- Submerge the rusted metal in vinegar for 24 hours. You’ll see much of the rust come off.
- Scrape the rest of the rust off with a metal brush.
- Rinse

I have the MaxPower PivoTrim weed trimmer head because the spool type trimmer heads always get tangled. The MaxPower PivoTrim head makes replacing trimmer line super easy.
When I ran out of the trimmer line that came with the head, I bought a spool of new trimmer line. Unfortunately, when you cut some trimmer line and install it in the head, the line curves up or down instead of pointing straight out. So, I found a way to straighten the trimmer line. Below is a picture of the line straightened (left) and before it was straightened (right).
To straighten the line, I cut the line to length, stapled each end down to a piece of 2×4, took a heat gun and carefully heat up the plastic line to soften it and cause it to take on a new shape.
Then, I folded the straightened line in half and stapled each end down to the 2×4 and heat up the folded end so that it would remember that position.
The end result is trimmer lines that are straight and cut weeds better. Note, you may have better performance if you remove the plastic guard on the trimmer shaft.
If you take an mp4 (mpeg-4) video and put it in a video editing program like Corel VideoStudio and then render the same video without any other assets (images, audio, other videos, etc), then you may find that the resulting video becomes out-of-sync with the audio. To fix this, you can use Avidemux as follows.
Let’s say you’ve taken a screenshot of some text and you’d like to highlight part of the text. By using different blending modes, this becomes an easy task. Here’s how to do it.
1. Open the screenshot containing text in Photoshop and select the text you want to highlight
2. Create a new layer and fill it with yellow
3. Change the blending mode to darken or any other one you like to create the highlighted text.
Here, I’ve chose the Darken blend mode.
This is the result.
I’ve tried various types of tillers that you can rent from Home Depot. The light duty mantis tillers and mid tine are really only good for soft dirt.
This tiller is heavy duty and can break up hard clay BUT both the wheels and the tines move forward so unless the tines are partially underground breaking the dirt, you can easily be pulled forward and lose control of the machine. Though this is a heavy duty machine, I find it less easy to control compared to the Barreto Hydraulic tiller.
This tiller is big and heavy but it’s easy to use, easy to control, and will destroy clay and hard dirt. The rear tines move in the opposite direction of the wheels so the machine never runs away from you moving you forward out of control. It’s the most expensive to rent, but the time savings and ease of use make it worth it. I personally recommend this tiller over all the others.
This article explains how to remove a green background in a video using Corel VideoStudio Ultimate 2018 and the NewBlueFX Chroma Key.
When applying a chroma key to a video in VideoStudio, you have two options:
To use VideoStudio’s native chroma key feature,
From my experience, this feature doesn’t work well for imperfectly lit backgrounds. Unless you are filming in a professional studio, the chroma key results will likely be poor.
For better chroma key results, you can use the NewBlueFX Chroma Key filter. Disable the native VideoStudio chroma key by unchecking the “Apply Overlay Options” checkbox described in the previous steps. This will minimize confusion due to the application of multiple chroma keys. To use the NewBlueFX Chroma Key, do this:
The NewBlue Chroma Key control panel will appear.
Choose the “Curve” type of link
Click on the canvas to mark the starting point of the curve. Then click everywhere you want an inflection point. When you’re done, double-click to finalize the curve.
Click on the curve to show a bounding box with handles. Drag each handle to resize the curve.
Double-click on the curve to show the nodes on the curve. Then drag each node to shape the curve.
In an era of home made videos and YouTube, everyone now is making videos on just about every subject, including myself. Filming a subject against a green background has the advantage that you can replace the green background with a picture or video like what they do in movies or on the news. Though you can buy a complete green screen setup on Amazon with tripod and clamps to stretch and hold the screen in place, I decided to just buy the green fabric and make my own setup using simple and cheap items from Home Depot.
The advantage of this setup is it’s cheap and easy to set up and store each time you use it. The green fabric costs about $16 on Amazon. On one of the shorter sides, it has a pocket the length of the side in which you can insert a rod or pole. I bought a metal closet rod from Home Depot. I then clamped the rod to the ceiling in my garage using metal clamps. Make sure the screws for the clamps go into wood joists and not just drywall. When using the green screen, I place a 2x4x 8 piece of wood (available at Home Depot for $3) to hold the bottom of the fabric down.
For storing the green screen, I wanted something quick and simple. For my setup, I can just roll up the fabric and store it on some large hooks.
To do this, I bought two large hooks which I screwed into the ceiling. I also bought 3/4″ PVC pipe and foam pipe insulation. The insulation makes for a larger diameter rod to reduce how much rolling needs to be done to roll up the fabric. It also provides a cushion in case it falls from the ceiling. The insulation was secured around the pipe using cable ties.
Believe it or not, the metal closet rod was the most expensive part. You can probably substitute it with something cheaper as long as it doesn’t bow like wood might.
Here’s one way to secure an item using rope that locks tension in the rope. It’s a variation of the Trucker’s Hitch. It involves creating a loop (butterfly knot) and then looping the free end of the rope twice through the loop. For the first, fixed end, I use a ring hitch knot which easily ties the first end of the rope to an anchor without it loosening. No matter how hard you pull, the knot won’t loosen.
Here’s how to tie a ring hitch for the first end.
Here’s how to tie the butterfly knot.
And here’s how to use the butterfly knot to create a super tight rope line.
I found out how to do this from:
Use an Alpine Butterfly Bend.