So you have a few extra cans left about the manse after the holiday party and are wondering what to do with them. How about building a solar panel? Free heat is good heat.

As air enters the 2 holes on the sides near the bottom, the sun is heating up the soda cans all painted black to absorb the heat. The cans have holes drilled in the bottom, so the air being drawn in at the bottom works its way through all the heated cans and gets hotter and hotter as it approaches the top. With convection, more and more air is drawn in through the bottom and the heat rises. A single hole drilled in the top of the frame is where all this heat comes out, and I have to tell you - it's friggin' hot and it comes flying out of there at full speed.

This could be a handy way to provide a bit of daytime heat to a shed or garage that it otherwise useless during the depth of winter.

So you have a few extra cans left about the manse after the holiday party and are wondering what to do with them. How about building a solar panel? Free heat is good heat.

As air enters the 2 holes on the sides near the bottom, the sun is heating up the soda cans all painted black to absorb the heat. The cans have holes drilled in the bottom, so the air being drawn in at the bottom works its way through all the heated cans and gets hotter and hotter as it approaches the top. With convection, more and more air is drawn in through the bottom and the heat rises. A single hole drilled in the top of the frame is where all this heat comes out, and I have to tell you - it's friggin' hot and it comes flying out of there at full speed.

This could be a handy way to provide a bit of daytime heat to a shed or garage that it otherwise useless during the depth of winter.

Photo by karlfrankowski.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tools for editing images online, independent of any downloaded or portable software.

You responded and we rounded up the top five nominees for best online image editor. All of the editors are free so don't hesitate to jump into and editor that catches you eye and give it a test drive.

Sumo Paint

If you're expecting online image editors to be anemic, you'll be surprised by the extensive of features of many of the nominees like Sumo Paint. Sporting a toolbar, image navigator, swatches, and layers, Sumo Paint does more than just crop and rotate images. In addition to just having layers, as some other editors do, Sumo Paint has support for blending modes and other advanced layering magic like drop shadow and outer glow. The brushes and ink tools offer a wide variety of shapes and textures, if you like some of the paint-centric features of Sumo Paint you'll definitely want to check out the Gravity tool which helps make some pretty interesting abstract paint effects. Sumo Paint also supports drag and drop image opening of images you have stored in your Sumo Paint account. Sumo Paint doesn't require a login for use, but if you sign up for a free account you can store images online and participate in the Sumo Paint community by submitting your work and ranking the work of others.Photo by Randy Son of Robert.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express is Adobe's offering in the online editing arena. One of the first things you'll notice, and if you're an avid Photoshop user it's sure to elicit at least a chuckle, is that out of all the online image editors in the world the one that looks the least like Photoshop is the actual legitimate Photoshop offering from Adobe. None the less the interface is easy to use and covers the basics nicely. One of the best features of Photoshop Express is the film strip view provided along the bottom of the editor when using a variety of the adjustment tools. Instead of just giving you a slider to adjust the saturation, white balance, and other subjective photo tweaks, Photoshop Express displays the changes incrementally letting you pick your favorite from the gradient of choices. It's much faster for quick tweaks than fiddling with sliders, if you want to use a slider however they haven't removed the feature, the more granular slider is underneath the pictures allowing you to fine tune. Under the advanced feature set you'll find tools like tinting, sketching, and distortion tools. Adobe Photoshop Express is free but, unlike all the other nominees in the Hive Five, requires an account for you to use your own photos. If you just want to play around with it however, there is a demo account with sets of pictures for you to play with. Photo by pasotraspaso.

Pixlr

Pixlr takes a two-prong approach to image editing. When you visit Pixlr you can opt to use Pixlr Express or Pixlr Editor—seen here—depending on your needs. Pixlr Express is a simple image editor with a right hand toolbar which covers basic tasks like cropping, rotating, applying basic correction filters, and so on. Pixlr Editor looks like a more traditional photo editing application complete with a toolbar, menu bar, and even navigator, layers, and history panels. If you're familiar with desktop applications like Photoshop and GIMP it won't take you very long to find the location of tools like the clone stamp, selection wand, and gradient map. There is a Pixlr Firefox extension which allows you to grab images and screenshots from your browser and send them to Pixlr.

Picnik

Picnik doesn't seek to emulate desktop editors with its simple toolbar design, instead opting to make the most popular tools as high profile and easy to access as possible. There is no Photoshop-esque sidebars, palettes, or other advanced features in the main editing window. The features that are provided however are extremely intuitive and easy to use with tool tips that pop up to help you use the various tools. If you want to tweak your photo beyond basic cropping and color correction under the Create tab there are over 30 image filters and a variety of tools like a blemish touch up wand. There is a premium version of Picnik, available for $25 a year, which gives you access to more advanced tools, special effects, and other perks like bulk uploading. Photo by jurvetson.

Aviary Phoenix

Aviary Phoenix is an image editor that is part of the Aviary Suite of online editing tools, which on top of image editing boasts a vector and filter editor among other tools. Aviary Phoenix has an advanced interface and plenty of options to help you edit your images like layers, blending, and magic wand selection. You can use Aviary without signing up for an account but with an account you can save your creations, collaborate with other users, and otherwise participate in the Aviary community. There is a Firefox extension available for Aviary Phoenix called Talon which adds in an assortment of functionality like screen capture, quick editing of images you find online, and unique among the Hive Five candidates this week, it adds support for pressure sensitive input devices. There is a premium version of Aviary Phoenix available for $25 a year which unlocks advanced features and the ability to save your work to your Aviary account without adding it to the public area of the Aviary community. Photo by tinyfroglet.

Now that you've had a chance to check out—and hopefully play with!—the nominees for best online image editor, it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which Online Image Editor is Best?(opinion)

See your favorite in the Hive? Can't believe your favorite didn't make it? Still chuckling that one of the least Photoshop-like offering is from Adobe? Let's hear about it in the comments below.

These scissors are the most versatile ones I have seen. They were a gimmie at a Revereware shop that closed recently, buy one get one. I bought about four pairs with different colored handles. The black handled ones live on the workbench, a red handled pair stays in the kitchen and some others are reserved for crafting.

What makes them incredible? They are sharp, stainless steel scissors with decent sized handles, suitable for big hands. The two sides come apart for easy cleaning. The ends of the handles have large and small screwdrivers, and one side sports a bottle opener. Inside the handles is a grippy section for opening difficult jars. They are suitable for lots of kitchen and other tasks in the house, garden, and yard.

Ben Heck has just finished his latest hack which is version 5 of the XBox 360 Laptop. This time it looks even more polished than the previous versions. Unfortunately the laptop is spoken for so if you want one of these special units you may have to shell out some big bucks.

Via: Techeblog

 "A few months ago I announced that I would be building a few more Xbox 360 portables, and well, here’s one now! While it looks similar to the previous model it’s once again a from-scratch redesign and has the following features:

• Built-in Ethernet port, finally.
• Built in WIFI adapter, as usual.
• Digital pushbutton volume control rather than a clunky knob. I used a different audio amp as well, and it sounds a lot better.
• Flush-mount DVD door and side panels (such as the memory card slots)
• IR sensor for the remote control.
• Two user USB ports.
• More air holes!
• Jasper motherboard."

Look what happens when you go to the check out the Life Size Mousetrap...Some crazy beaste comes galumphing through the place.

Yikes. Anybody got details on the build?

• Solar night light circuit art

• High speed glass breakage

• Creep out your babysitter!

• DIY air rocket

• Candy PCB most likely ROHS-compliant [above, bottom-right]

• FedEx wine rack [above, bottom-left]

• Power drill coffee grinder [above, top-right]
  
• Compressed air rocket goes up, must come down … somewhere? [above, top-left]

New kits in the Maker Shed

• Fiber Optics Kit
  
• ScrewShield for Arduino
  
• ARMmite PRO
  
• Arduino Projects Pack
  
• ArduPilot
  
• Desktop Onager
  
• Fire Piston Kit