Now that Oxford Dictionary has added the verb 'MacGyver' to the official lexicon, we pay homage to the almighty hack.
With each new update to the online version of the Oxford Dictionary, one can practically hear the laments of pedantic grammarians far and wide. This week, among a few dozen new words, we got “awesomesauce” (having nothing to do with sauce at all) and “mkay” (as in, OK … mkay). Oh how the mighty have fallen.
...
In the age of all things DIY, MacGyver has become the patron saint of the hack. And if there’s one thing we love here at TreeHugger, it’s a good hack. A clever use of materials allows old things to live longer, creates new uses for things that may be obsolete, and can basically become a super sustainable way to obviate the need to purchase more and more and more new stuff. Long live the hack! So with that in mind, here’s a round-up of some of our best MacGyver moments.
What follows is a long list of hacks. Some are contrived, some are clever but too niche, some might be useful. Anybody have any to add to the list? Mine is poking string into the can of bacon & chicken grease in the kitchen to make a quick tallow lamp. Works well.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:26PM
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/19/387268521/will-the-next-macgyver-be-an-indian-woman [npr.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:31PM
There's just one requirement: The new MacGyver has to be a woman.
I'm old enough to remember the original series and it was awkwardly progressive or politically correct by the standards of what passed for that in the 80s.
I distinctly recall episodes about anti-hunting and another one about anti-political organizing from the right. There were more that I only vaguely remember where even as a kid I kind of laughed at the TV and said "really?"
From memory it was kind of a competitor-clone of the A-team where the only real differences were no teamwork (which was apparently seen as right wing) and he was fairly non-violent (as opposed to the A team which had a mandatory minimum # of firearm rounds shot per show, somewhere around 1K minimum)
I think we can safely assume the MacGyver of the mid 10s is going to be simultaneously interesting and agonizing to watch. An (insert predictable demographics here) gets a post on tumblr to fix a 3-d printer with sugru, duct tape, and a linux install (OK cool so far) so the local community organizer group can repair their "black lives matter" banner which had a broken mounting bracket (err what?), and that'll be portrayed as a good thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:13PM
The original show had Cuba Gooding Jr in it for a few episodes. That was good enough reason to dump the show.
Hope there is no CGR ever again. But we cannot hope for a propaganda-less show. That is against the law.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:13PM
a mandatory minimum # of firearm rounds shot per show
All to zero effect. Virtually nobody ended up getting shot.
Common knowledge is that firing a bullet into the air will, without fail, fall to earth and kill a child three miles away.
Yet full automatic weapons unleashed in a firefight at twenty yards will result in nothing but broken windows.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:35PM
Yes and A-team was just barely contemporary with "Tour of Duty" where they fired the same mandatory 1K rounds, but people dropped like flies (on both sides, from what I recall).
From memory, Knight Rider had about 100 bullets fired per episode, again zero hits. Apparently "old people" in the 80s didn't know you need to hold the gun sideways to get good accuracy, like hollywood learned how to do in the 90s.
Now that I think back to it, almost all network TV in the 80s sucked. Let me horrify some Gen-x and older readers. "Greatest American Hero" "Punky Brewster" "Battlestar Galactica:1980" "Whiz Kids" "Starman" "ALF" "Roseanne" "Remington Steele" "Thirtysomething". I liked ST:TNG and ... ... um ... I liked ST:TNG, that was about it.
"Thirtysomething" would be "Sixtysomething" now. I smell a reunion show in the making... no wait thats just gas. Well anyway the 80s had some amusing TV.
The weirdest story of all from 80s TV is given the stereotype of what happens to child actors when they grow up, I checked Punky Brewster on wikipedia and shockingly she's not a train wreck at all, fairly normal, almost.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Monday August 31 2015, @12:48AM
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Monday August 31 2015, @01:06AM
So was the original Star Trek, ST:TNG and every incarnation of Star Trek to follow. So was Dr Who. So was Twilight Zone.
It could just be that shows for dumbasses tend to espouse right-wing values and shows for people with half a brain espouse progressive values.
Do you see where I'm going with this? If not...
let's let the research speak for itself.
https://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/study-are-liberals-smarter-than---conservatives [americanscientist.org]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives [psychologytoday.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com/proof-republicans-really-are-dumber-than-democrats-2012-5 [businessinsider.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:04PM
we got “awesomesauce” (having nothing to do with sauce at all)
That's your problem with "awesomesauce"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:12PM
"It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the gate on Earth."
(Score: 2) by jbWolf on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:51AM
For those who don't know: This is a line spoken in the very first Stargate SG-1 Episode [wikia.com]... of which Richard Dean Anderson also stars.
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:20PM
MacGyvering involves solving problems in ingenious ways with what ever is at hand.
Making a lamp out of excess grease? Who needs a horrible smelling grease candle? Who even keeps horrible smelling grease around? What problem is actually solved by such a hack? Apartment smells too fresh?
In a sense MacGyverisms are like patents. Once something becomes expected or common, its no longer a MacGyver. Using twist-ties or Sugru or dict tape for ANYTHING doesn't qualify because that't what those things are intended for, and just about any usage of them becomes trivial and obvious.
Even the chicken grease candle is just a disgusting variation of the butter candle mentioned in the list of hacks.
(Is it just me, or is there no such thing as a household that includes a woman but no candles?)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:09PM
My experience with candles is they buy them for each other and you can't burn them because burning them destroys them and what if great auntie WTF came to visit from Nebraska next summer and noticed her commemorative pope votive candle from christmas of 2006 is gone, she might think I threw it out and then it'll be all family drama that I threw out her candle but not cousin Jennies pink candle with the love quotation from 2007 and you know those two sides of the family don't get along, at least on the womens side, so they'll think I'm taking sides. Meanwhile I'm thinking, I need some wax for this wood saw and buying my own candle is starting to sound appealing... This also applies to "practical" gifts like bath towels (seriously, I need to towel off my manly butt with your sister's idea of a cute kitten theme bath towel, and your sister thinks kittens are cute and she's in her 40s now? I swear if I get a whisker stuck up there... and it all goes downhill from there). Then there is the OMG I can't believe you used that towel to change the oil in your car, my aunt flora gave us that towel as a housewarming gift before she died, what would she say, and I'm like, we moved here back in '00 so zombie flora would probably say either "brainz" or "WTF do you still have that old thing for", that's what she'd say.
A good hack is a "hold my beer and watch this" moment that doesn't end up involving fire trucks or ambulances. Its hard to see how a candle could fit that criteria.
You know what else food grease is good for? Cooking. Take that bacon grease and fry some eggs in it, or fry a lean meat like chicken or a very lean steak in the pan, that tastes freaking awesome. Also any time you use fat you can use filtered bacon grease, just a couple drops in whipped cream is a cool experience although mixing it is non-trivial (because at cream temps the bacon grease is a solid, so there's this "tempering" process that has nothing to do with metallurgy but is the same basic idea as egg based sauces...). Oh and mix some bacon grease with peanut butter (you'll need to refrigerate it now unless you like rancid bacon grease flavor peanut butter, of course). Oh and potatoes are useless empty carbs, BUT when I eat useless empty carbs, I eat them fried in bacon grease, yum... I sometimes wonder how much bacon grease I threw out in the trash when I was a young dumb new cook. That stuff is freaking gold now that I know what to do with it. Some say that stir fries should use a neutral boring tasteless oil, I would say they have really bland tasting vegetables. I'm gonna start saving it in ice cube trays if I ever build up an excess of it, which is probably impossible. And now I am getting hungry. And thats some kinda hack-ish bacon grease ideas, at least compared to burning it.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday August 31 2015, @04:38PM
What kind of coffee do you drink, and how much?
But yeah, I reuse my oil once or twice, too, when cooking. It does add flavor and reduces the amount of stuff I have to jar and dispose of.
(and when cooking low fat meats, all the fat you can reuse is flavor you might not have been able to get with the meat... Don't buy a pink blob for flavor, because its in the marbling or that tasty fatty stuff being cut off.)
And yeah refrigeration storage of mixed oils is key to preventing a terrible mistake...not doing so is part of a recipe for disaster!
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Monday August 31 2015, @05:01PM
My experience with candles is they buy them for each other and you can't burn them because burning them destroys them and what if great auntie WTF came to visit from...
How quaint. My experience with candles is that you burn them because WTF, the power is out. Again. Reminds me of a joke circa 2000: Q: What did Zimbabweans use before candles were invented? A: Electricity.
You could say the joke's on us.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:30PM
I did the grease candle hack. It would not light in a Colt 40 bottle so we poured it out into the grass and lit it. It solved boredom.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:27PM
"Make or repair (an object) in an improvised or inventive way, making use of whatever items are at hand"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/MacGyver?q=mcgyver [oxforddictionaries.com]
MacGyver. It's just one of those words, like awesomesauce (I do notice how the built-in dictionary in the browser doesn't recognize any of them yet), that doesn't really need to be in the dictionary. Awesomesauce, mkay and d'oh! are just more examples of stupid words that belong as verbal words only and are not to be used in written conversations. That said I have probably used them all, I just don't think or believe that they belong in a dictionary.
If I had to pick a cool macgyvering (or whatever the word is) I still really like the one about how they lit houses with the sun, plastic bottles, water and bleach.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23536914 [bbc.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:47PM
As a machinist and CNC programmer, I don't see much of a demarcation between MacGyvering and normal work, more of a spectrum. No matter the circumstances, you do the best you can with the resources you have available, including time and money limitations.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @10:52PM
Yes, the way they chose to describe the word felt quite general. Many things previously not so now seem to be a form of MacGyverism. Not sure really how one should fix the definition but perhaps add something along the line of "... in a way contradictory to it's original purpose."
"Make or repair (an object) in an improvised or inventive way, making use of whatever items are at hand"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/MacGyver?q=mcgyver [oxforddictionaries.com] [oxforddictionaries.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:31PM
Tampons work great for getting the oil out of leaking spark plug wells on hemi engines. If you've ever worked on one, you know what I mean.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by redneckmother on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:41PM
Yes, and a maxi-pad makes a good non-stick dressing for large cuts and scrapes.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @08:46PM
Who would have guessed that tampons and maxi-pads are good for soaking up blood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:20PM
They really do work great for soaking up oil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @09:35PM
There was a news story about a guy that uses them under his armpits to soak up excessive sweat. I see no problem using something for other uses.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @10:47PM
It's not that I doubt they are great at soaking up various liquids -- oil, water, sweat or blood. I'm just not sure it should count as MacGyverism to use something designed for soaking to soak.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ticho on Monday August 31 2015, @06:32AM
But now we're getting dangerously close to "No true MacGyver" fallacy...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Monday August 31 2015, @01:14PM
Also, I don't claim to speak to the situations that the OP found himself in when cleaning an engine block "Here, you're/I'm on your/my period, let me just slip this out and put in the spark well to soak up that oil"
Remember a MacGyverism is when you use innovation and whatever happens to be at hand to solve a problem. Buying a box of tampons for the purpose of soaking up oil in spark plug wells does not count.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Monday August 31 2015, @12:02AM
I had to do this once when I put a utility knife through my hand at my parents house. The cut was too wide to super glue over, otherwise I would have just done that and gotten over with it. Probably should have gotten stitches, but I wasn't going to put a damper on Christmas by going to the ER.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday August 31 2015, @03:52AM
Most people use the Oxford English Dictionary as a prescriptive dictionary -- one that sets the standard for correct English. The makers of the OED, though, consider it a descriptive dictionary -- a description of how the language is used.
Let the pedantic grammarians lament.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 31 2015, @09:51AM
Is a useful way to "MacGyver" all these damned smartphones we have lying around in drawers! Hell I'm not a big smartphone guy and I have 3 or 4 of the things stuffed into drawers, most Android 2.x single cores, and I have looked around and haven't found any kind of "hack" that will make these things useful if you already have a new smartphone in their pocket. You would think these "pocket computers" would have all kinds of uses but when you already have 2 laptops, 2 desktops, and a quadcore smartphone? Yeah its not so easy, and I'm far from the only one with these things piled in drawers gathering dust.
So instead of making stinky candles out of cooking grease, how about some uses for all this outdated tech?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by Jtmach on Monday August 31 2015, @01:48PM
I used my old Nexus 1 with a webcam app to see what my dog was up to all day.
Not really a hack, but it's not being used as a phone anymore just a much cheaper drop cam.
Turns out the answer is sleep, bark at the mailman, back to sleep, not very exciting.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 31 2015, @06:04PM
Video doorbell.
Pranks and Halloween triggers.
Message sign at the back of the car for the tailgaters.
Look-around-the-corner devices for shitty building layouts or airsoft competitions.
Mail me a check when you make on of these into a billion-dollar business.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday August 31 2015, @06:38PM
A friend of mine uses original and second generation iPads as home control/home theatre devices.
They are installed in every room next to the entrance; and there are sometimes several in each room. They all get power via being plugged into various chargers that are intended to remain permanently plugged in; the outlets themselves have built-in surge protectors.
My old blackberry works fine as a bluetooth audio device for my car; my replacement phone didn't support bluetooth audio except for hands free calling. I only need to carry so many gigs of audio with me on road trips, anyway. And if I want to listen to something else, that is not hard to change.
My home isn't as nice as my friend's with the ipads, but I do have dedicated use $30 tablets.. some of them really aren't useful for what they are sold for. Sure these are fantastic compared to what was in my pocket 8 years ago, but these things aren't good at what is supposed to be done on them, and aren't good for reading (cheap screens) and generally are best suited for streaming audio or similar.
A 4 inch android tablet is used as my generic replacement mp3 player (I used to have a dedicated device for this) but it really does suck for use when exercising because I used to be able to press a few buttons to skip, change volume, change playlists etc... and there is no android device available (that is inexpensive) that lets me change songs like that. No, I am not wearing some crummy earbuds with a pause play feature. That's not the answer.
As a result, I still use a NexII mp3 player -- It was $250 when new (and with a 256mb flash card in it...) I bought a replacement for cheap and put a 1gb cf card in it, and it works better than the smart devices do. And if I drop it, it still works. batteries last like a week.
(the replacement was due to my dropping the previous one about one too many times after five years of continuous service).
Some things do not need to be upgraded; they only need to be replaced when broken. I wish established norms in software could be like that, but we'd never buy new versions because its the hardware that wears out, not the software.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 31 2015, @09:45PM
I kept my 4GB Sandisk precisely because of how bad phones suck at this task, with the Sandisk I have tactile feel to let me switch tunes and change volume which I have yet to find a smartphone that does this well. oh yeah and I get 27 HOURS on a single triple A battery that takes less than 2 minutes to swap, most smartphones just suck power when playing audio.
And all of the things you listed involved tablets...NOT smartphones. Sure a 7 inch tablet can be used as a video streamer but nobody is gonna want to watch video on the kind of screens smartphones had a couple years ago. This is why I like PCs and just barely tolerate smartphones as a PC? You can always find a use for it, media tank, retro gaming system, jukebox, but with most smartphones you do more than basic tasks with the thing and you can just watch the battery get sucked dry so despite the power of these "pocket computers" they just end up in a landfill or in a drawer. Hell its not even useful for retro gaming for me as I grabbed a PSP knock off from a Chinese website for $8 that plays GBA and SFC and gets several hours on a charge.
So when it comes to smartphones? I guess other than using them to shore up a wobbly table there really is no use for the things.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.