It has recently come to my attention that hot pockets, the noble staple of my diet, are awful. Not awful as in unpleasant, but rather awful for people who don’t wish to see their own hearts explode. I realized this as one day, while leaning against a tree, I was approached by a herd of deer who held me down and licked me all over my body until I got tired and went home. after bathing, I went to the kitchen and checked the nutritional information on the nearest box of Lean Pockets. Aha, thought I, each one of these has 810mg of

Not actually relevant, but certainly dramatic!

sodium! 810MG! 34% of my RDA in a single delicious food pod! I eat 3 or 4 of these things a day (depending on how little sleep I get), so that means I’m sucking down up to 3.25 GRAMS of sodium a day!

Now being both cheap and lazy (single too, ladies), I am a pretty big fan of pod-based foodstuffs. The thought of having to actually cook real food on a daily basis fills me with unspeakable dread. In a panic, I rushed to Kroger to see if there was some sort of alternative to this unholy fate. Initially, it seemed not; apparently the term “microwavable” is synonymous with “cured in brine.” So here we arrive at this week’s project: BUILDING A BETTER HOT POCKET. Using SCIENCE and MATHS, I determined that I could combine ground turkey, tomato paste, low-moisture mozzarella cheese, onions, garlic, and peppers in a wheat tortilla to make a thing that tastes pretty good and is comfortingly pellet shaped (more…)

I used to have a big red electric school bell. Don’t remember why, but it’s not really relevant just now. What is relevant is that this past Halloween I rigged the electromagnetic clapper mechanism to a motion detector and some other stuff to make a thing to frighten trick-or-treaters. I only used the clapper bit because the whole bell was absurdly loud and not really halloween soundy. I think I put the clapper in a wooden box so it would kinda rattle hollowly. Doesn’t matter. Point is, either the clapper wasn’t rated for the continuous duty it received, or it was NOT intended to run off 110V AC. Very soon my lovely device went from being “Scary Flashing Hoverskull with eerie rattle” to “Smelly Flashing Hoverskull with silent cloud of eerie smoke.”

And the point of all THAT is afterward, I had a really pretty big red bell with nothing to make it go ding. To the project!

Make a nifty boxing-style bell to reunite the schoolbell with it’s ring.

Materials:

• cheap plastic caster
• metal spoon handle
• small steel bolt
• springa
• random metal bits
• whatever the hell that pulley came from (drape pull maybe?)

The only bit of the construction that may not be obvious just by looking at this clever cutaway photo is the hammer bit. First I used the angle grinder to smooth out a small bolt and sharpen it to a point, then I welded a spoon handle to it and riveted the lot to a plastic caster.