In the 70's I liked things on two wheels. I always wanted a nice bicycle with chrome forks and stays, Reynold's 531 tubing and alloy rims. But I didn't have one.

Instead I had a Yamaha RD400 with alloy rims, drilled brake disks and clubman handlebars. I had a great time on it, even though it wanted to throw you off the back when you twisted the throttle too hard.

But times have changed. Now, courtesy of a local garage sale I have that 70's bicycle with chrome forks and stays, 531 tubing and a Brooks Professional seat. The flexy French PX10 Peugeot is as vintage as it can get. But on the other hand, I don't have an RD400, just the memory.

Rolleiflexes often came with a leather "EverReady" case - often dubbed "NeverReady" because they are hard to put on and take off to do something as simple as put in a new roll of film. Mine is old and cracked and useless, so I needed a new strap and this is the one I made.

Get a strip of latigo leather - this is the type of leather that belts and straps are typically made of and is stronger than some of the other types.

With a skivver (a sort of leather shaver) or a knife or a plane (what I used), thin the leather down at the ends until it fits through the guides on the side of the camera.

Punch a hole the size of the post and then make a slit above the hole to make room to fit it over the head of the post.

Then slip the leather through the guide and work the post through the hole and slit you made.

I made two short pieces which fit on each side and joined them with a buckle to make a short hand strap. I also made a longer piece which can buckle onto the ends of the short pieces to extend it and convert to a neck strap.

A capo clamps on the neck of a guitar just behind one of the frets and allows you to easily change the key that you are playing in without changing the fingering - or the inverse, lets you change the fingering without changing the key, but if you are reading this review you probably already know that. Slipping a capo on can completely change the tone of your guitar from a loud and boomy strummer to a quiet finger-picker.

The easy way to make a capo is with a rubber band and a pencil, but some rubber bands can rot the finish on the guitar and the pencil can roll about and buzz. So a whole science of capo's has come about. There are capos like the Dunlop and Kyser which are like a clothes pin and clamp on using spring force. There are those like the Victor and Planet Waves and Elliot which use a screw clamp and there is the Shubb which uses a lever and roller.

The advantage of the Shubb design is that you can never put it on too tightly - a too tight capo pulls your strings out of tune. The lever design goes on and off quickly. I guess I should mention that it is so solidly built that unless you drive over it with your car, it probably won't wear out in your lifetime. My favorite model is the Shubb Deluxe due to the all stainless steel construction and the roller on the lever. It rides in a little track and makes operation very smooth.

The disadvantages are that when you remove this capo, you have to put it somewhere. Spring clip capos can clamp on the headstock, but you will probably want to slip the small Shubb into your pocket. Even though it is pretty small, it is solidly constructed of stainless steel so it may be a bit heavier than aluminum models, but it will last longer as well. The Shubb Deluxe capo is well worth the price paid.

These are the best loppers I've used. I've broken the handles on a couple of wood handled loppers over the years, but the aluminum handles on these are both stronger and lighter and can get wet without cracking and getting splintery. They are also replaceable as are the cutting blades. You can take the blade off pretty easily to sharpen it when the need arises too.

The bypass style doesn't give quite as much leverage as you would get with a geared anvil type lopper, but I think that the blades stay sharp longer with this style, and there is plenty of leverage for cutting anything that you would use a lopper on. Anything too big to cut whith these you should be sawing anyway. But note that if you are frequently cutting bigger branches you should get the type with 31" handles instead of the 24".

You can see a bit of rust near the blades from the times when SOMEONE in the house has left them out in the rain or sprinklers, but the plastic coated handles are fine even after long exposure to the sun.

One minor feature which bears mention is the set of rubber pads you can see right near the pivot point. They really do work to cushion the impact you get when the blades cut through, Anvil cutters meet with a sharp snap. These cut past the end and then those rubber pads cushion the blow. When you are chopping a lot of stuff, the little touches make your day nicer. Occasionally I tuck one handle under my arm and cut one handed. In that position, a soft cut is appreciated!

Overall, I don't think you could do much better than these loppers. I'd buy another pair, but I have a feeling this 10 year old pair is not going to wear out anytime soon. Mine is an older model so it does not have the "Stratashear" teflon-coated blades like the #AL 8240, but they are fine without it.

From the picture you can see several of the key characteristics. The three leaves are one of the most well known identifiers and there is even a rhyme "leaves of three, let it be" to help remember. Oak leaves have a similar shape but do not come in groups of three. Poison oak also grows on a woody vine and frequently climbs trees or stands as a low bush. The color is also a good indicator. It is green in spring and gradually turns reddish and then brown in the fall. When green the leaves are a bit shiny, but as they age they lose some of the shine.

Poison oak can also be recognized by the small white berries it produces. They are about the size of a pea. But you don't need to see the berries to know it is poison oak. The leaves tell the whole story.

If you have come in contact with poison oak, the best thing to do is wash as soon as possible. Because the urushiol is an oil, use soap or other detergents when washing. Water alone won't help much in removing it from your skin. The sooner you wash the better because once it starts to soak into your skin, it won't be easy to get it off.

It can contaminate clothing as well, so if you have been through an area with a lot of poison oak, make sure to wash them well.

All in all, the best strategy is to be able to identify it, and then avoid it.

Here is another update to a tool which has been unchanged for years - the Crescent Wrench. The slider on the handle opens and closes the wrench. Sliding the handle rotates a bronze rod which turns the worm gear which controls the wrench opening. Having the adjust be so quick and positive is really an improvement.

Another nice feature is the scale on the wrench face which tells how wide it is open. One side is marked in inches and the other in millimeters. This is useful when you are trying to figure out what size wrench to use after you have rounded the corners with the Crescent wrench.

The only negative about this wrench is the added bulk and weight. I think that the convenience and speed of adjustment more than make up for it though.

Some things never change, or at least that is what I thought. The old Stanley 10-099 utility knife has been around forever. But in the past few years there have been a bunch of new twists on it. One of them is the folding utility knife. This craftsman model flips open just like a regular lockblade knife. Flip the lever up and the side rotates down so you can change the blade without any tools.

But this flash comes at a price... There is no room for spare blades which is almost a fatal flaw. The aluminum handle is filled with dimples for drywall mud and other stuff to hide in. You can't just wipe it clean. And last, the whole blade is always exposed when it is open. The retractable blade on the Stanley allows you to extend only as much as you need so you can set the depth of cut allowing you to easily score materials.

The folding knife is smaller and flashier. If you work only with clean materials it would be a great choice, but for drywall and throwing in the tool belt, the venerable 10-099 is still champion.

I've written before about Milwaukee's close quarter drills (also called "right-angle" drills) and was glad to see that the new version Model 0370-20 3/8" close quarter drill improves upon the old one. First, let's cover what is better about it.

• The housing has been redesigned so that the teeth on the chuck are no longer in close proximity to your fingers and the work. As far as I can see, they shouldn't be able to contact the work if it is flat. I'm not sure if this limits how close you can get in a corner, but it is a welcome change.
• The main switch and reverse switch have been redesigned and put in a logical place. On the old model the reverse switch was at the back of the tool so it took two hands to reverse.
• The cord now comes out of the back instead of the bottom. I think this may not improve the balance of the tool, but the cord is now out of the way in tight spaces.
• They put rubber grippy stuff on it. The earliest versions of this drill were shiny and smooth - which means they got slippery when you start sweating. This one is grippy and has an octagonal shape to the grip which should improve grip and also alignment.

The older version was reputed to be build by Sioux and re-badged by Milwaukee. It was pretty obvious that the design and even the materials were slightly different from the rest of the line. Now it is just like another member of the family. We won't know for a while about the longevity, but if it is like the other milwaukee drills then it should be a very worthwhile investment.

Oh, the one disadvantage is that it no longer looks like a duck. And I haven't seen a 1/2" version.

I'm so glad to see that Sanyo finally delivered what I really want, rechargable batteries that work when I want them to. Often I want them to work weeks or months after I last charged them, but most NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) rechargables self discharge pretty fast and there is no charge left when I need it. With the eneloops, you can charge them after you last used them and chances are there will still be charge left weeks or months later.

I've put them in flashlights and camera flashes, both items you don't use often, but you want them to work when you need them. And I've very happy with their performance and shelf life. They come pre-charged from the factory so you can even start using them right away. The self discharge rate is dependent on ambient temperature, so they will hold a charge longer when stored in cooler temperatures. I'm not sure they are what you want if you leave a flashlight in your car trunk all summer, but they are perfect for things like flashlights, remote controls, cameras, clocks and other things which require a low self-discharge rate.

With the price of non-rechargable batteries and the toxic materials they contain, it only makes sense to use a battery which is capable of being re-used a number of time. I highly recommend the eneloops.

I've seen them available both with and without a charger. You can use any 1-5 hour battery charger to charge them so if you already have a charger, you can probably use it. The eneloop charger is a slick white thing which matches the battery design and it is not that expensive. High speed chargers (1/2 hour) are likely to create a lot of heat in the cells - that is not usually a good thing.

They are available in AA and AAA sizes.

The California Abalone is a big gastropod and adheres to the rocks it lives on very tightly. This makes removal of them a tricky process. When the fringe of the abalone detects a visitor, the thick muscle pulls the creature tight against the rock. So to get them off the rock you need to slip one of these stout abalone irons under the shell very quickly, surprising the abalone and not allowing them to suck down tight. The edges are rounded so that it doesn't cut the abalone.

There are a wide variety of abalone irons, but it is probably a good idea to pick one with a built-in gauge. Divers are required to carry a measurement device with them whenever diving for abalone and having it built-in to the iron helps.

The other thing shown in this picture is a floatline. This one I made by feeding some fluorescent orange line through a length of polyethelene tubing. The ends are sealed with some plugs with a stainless steel ring at each end. I put some heat shrink tubing on there to neaten things up. The float line is then tied to the end of the abalone iron. It does not float enough to lift the iron, but it does float up and mark the spot where the iron is. So, when diving in rough murky conditions where the swell and current are moving you about, you may find an abalone lurking but not have enough breath left to spend time to remove it from the rock. Or you may want to come back to the spot for a second look. So all you need to do is drop the iron right there and surface for another breath. Then when you are ready, follow the line back down to where you were.

The float line also allows you to determine how deep you are diving or how deep the water is where you are. I'd consider it an essential accessory for any abalone or sea urchin diver.

That pair of eyes on the front is an ultrasonic distance sensor for the Lego NXT robot. My 10 year old put this together to carry a video camera around the house and avoid bumping into stuff.

The NXT is at the top of the Lego hill and is a great place for people to start exploring both robotics and software development. The box in the middle is the controller which has ports to control and run motors and to get input from a variety of different sensors. The sensors included in the kit are touch, light, distance and sound sensors, but other companies also sell things like compasses, accelerometers, color sensors, IR seekers etc...

The NXT also comes with its own visual programming environment. It comes with a few tutorial projects which exhibit the basic functions. I think that most 8-10 year olds should be able to follow them, but getting beyond the tutorials takes some interest and experimentation. Making connections between the different programming blocks is done by simply dragging and dropping the output so it is fairly simple, but understanding loops and conditional branching is probably something that would not be suitable for an 8 year old. The box recommends for 10 and up and I agree with that recommendation.

The strong point of the NXT as a software learning platform is that it gives immediate physical output. You can write code and your robot actually moves or makes noises. This is not always true when you are just writing software. Their output is two dimensional. On top of this kids get to think about how to build a structure which is capable of doing something. The Lego pieces are easy to put together in different configurations that the focus in on shaping the construction to do what you want rather than trying to put it together.

Bill Gates has identified robotics as one of the key technologies in the coming decades. In my opinion home-built robots are still in the same phase as early computers were. A great way to get started in this is with the NXT. I highly recommend it.

Link to Lego Mindstorms home page

In the days before digital readouts, a vernier scale was a common thing for precision tools like micrometers, calipers and other precision measurement tools. The principle is simple. First create a regular scale such as the one shown above. On the top it ithe finest division is 16ths of an inch, on the bottom we have inches, 1/10ths of inches and that is divided even further in to 4 divisions leaving us with 1/40th of an inch (0.025 inches) for the smallest scale. Since we are reading the scale by eye, it is not useful to go much smaller unless we are looking with a magnifying glass - but there is an easier way to get a finer measurement. We use a secondary scale.

The secondary scale is divided such that it has the same number of increments as you would want between divisions, but instead of squeezing them in to a small space, they are spread out almost at the same spacing as the other divisions. I say almost because they are spread so that there is one more of them than there would be normally. Look carefully at the scale below:

The eight divisions on the secondary scale take the same space as seven do on the primary scale. What this means is that only one of the marks is going to line up at a time. We can see here that the mark at 5 on the secondary scale is the one closest to aligning. Since the 0 is between 0 and the first 1/16th mark on the primary scale we know that the object being measured is 5/128ths of an inch. Actually it is a tiny bit more as the marks are not completely aligned.

We can confirm this on the 1000th's scale. There the zero mark is between the first and second marks on the primary scale. Looking further we see that the 15 mark is the closest to aligning. Add up the 0.025" from being past the first primary division and the 0.015" from the vernier scale and you have 0.40, slightly more than 5/128ths (0.039 inches).

I think they missed their target date by at least a week due to both code and hardware issues. But they do have one redeeming quality - I have free use of my photos - which is important. Free is always a good thing especially when people take a liking to the photo and it gets downloaded a thousand times (what the attraction to a random orbital sander is I have no idea, but it is popular) - having on someone else's server makes this much better,

The new release has some interesting features. The most intriguing is that they are instituting some sort of mechanism by which people can sell their photographs (or probably more precisely, the rights to their photographs). How this will work I'm still not exactly sure because the new site was only up for 10 minutes - long enough for me to upload one picture and poke around a tiny bit. We just need to wait until their server is back up to figure out if this is brilliant or one of those things which "seemed like a good idea at the time".

If the site is up you can follow this link to my photos there:

The first of these is very simple. For any rectangle, the diagonal lines from one corner to the opposite corner are equal. Assuming you have a rectangular or square shape, you can just measure both diagonals and if they are equal, then the corners will be square. If one is longer than the other, then the shape is more like a diamond than a rectangle and you need to push in one of the corners on the longest diagonal until both are equal. One thing to be very careful about here especially on framing is that the sides are the same length. If the sides don't match (top is not the same length as bottom or left side is not the same as right) then the diagonal rule does not apply.

The second way is to use simple geometry. You can do this without using a calculator if you use a 3-4-5 right triangle. If you have a right triangle with sides of 3 units and 4 units, the diagonal side will be 5 units long. So start at the corner you want to check, make a mark along one side which is 3 units out (use feet or even yards or meters as the units) on the other side make a mark 4 units out from the corner and then measure the diagonal distance between the two marks. If it is 5 units, then the corner is square. If it is less, then the angle is sharper than 90 degrees. If it is more than the corner is more than 90 degrees.

Once you have the corner square, it is a good idea to lock it into place using a diagonal brace. Triangles are much more rigid than squares. If you bump the corner of a triangle it won't shift into another shape, but if you bump a square it easily turns into a diamond shape.