I had tons of gadgets and toys as a kid. There was a magazine when I was young, called Yps, who weekly had a new gadget or toy when it came out. After that I developed more structure and bought a whole collection of dinosaur magazines in which you collected a tyranosaurus rex. After that it was a medicine book in which you collected all parts to build a male and female human model. My mom being ISFJ had a firm knack for such endeavours and was good at reminding me to buy the newest magazine.
So if you look at my childhood you'll find shitloads of junk and toys. I had all sorts of gadgets from gun belts with versatile options for storing things to pratical overalls used by craftsmen.
Nowadays I basically collect technical ideas and build them. I have a growing machine shop in my basement and a huge collection of electrical components. I've build several things, I never really use, but who knows they may come in handy once. Here's some pictures:
This a webserver to host a small site written in binary. Would need a SD - card to have more storage:
That's an RF radiocommunication, receiving and transmitting end:
That's asuro, shall clean the house autonomous one day:
LED cube, currently building one with 3x3x3 LED's
And that is my current and biggest project, building a cnc control, to connect the cnc mechanics of the computer and control it:
The last project is in a casing by now and it is my first AC project, kinda scary, since I build the casing from wood aswell and it has around 225 Watts
. Well you gotta try
All things I do have in common that I want to build them myself completly from scratch. When my cnc machine is finished, I'll be even able to mill electrical raw boards and then only need to buy the components and solder them. It's my dream to be independant like that one day, I'ld even like to build my own house completly independant and on my own, it makes me not only feel great that I have accomplished something but also gives me some sort of comfort and security.
There are still many cool projects out there on the webs, so I'll basically stick to rebuilding already existing electrical layouts or mechanical layouts provided by people doing it as a hobby. As long as there are so many cool things, I am not trieing to invent something new just for the sake of inventing. I think that eventually I'll come up with something useful and having build all sorts of stuff gives you a wider repertoire of knowing whats possible.
What I really dislike are people buying for example the newest iphone and spending tons of money for it just to have it. And then even brag with it because they have it. I like gadgets like that too, but I'll probably never really if I havent build it myself.
Only downside of building stuff yourself is that you want to do everything and when my girl wants new furniture, I am already planning to saw them in our kitchen (cause we lack space to work on them).
That sometimes is no good thing, thank god my girlfriend has the rationality and practicality to stop me in times like that.
Biggest problem of mine too is having two left hands. God gave me the ability to understand complex math, but gave me the ability aswell to break every thumb while trieing to hit a nail. The lack of practicality in me is definitly coded in my DNA, cause I grew up with my Dad being a plumber and helped him out in that time almost weekly. So I should be better just because I had some experience. Fact is I am not too bad and I am not afraid of doing anything or handling big machines. It just looks always kinda uncool when I am doing it and there's a lot of mess produced in the process
. I tho plan on getting better with age