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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.
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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: 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So instead of making stinky candles out of cooking grease, how about some uses for all this outdated tech?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.