Miscellany Inventions, recipes, ideas, essays and other stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else

...new other stuff...

My build-it-yourself "tether-nis" tennis trainer The tetherball principle applied - successfully - to racquetsports Through sheer dumb luck, I figured out an easy way to build a functional - and surprisingly entertaining - tennis/racquetball trainer on the tetherball principle...and in the process, conceived a simple, durable device for converting any unused urban playground pole for "tethersports". (completely rewritten 08/11; includes demonstration video clips) $30 Cannister Sprouters from Found Containers Storebought sprouter prices are criminal. It's time to go vigilante. Here's a quick guide to making medium- and high-capacity cannister sprouters from easy-to-find thrift shop containers, including a family-sized cannister sprouter that gives new life to your useless countertop pasta soakers. (08/11)

Build a Light Therapy Box in 2 Hours for Less than $50 Fighting the high cost of low spirits For $300, you can buy an inexpensive light-therapy box guaranteed to provide the proper spectrum for treating SADS. Or you can build this simple, safe project from easily-sourced parts and save a small fortune. It pumps out 17,500 full-spectrum lumens from 300W, weighs less than 15lb, and takes just a couple of hours to build from $50 worth of parts you can find at almost any big-box store. It is, of course, brilliant! (08/11)

...older other stuff...

A Neurological Model of Psychological Trauma Trauma and healing from the electrical perspective I needed this several years ago, and since it still doesn't seem to exist, I developed it myself: an easy-to-understand guide to psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders which uses the principles of simple electrical circuits to explain the phenomena involved. If you understand how power gets from the street to your lightbulb, you can follow this explanation. (07/11) Boilerplate non-disclosure agreements Just because they're so damned hard to find elsewhere! Something else I needed years ago and couldn't find templated on the web. Includes two NDA templates and an Agreement to Review Idea form. These were the best unprotected templates I could find of a dozen or so I eventually did source...which doesn't say much, I know. (11/04)

Brand-blacking: An Exercise in Mental Hygiene Free your mind and the savings will follow Nobody pays me to endorse or advertise the Microsoft, Craftsman, Sony, or Hamilton-Beach products I own. So why should I allow them to advertise for free in my office? Nobody's brand name or logo gets free exposure in my home, and this is a form of anticorporate activism which has a real payoff. It's easy, it's fun, and ten full years after first posting this essay, it still hasn't caught on. (01/04)

...other other stuff...

Wet April Day by Cub Lea, from Another Lost Weekend, ©1996 D:\Mystify Publishing

"It keeps your mind fresh and odor-free."