Yeah, going to be a bit of a pain to set up to work as a small box over the existing deadbolt but a servos a battery pack and an arduino with a wifi and a motor board I might be able to pull it off. I think www.instructables.com actually had some good guides for similar ideas.

Yeah that was when I really didn't know my renters rights very well and I recognized the guy from seeing him work around the apartment complex so it wasn't waking up to a stranger in my kitchen, it was waking up to a near stranger in my kitchen (somehow it seemed a little better.. I don't know why). I have since…

I'm sorry, it wasn't a simple setup. I've been doing I.T. and programming for the last 20 years and about five years ago started working with Arduino's and Raspberry Pi's as cheap computer/electronics platforms for building my own electronics or hacking other electronics I own to add additional functionality to them.…

I have a home server that I never turn off so I can access it from work and while on the road via VPN (although I used to use TeamViewer to do it). I ended up setting up a few wireless cameras that detect motion and had mounted one in a hidden spot that covers the front door and another one overlooking the living room…

We were having all kinds of issues with lunches and food going missing in our office fridge about a year and a half ago. People started putting up nasty notes on the fridge about the thief. After a few weeks it escalated so that one day all the lunches were in the garbage with coffee and gounds poured over the top…

A bit spendy, but I like this style where the TV doesn't have shelving above it as I worry about the amount of heat that would collect at the top.

A bit spendy, but I like this style where the TV doesn't have shelving above it as I worry about the amount of heat…

Camelizer~! I use this all the time it's helped me save so much money. I can see if a product is peaking or in a valley as far as prices go and it's pricing history which helps when I see a "super sale" on amazon where the product is 50% off I can look at the history and realize it's only 10% off the normal price,…

Now I just want to make a kegarator, but being the type of person that generally bites off more than i can chew, I really want to make a kegerator into the bottom of a MAME arcade cabinet with the taps on the side.... hmmmm beercade!

I've looked into using Problem Steps Recorder and was really unimpressed by what it did. For most users it's easy to have them use the "snipping tool" in Windows 7. I can't count the number of times I've gotten work orders that just said "It doesn't work". I generally have to hold back from writing a snarky email…

I take pictures of our whiteboard in nearly all my meetings. It's trivial to open the pictures in Camera+ and turn up the brightness, contrast and saturation. They even have a text setting for pics that works about 90% of the time. Then I use TurboScan to compile them into a PDF on my phone before sending them out.…

Luckily Gawker Media blogs are predominately reposts from other sites. Removing them from my RSS feeds didn't impact me much at all. LifeHacker is one of the few Gawker sites I still check in on regularly although I feel the quality of it's posts have gotten a bit spotty in the last five years.

It really is a shame RSS never took off in the general public. I know a lot of people that use it for their jobs that do a lot of writing and news coverage, but it never had a killer app that made it stupidly simple for most people to use. I really can't image not having RSS feeds as I would have no way to cover all…

Awesome idea, I've built quite a few Arduino projects over the last three years, but I'm still always really nervous about hooking it all up to higher voltage sources via relays as I don't entirely trust my soldering and wiring skills.

I just moved into an apartment my problem is the bedroom door and it's frame has been painted over so many times the door closes okay, but when you open it, it sounds like you're breaking a seal on an ancient vault. It's a really loud crackling noise as the paint from the door and the frame seem to get tightly…

I'm a big fan of GOG and being DRM free is greatly appreciated. Mainly I buy games on GOG to load onto my travel laptop I use for work (just intel integrated grahics). I've got a couple of really kick ass gaming desktops at home, but I have a very plain business laptop for work and am unwilling to pay the premium…

I used to never do spring cleaning when I was younger, but as I've got into my late 20's it began to make more and more sense, especially as often as I move (every 2-3 years on average) so spring cleaning is about doing some deep cleaning around the apt or house and annual maintenance type things like cleaning dryer…

One nice thing about leaning bookshelves is that they don't end up sitting on the tack rail for the carpet. If you're trying to push a normal bookcase up against the wall the tack rail makes it lean forward and look like it's always about to fall away from the wall. Sure you could use a few bits of wood to shim up…

What!?!!!? Where was this post six months ago when I first moved in with my girlfriend. It would have saved me from so many painful nights of holding in my farts until I'd be able to think of an excuse to leave the apartment for 5-10 minutes. Usually I'd take the garbage out or run down to the corner store to pick…

I've looked at EL wire for making my bike stand out at night, but I ended up going the simple route and bought some 3M Stealth Reflective tape. It's black and hardly noticeable on a dark bike, but when headlights for cars hit it at night it reflects white light brilliantly. That with a front facing light and red LED…

Learned about this a long time ago and have generally either owed or gotten back less than $50 each year. This year I got back $15, I just can't decide if I should buy a new car or go on a South American vacation with all that sweet, sweet tax money.