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Whether you’ve got rusty chrome on your car or dirty chrome on the faucets on your sink, possibly the quickest and easiest way to get them clean and sparkling again is simple: aluminum foil.

Instructables user Captain Pedantic caught an episode of Mythbusters (with our pal Adam Savage) where he heard that aluminum foil and cola were great at polishing chrome, so he gave it a go on his neglected motorcycle with great results. There’s really not much to it:

Pour the Diet Coke on your rusty chrome (is there any better use for this stuff, lacking Mentos?) Crumple up some foil and use it to scrub the nasty rust away. Rinse with warm water and wipe dry.

It sounds too easy to be true, but it’s a method we’ve been using around our own house for quite sometime. If it’s just your bathroom sink that needs some sprucing up, simply buff with a flat (clean) piece and it will be good as new in seconds.

Hit up Instructables for further details, or if you don’t have any aluminum foil in the house, try using baby oil instead. If you do have aluminum foil on hand, don’t forget that it also works like a charm sharpening scissors.

It’s not a clever hack any of us want to have to use, but the Art of Manliness blog has a homebrew fix for the next time your restroom trip ends in disaster.

Photo by powerbooktrance.

When a toilet clogs, the first jobs are stopping water from flowing to prevent an overflow and finding a decent plunger. Then again, if you’re visiting a friend’s place and might feel embarrassed returning from the bathroom with such a request, some hot water from a bathroom sink might do the trick. Need more firepower? Add in dishwasher detergent to put things right:

Add a few cups of hot water to the toilet bowl before you start plunging. After you pour the hot water in, let it sit for a few minutes. To put it mildly, the heat helps break the, um, stuff up. This will make unclogging the toilet with the plunger much, much easier. The heat from the hot water can sometimes break up the clog without plunging, so this could be a good tactic to use if you a clog a toilet at a friends house and you don’t want to face the embarrassment of asking for a plunger.

The blog post, sourced from a Roto-Rooter representative, offers more good-to-know tidbits about properly using a (warmed and un-stiffened) plunger and using tools like an auger for the really bad, um, breakdowns. If you’d care to be so discrete as to share your own toilet emergency fixes, we’ll welcome them in the comments.

Filed under: Multimedia, Tips and tricks, Mac mini

For those of you that haven’t heard me tell the beginning of this story on the TUAW talkcast, you might recall that my dad the switcher upgraded his Mac mini to a sweet new Mac Pro. So what could I do with an extra Mac mini? Maybe a server? Maybe a doorstop?

I know! A media center!

I had cable service, a DVD player, and a TiVo Series 2. My goal was to combine all of those things into one set-top-box — the Mac mini — and maybe even unsubscribe from some of the monthly services.

After I bought the Mac mini from my dad (the switcher), I hooked it up to my old, standard-definition TV. The Mac mini Media Center — M³C for short — was born.

The video experience was sub-optimal, owing mostly to my 10-year-old CRT that occasionally turned black-and-white (or lost video altogether). I knew it was time for a new TV. I promised myself that as a reward for finishing a series of challenging home improvement projects (replacing a bathroom sink and installing new floors, to name two) I would get myself the high-definition TV I always wanted.

That TV arrived on Wednesday. Now, I can share with you how to set up the easiest, most awesome M³C of your own — for less money than you think.

Continue reading Behold! My Mac mini media center

TUAWBehold! My Mac mini media center originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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