I’ve come to the end of my guest week. I’ll be handing the keyboard to Mary Beth Trautwein starting tomorrow, as the Seniors start at Tinkering School.

I’ve had fun doing this, and I hope you have enjoyed …

It’s Friday! And it was payday at Nameless Employer, which means a small group of us go for Thai food at lunch.

Which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what I did when I got home after work.…

My predecessor as guest blogger, Deb Nies, has published Part IX of her and her tween’s exploration of Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) on Examiner.com.

Go, read about using a knife and then throwing a …

We’re going to start off this one with a great piece of video: Adam Savage’s TED talk about making his own dodo bird skeleton out of Sculpey and his obsession with making a dead-nuts-accurate copy of The Maltese Falcon…

Everyone wants to get a little attaboy/attagirl for their efforts every now and then. Some little acknowledgement from the boss/parent/spouse/kid that “hey, what you did there was pretty cool”.

But what if what you do, while certainly important, isn’t …

Mellow greetings, fellow travelers.

Okay, so I’m not really a terribly mellow person. I’m Jim Crider, mechanical engineer, car guy, and genetically-engineered tinkerer. Some may know my nom de net AutoJim from various and sundry places, but I’m …

I received an email from Parenting.com yesterday with the huge headline, “11 SUMMER DANGERS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM!” Well, course, I just had to find out immediately what was included in  the list of eleven.

Complete …

Here’s a fascinating short video of Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy, “playfully” taking a look at how a copier works. This should inspire the kids to investigate Dangerous Thing #34 – Deconstruct an Appliance.

…

Really? Climbing Trees is now considered a dangerous childhood activity? Puh-lease! My middle-aged friends and I laugh in the face of your danger, and we’ll go on record to say that they don’t make danger the way they used …