make it for my bf for Valentine’s Day. Now I am a very crafty girl, but have never sewed anything in my entire life (27 years) but had to do it…so I am sending you the results. This vday sock monster was created in 4 hours (had to figure out how to sew it all together and find wire for the wings, used underwire from a bra lol)
Well hope you like and I made you proud.

Yes indeed! The underwire wing reinforcement is *genius*! And I *love* this fella’s saucy little pose on the sofa:

Check out a couple other pics here (man, I *love* those wings!)
*thanks Cirsten!*

FYI: Upcoming “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” ebook promo

Just a quick heads-up: my Nebula-nominated (“toot, toot!” goes my own horn) novella, “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” will be available absolutely *FREE!* next week! Visit Amazon between February 22 and 24 and download a copy! Spread the word WITH *EXCLAMATION* POINTS! Overstate Minor TRIUMPHS!!!
But, for reals, swing by and grab a free copy from Feb 22-24:
Amazon.com: Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate eBook: David Erik Nelson, Chad Sell: Kindle Store

Boomerang Success Story!

Make A Simple Cardboard Boomerang | Apartment Therapy

(credit: Richard Popovic)
I remember when my brother got a foam-rubber boomerang at the circus one year. We spent hours throwing it at each other in the backyard, desperately trying to get it to come back to us with little success. I figured I just didn’t have the knack. As it turns out, it was the boomerang’s fault (I knew it!), and I can make one in a few minutes that is guaranteed to work. Sign me up!

FACT: Hearing about folks’ success with one of my projects is just *insanely* gratifying–and all the more so when it’s a boomerang success story. My introduction to boomerangs as a kid was *also* a circus souvenir, and I had *exactly* the same experience as Richard; soured me on the damn things for ~15 years.
Do you have a boomerang success story? Send it my way; we need to push back against all the terrible boomerang karma drifting around out there.

On boomerangs and boomeranging (my final guest blog posts at Man Made DIY)

My last two guest blog posts are up at Man Made DIY; the first is on making your own boomerangs from scarps of cardboard (if you’re looking at this blog, you’ve probably already got the skinny on that). The other post is entirely new and starts to get at what I really like about teaching and DIY.
The Spirituality of Boomerangs: On Making Something from Nothing… — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: talk, diy, craft, philosophy

In a nutshell, the cheap toy-store boomerang encompasses the core sadness of “growing up,” and highlights what we envy in the “childlike wonder” of children: As we mature, we begin to reflexively doubt that neat things are real, or really as neat as they seem, and start to assume that most of the time most things just aren’t going to work as advertised. This is our default setting as Americans: Don’t believe the hype. So, if you take a room full of people who are savvy and jaded and know enough not to believe the hype, then give them a ruler and a marker and a pair of scissors and show them how to quickly make a working boomerang out of something they were going to cram in the recycle bin, they become luminous; they’ve just made something awesome out of trash, and it clearly dawns on them that there are a whole lot of other things they could make, too. They could remake the world.

Check ’em out. Thanks!

Crafting Liberation: Confessions of an Unredeemable Direction-Follower

I’m still guest blogging at Man Made DIY this week; please feel free to check my latest post out and, if you feel so moved, chime in. Thanks!
Crafting Liberation: Confessions of an Unredeemable Direction-Follower — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: recipe, talk, cooking, craft

I’m an unredeemable direction-follower. As a boy, I’d account for the meniscus when measuring water to make Ramen noodles. As a man, I was relentlessly mocked by my wife for my stove-side devotion to the succinct instructions of Mark Bittman . . . . This, obviously, is the pathology of a man terrified of failure–that I ever wrote anything at all, let alone an entire damn book (let alone several!) is itself a crippled miracle. While DIY is obviously empowering–My stove was broken, now it’s fixed; I did that!–having instructions in hand can really quickly shackle us, as it’s so easy to mistake a good way of doing X for the only way to do X. . . .

If you’re a crafter/maker, this is a worthwhile Kickstarter project

Or, really, a worthwhile investment; there is a *lot* of disorganized info floating around the web explaining how one *might* transition his/her DIY habits into some sort of business that at least defrays its own costs–and maybe even puts some meaningful scratch in the coffers. What’s missing in my humble, is an organized set of case studies from actual makers/crafters who’ve made their DIY hobbies into stable businesses.
I’ve interfaced with TJ a little, over email and Skype; he’s a good guy, and really well suited to putting this project together. Dave’s advice: Go in with at least $15 so you can get the ebook.
Makers Going Pro by TJ McCue — Kickstarter

Guest blogging at Man Made DIY is *GOOOOO!!!*

I’m guest blogging all this week at Man Made DIY and the first of these posts just went live. Tune in later this week for project-specific stuff, as well as some general DIYing advice and things I’ve learned since writing Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred.
The Craft and Commerce of Writing — Man Made DIY | Crafts for Men — Keywords: talk, work, craft, writing

I never set out to write a craft book–or, for that matter, to write business columns, or reference materials, or textbooks on teen sex and Chernobyl, or basically anything that’s paid the bills over the last five years. I’d written for years, but it had been an after-hours art: Essays about technology and sexuality and Detroit’s decay; stories about clockwork robots, haunted dogs, monster wives, and giant squid–the kind of stuff you gut out after dark; the kind of stuff you write for the consuming love of finding how to say it. The kind of stuff that’s hard to sell.