Blondihacks

Hey everyone! Sometimes I get requests from folks who would like to support the blog and YouTube channel, but prefer not to use Patreon. I’ve

Hey everyone! Just a quick note to say that I’ve created my first Patreon Goal. As of this writing, I’m very close to reaching 100

Increasing the unexpected usefulness of an odd tool.   Patrons! If you’re at the $5 level or above, you’ll be seeing a three-part video series

Bringing a little mechanical buddy back to life.   This article has an accompanying four-part video series in the Patreon feed. Sign up at the

Wherein we party like it’s 1969.   A very good friend of mine has been having a rough time lately, and a couple of us

Wherein we ensure I never have to hear my own thoughts.   I’m a podcast junkie. That might be entirely literal, given that I can’t

Wherein we shave yaks.   This post has an exclusive companion video for Patrons. Sign up now to see it! It shows detailed construction steps

When a bolt-on kit…. isn’t.   Anyone who has messed with cars knows that “bolt-on” kits generally involve almost as much custom fabrication as having

All your smartphone are belong to us.   This post has an exclusive companion video, engineering drawings, and 3D model for Patrons. Sign up now

Wherein I give out more cool stuff to the people who make this all happen.   Have you been on the fence about supporting me

Because everything is better with bluetooth. This article has two companion videos! There’s an overview on the Blondihacks YouTube channel, and an insider look at

Finally we can make flat things.   The lathe is called the King of Machine Tools for very good reason. There’s arguably nothing you can’t

  Hello loyal readers! After seven-or-so years of running this blog, I decided it’s long past time to start giving my Patreon patrons more than

A whole new look and location for this old blog.   I know, right? It’s crazy in here all of a sudden. Well, here’s the

Big Data for a Little Blog   Hello loyal Blondihacks readers! The results from the first ever Reader Survey are in. My apologies if you didn’t

Hey loyal Blondihacks readers! It’s hard to believe, but Blondihacks has been operating for almost seven years now. In all that time, I’ve never stopped

Hey loyal Blondihacks readers! Just a note that I’ve added a commenting policy to the site. I really appreciate everyone’s comments, and you folks that

New Love For An Old Door.   Well, we had some fun with all the steam shenanigans in the shop recently, but it’s time for

Did we make a steam engine or a pretty pile of scrap? Time to find out.   In the previous installments in this series, we

Alliterating our way to success.   So far our little Wobbler has a crankshaft, main bearing, piston, and cylinder. However, it’s currently a bucket of parts.

Hello loyal Blondihacks readers! I recently posted my thoughts here about Patreon’s changes to their fee structure. In that, I counseled you to lower your pledges

Reciprocation and Salivation   Last time, we made the crankshaft and main bearing. These are the elements that convert linear motion into rotational motion, so

Building something cool that only machine tools can do.   If you’ve been following along with my lathe series, then you now have sufficient skills

Thoughts on the first nine months.   It’s been nine months since the Precision Matthews PM1022V lathe was brought into my shop, so I’m starting to

When “compromise” just isn’t good enough.   Race car aerodynamics are a very complex thing, but there are some easy wins that can be had

Wherein the huge workbench is determined to be insufficiently huge.   While it’s true that Furiosa’s Workbench is a beastly thing and should be plenty

The tradeoff of time spent learning tools.   This article is ostensibly about a particular piece of software, and its relationship to 3D printing and machining.

The trick is to be smarter than the animal with a brain the size of a walnut   “This will be great,” I thought to

For when “incredibly strong” just isn’t good enough.   A while back, we did a fun little welding project here on on the blog that I have

A simple hack for containing feline enthusiasm   A “Whiskey Bar” could be described as a thing that contains whiskey. That applies equally well to

For all your bicycle-related scooting needs.   I was recently asked by a cyclist if it was possible to build a rolling stool that used

Another project tool followed me home.   If you do a lot of metalworking, you very quickly get tired of making cuts. Your choices are,

Ghosts of the past, I/O errors, and big dreams.   A while back I did a Part I on digging through the old pile of

So you wanna buy a drill press…   If you’re at all interested in machine tools, a drill press is a really great place to

So many old hacks. Where are they now?   Blondihacks has been running for seven years now, and it’s been quite a ride. I have many,

Sometimes, you just need a place to set down your adult beverage.   My recent metalworking posts have gone over well, so I thought I’d

Not everything you read on the internet is real.   I think the hacking community online has a bit of a File Drawer Problem. This is a

Or Possibly An Artisan Solar Bird Oven   Every so often I get the urge to make something ridiculous. During a conversation with a regionally

Readers send me stuff.   Here’s a first for Blondihacks- reader mail! I’ve been doing this blog for many years, and have received a lot

A new entry into the Apple II solid state scene.   The Apple II retrocomputing scene has some excellent solid state storage options already, including

But wait, there’s more.   Hey everyone! I wanted to say, “thank you” to all my Patreon patrons. You are the ones who make this blog

For once, wishing a computer was slower.   A little while ago, I went on a semi-epic (sempic?) quest to fix the beep in my

Digging up treasures in mom’s basement   Over the holidays, I took the rare opportunity to dig through the stockpile of childhood belongings in my

Fixing 30yo ROM bugs… for real this time.   You may recall way back when I started my Apple II ROM Tool project, that I had

Attempting to close the loop on my 30yo ROM hacking efforts.   Last time, we got the Apple II ROM Dumper to the point where it

A side quest to explore old code.   Something I’ve been wanting to do ever since acquiring my Apple IIc Plus at KansasFest is to dig into

Getting access to a better world.   I have a project coming up that needs a lot of I/O and USB support. I could do

Now with 100% more Twitter   Hey Blondihacks readers! It’s been a very busy summer here in Blondihacks labs. I wanted to drop everyone a quick

Wrapping up the prototype for retrogaming on the go.   A while back I started working on a gamepad for Apple II-series computers. It’s now

Stand back- I’m going to try SCIENCE!   My PrintrBot has been chugging merrily away for me, and while it works, the preparation of the

Delicious, delicious crow.   Yep, that’s right. Despite all my preaching in this blog about how 3D printers are overrated and not ready for primetime and

Taking classic gaming on the road.   Teddy Top has been proceeding nicely, and my IIc Plus is getting increasingly portable. However, there’s one key

Data on the go to go with my screen on the go.   With the basic Teddy Top now up and running with a nice

This idea may yet see the light of day.   A while back, I had this idea to create a thing that would turn an

How far we’ve come from where we were.   It’s an auspicious occasion here at Blondihacks. You see, my Philips Sonicare Elite toothbrush died. Why

Taking a basic case to school.   Sometimes the simplest hacks are the most satisfying. I recently gifted a snazzy new iPad case to my father. That meant

Making something that sucks.   After my poor result from attempting to 3D print the rather large Teddy Top prototype, I thought I’d give vacuum

Sometimes a magic bullet ricochets and kills you.   Ever since beginning the Teddy Top project, I’ve had it in my head that I wanted

Attempting to determine why it sucks so very much.   Like many hackers and tinkerers, home automation is a subject of irrational fascination for me.

A tale of fourteen fails.   Sometimes a project goes so smoothly from start to finish that you’re left feeling all warm and fuzzy, and

What’s new is old again.   Sometimes, an idea seems so great that you just can’t let it go, even though you should. Today’s hack

Upcycling my own crap for once.   This isn’t a hack per se… more like a hacklet. It’s a quickie, and thus is free for

We need eggs, but the chickens all died in 1992.   Last time, I gave my IIc Plus a little checkup, then proceeded to try booting

Playing doctor with an oldie-but-goodie.   As regular readers may recall, I recently attended KansasFest for the first time. In addition to being a big

A one-click build pipeline for rapid iteration on Apple ][ software.   In addition to meeting lots of amazing people, the recent KansasFest left me with a

Braving inhuman humidity for the love of 8 bits.   This year I got talked into attending KansasFest for the first time ever. To be

A quick tour of Blondihacks World Headquarters.   I’ve had a number of requests for a look at my workspace, so I figured I’d finally

Rescuing yet another almost-great product.   One of the running themes here at Blondihacks is rescuing products from the landfill when they “barely fail”. That

Pushing the boundaries to see what blows up.   I can’t ever leave things well enough alone, so while working on Veronica’s input system, I decided to

Hey loyal Blondihacks readers,   I wanted to take a moment to talk about the advertising content on this site. You may have noticed that

An arcade “cabinet” to hold my arcade controller.   A while back, I decided my life was missing a homemade arcade control panel. Well, it’s

A fun little afternoon project.   Recently, the fine folks over at Adafruit Industries asked me to build something with their parts and write about

This is what happens when there’s nothing on TV.   I’ve been listening to a really great podcast lately called No Quarter. It’s all about

Homebrew etching of double-sided PCBs.   Etching PCBs is a topic I’ve covered quite a bit already, here and especially here. You might think I’ve

Rescuing a good product from bad customer service.   I’ve been setting up my house for wireless music throughout. The technology I chose is Apple’s

Making another product into what it should have been.   Here’s yet another case of a consumer product that is almost really nice, but falls

A better morning for old feet.   We’re back! Thanks for everyone’s patience with BlondiHacks’ long absence. Moving to the new space has been more

Hey everyone! You may have noticed it has been a little quiet here lately. That’s because Blondihacks Labs has been in the long process of

A timelapse camera in a Tic Tac box.   Among my more questionable life choices is my regular participation (as part of The B-Team) in