This ultimate guide for tech makers covers everything from hand tools to robots plus essential techniques for completing almost any DIY project. Makers, get ready: This is your must-have guide to taking your DIY projects to the next level. Legendary fabricator and alternative engineer Chris Hackett teams up with the editors of Popular Science to offer detailed instruction on everything from basic wood- and metalworking skills to 3D printing and laser-cutting wizardry. Hackett also explains the entrepreneurial and crowd-sourcing tactics needed to transform your back-of-the-envelope idea into a gleaming finished product. In The Big Book of Maker Skills, readers learn tried-and-true techniques from the shop classes of yore—how to use a metal lathe, or pick the perfect drill bit or saw—and get introduced to a whole new world of modern manufacturing technologies, like using CAD software, printing circuits, and more. Step-by-step illustrations, helpful diagrams, and exceptional photography make this book an easy-to-follow guide to getting your project done.

Josh Volk, author of the best-selling Compact Farms, offers small-scale farmers an in-depth guide to building customized equipment that will save time and money and introduce much-needed efficiencies to their operations. Volk begins with the basics, such as setting up a workshop and understanding design principles, mechanical principles, and materials properties, then presents plans for making 15 tools suited to small-farm tasks and processes. Each project includes an explanation of the tool’s purpose and use, as well as the time commitment, skill level, and equipment required to build it. Projects range from the super-simple (requiring a half-day to build) to the more complex, and include how-to photographs and illustrations with variations for customizing the finished implement. Along with instructions for building items such as simple seedling benches, a mini barrel washer, a DIY germination chamber, and a rolling pack table, Volk addresses systems design for farm efficiency, including how to design an effective drip irrigation system and how to set up spreadsheets for collecting important planning, planting, and market data.

From the craftsman behind the popular YouTube channel Primitive Technology comes a practical guide to building huts and tools using only natural materials from the wild. John Plant, the man behind the channel, Primitive Technology, is a bonafide YouTube star. With almost 10 million subscribers and an average of 5 million views per video, John's channel is beloved by a wide-ranging fan base, from campers and preppers to hipster woodworkers and craftsmen. Now for the first time, fans will get a detailed, behind-the-scenes look into John's process. Featuring 50 projects with step-by-step instructions on how to make tools, weapons, shelters, pottery, clothing, and more, Primitive Technology is the ultimate guide to the craft. Each project is accompanied by illustrations as well as mini-sidebars with the history behind each item, plus helpful tips for building, material sourcing, and so forth. Whether you're a wilderness aficionado or just eager to spend more time outdoors, Primitive Technology has something for everyone's inner nature lover.

The only comprehensive, illustrated, step-by-step guide to building with earthbags. Over seventy percent of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials-straw, cob, and earth-for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials. Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth-or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty-in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work. This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building: Special design considerations Foundations, walls, and floors Electrical, plumbing, and shelving Lintels, windows and door installations Roofs, arches and domes Exterior and interior plasters. With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the long-awaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style. Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series

Learn how to protect your network with this guide to building complete and fully functional network security tools Although open source network security tools come in all shapes and sizes, a company will eventually discover that these tools are lacking in some area—whether it's additional functionality, a specific feature, or a narrower scope. Written by security expert Mike Schiffman, this comprehensive book will show you how to build your own network security tools that meet the needs of your company. To accomplish this, you'll first learn about the Network Security Tool Paradigm in addition to currently available components including libpcap, libnet, libnids, libsf, libdnet, and OpenSSL. Schiffman offers a detailed discussion of these components, helping you gain a better understanding of the native datatypes and exported functions. Next, you'll find several key techniques that are built from the components as well as easy-to-parse programming examples. The book then ties the model, code, and concepts together, explaining how you can use this information to craft intricate and robust security programs. Schiffman provides you with cost-effective, time-saving guidance on how to build customized network security tools using existing components. He explores: A multilayered model for describing network security tools The ins and outs of several specific security-related components How to combine these components into several useful network security techniques Four different classifications for network security tools: passive reconnaissance, active reconnaissance, attack and penetration, and defensive How to combine techniques to build customized network security tools The companion Web site contains all of the code from the book.

For your next project on GitHub, take advantage of the service’s powerful API to meet your unique development requirements. This practical guide shows you how to build your own software tools for customizing the GitHub workflow. Each hands-on chapter is a compelling story that walks you through the tradeoffs and considerations for building applications on top of various GitHub technologies. If you’re an experienced programmer familiar with GitHub, you’ll learn how to build tools with the GitHub API and related open source technologies such as Jekyll (site builder), Hubot (NodeJS chat robot), and Gollum (wiki). Build a simple Ruby server with Gist API command-line tools and Ruby’s "Octokit" API client Use the Gollum command-line tool to build an image management application Build a GUI tool to search GitHub with Python Document interactions between third-party tools and your code Use Jekyll to create a fully-featured blog from material in your GitHub repository Create an Android mobile application that reads and writes information into a Jekyll repository Host an entire single-page JavaScript application on GitHub Use Hubot to automate pull request reviews

Over the past 10 years in the field of human and organizational development, the approach to team building has moved from problem solving and conflict management to helping work groups and organizations build a foundation of trust, cooperation, and mutual support. Focusing on collaboration rather than resolving conflict, Building Better Teams: 70 Tools and Techniques for Strengthening Performance Within and Across Teams offers a fresh approach to team building. It provides proven tools for the most common needs of teams, including establishing trust, building consensus, managing change, working virtually and across boundaries, and dealing with setbacks.