Learn How to Make All Kinds of Weird (but cool) Stuff With Instructables

(Just out of curiosity, is "ables" the new "i" or "e"? Thisables, thatables. Whattheheckables?) Combine tagging with step-by-step instructions to make a wide variety of things and voila, you have Instructables, available at http://www.instructables.com/. Warning, monster timesink, fascinating, even for amateur tinkerers. It may take you a few minutes to get used to the interface.

Step one. Go to the front page and note the featured projects, which apparently rotate. Reloading the page a few times brought up a variety of gems including a wheelchair for a Daschund, a pinball coffee table, "throwies" LCD lights, and a bird feeder with a built-in Webcam. On the same line as "Featured Projects" is also a link to explore available projects; a search box is at the bottom of the page. I don't like the search box; it searches for keywords and mixes projects, registered users of the site, and comments together. So if I search for birds I get all of two hacks but several member and comment listings. I saw no way to filter things out of the search results.

So I think I'll explore instead. Explore lists all of the 300+ projects on the site (I'm not sure how they're sorted) but also allows you to view recent projects or explore all available tags (tags are, again, mixed between user listings and projects so I didn't find the tag cloud very useful.) Recent projects included "How to test Bipolar Transistors if you have an Analog Multimeter" (um, huh?), "CD-Cases made with old 5 1/4 floppy disks" (woo hoo!), and "Giant Steel Skeleton Hand (and coat rack)" (woo-ick! But neat!)

The projects themselves vary a lot. Let's look at the "cablebone", a three step project (http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/C89EF15CBB0C10289B50001143E7E506/.) There's an introductory photo in the middle of the page along with some text and comments if any. The follow the steps to creation you need to either click on the (woefully small) step button underneath the photo or click on the step photo thumbnails at the top left of the page. In this case the cablebone has three steps, each explained. Each step has a photo and instructions. Each step has the possibilities for comments as well. The cablebone is a fairly basic instructable; other ones, like "Twisted Spoke Bicycle Wheel Lacing - flowers!" can run a dozen steps or more. The quality of the instructions varies a lot; most of the ones I saw were fantastic, but I was disappointed by the bird feeder with the built-in Webcam; it had photos with no instructions and I was left totally confused. Some instructables neglect to say where the materials to create the items were purchased, which is occasionally bothersome; I know where to get USB cords but am at sea when confronted with the need to buy watch batteries in large quantities.

The user comments do a lot for this site. I have some computers at work that are tucked away and periodically need to be worked on. Flashlights are clumsy and an LED tap light would be overkill. What would come in handy would be a small diffused light that would be just enough to let me see cords and not crack my head on the top of a desk. (I can also think of some fun ways to use these little bugs when stringing network cable and doing an inspection of our inventory systems.) The LED throwie lights looked terrific, but their always-on option wouldn't work well. Another instructables user offered a Flickr set for a basic switch (and by basic I mean cardboard) to turn the throwies on and off. (And don't worry, I don't plan on using a magnet as with the original throwies. I thought a little adhesive tape and a pushpin, with a bent paperclip to slide the switch on and off.)

I could wander around this site for hours. Some of the projects lack a little in actual instruction, but enough of them are well written and interesting to keep you dreaming up cheap mad scientist projects for a long time.

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