DIY and Home Improvement
Hands-on work on the home: repairs, renovation, installing fixtures, tools, workshop technique and materials. Tech DIY (home labs, PC builds, electronics) stays in Computing. An extra channel alongside an episode's main one.
#5650: Electricians, Rentals, and the Skill That Waits
A day of wiring a rental sparks three threads: skills that return, a guild older than its technology, and spaces you can't touch.
#5645: Who Teaches You to Fix Your Own Home?
Wiring a plug but never welding metal — why hands-on skills have holes, and what a real DIY curriculum would cover.
#5635: Why Your VHB Tape Keeps Falling Off the Wall
VHB tape is a viscoelastic acrylic foam, not glue — and it fails on dirty grout, cold tile, and no roll-down pressure, not on bad tape.
#5611: Why Your Label Printer Quits After 10 Seconds
A label printer that charges for ten seconds then dies — and what that tiny failure reveals about building a diagnosis-first repair bench.
#5610: Magnetizing Screwdrivers: Do the Cycles Wear Out?
Can a screwdriver be magnetized forever, or does the magnetism wear out? A deep dive into magnetizer blocks, coils, and demagnetization.
#5609: IEC Cables: Terminate, Split, or Extend?
Rewireable C13 connectors, splitters, and the length ceiling — the practical answers to running power without daisy-chained plug strips.
#5599: Cantilever Racks: Why Long Things Need Different Steel
Why a ladder needs a cantilever, not a shelf — and how to actually mount one in an Israeli rental's concrete walls.
#5589: Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome: What Cheap Power Tools Cost
Cheap power tools changed construction — and quietly introduced a disease that damages nerves and blood vessels in the hands. Here's what HAVS actu...
#5579: Cutting Things With a Dremel: What Actually Works
Cut-off wheels vs cutting bits, RPM by material, and why lateral cutting is fine with the right attachment and fatal with the wrong one.
#5541: Re-terminating a Keystone Jack After a Bad Ethernet Run
A DIY Ethernet run came up at 80 Mbps on 2.5G fiber. Here's what went wrong and whether re-termination is a skill worth learning.
#5540: Why Your Trackpad Clicks Stopped Working
Your trackpad surface works but the clicks don't? That's not a trackpad failure — it's a swollen battery pushing the click plate out of reach.
#5529: 15 Forgotten Hardware Parts Your DIY Kit Needs
A 64-drawer parts bin reveals why you keep buying the same screws twice — and the 15 fasteners worth actually stocking.
#5518: Task-Based Organization: What ER Carts Teach Home Workshops
Daniel's 64-tray parts box mirrors urgent care triage. The medical literature on task-based package organization has real numbers — and real disagr...
#5516: Wall Anchors: Why Your Holes Keep Failing
Nylon anchors don't fill gaps — they multiply grip. Here's what actually works when your hole is compromised.
#5514: Drilling Concrete: Jigs, Anchors, and Fidelity
Why your hammer drill wanders off mark, which wall-capable jigs actually grip, and how to match drill bits to anchors.
#5513: Why Phone Mounts Fail (And What Doesn't)
Suction cups, vent clips, and magnets all fail at the same point. Here's what heavy-duty mounting actually looks like.
#5490: Why Screen Protectors Bubble Every Time
One dust particle becomes a permanent tent pole under your screen protector. Here's the physics behind the bubbles.
#5489: When Your Toddler Swallows a Screw
A screw and a washer from the same drawer are two different emergencies. Here's the triage protocol for the sixty seconds after the double take.
#5424: ThinkPad E15: Swollen Battery or Bad Keyboard?
A dead arrow key and a jammed trackpad on a two-year-old ThinkPad E15 might be one problem, not three.
#5372: 10 Power Tools, Ranked by What to Buy First
A purchasing sequence, not a wish list: the 10 power tools a homeowner should own, in the order you should actually buy them.