Some of my friends who were in the denial phase that the US economy isn’t going so hot are starting to go past the bargaining, guilt, and anger phases and right into the depression one. I thought, perhaps, a post on how tough times can actually be quite fun might pep them up a bit.

Tough times are a hot bed of opportunity for invention and ingenuity. They are times in our lives when we get to solve puzzles. Real world puzzles; “How to do more with less”.

I find it is often the most fun when solving a puzzle / problem with hard constraints – don’t you? It is much more fulling, in my opinion, to create a new propulsion engine out of duct tape, two paper clips, and a can of Raid than to have an open checkbook with unlimited funds. I could be off my rocker, but I think if you’re into computers / tinkering you likely have the same bug as I do. So here is my tip:

0. Reuse, Recycle, Renew, Repurpose, Rethink.

The underlying theme for this post is “the fun is in figuring out how to solve problems”. However, to get you started, let me give some examples of things we have done / have been doing on a small scale.

• I needed a few containers to hold parts on my work bench. Instead of going to the store and buying something, I made a few containers out of old floppy disks (something I saw in Make):

• I also repurposed a couple boxes of tea and a cigar box to hold bits of things:

• For entertainment, we’ve done things like create our own board games, go to the library (yeah, those things still exist), go for a walk, and took up trying to garden (which has the added bonus of a bit of food, and less electricity usage).

• My wife, who happens to be very talented, often goes to the thrift store to buy clothes, then takes them apart and uses the fabric to create new clothes of her liking. She still buys stuff at the store when she wants, but for added accessories, or that hard to find blouse – she makes her own just the way she wants it.

• We have started riding our bikes most everywhere. Which happens to be another great area to do a bit of tweaking…

• Instead of buying a bag for my handle bars I repurposed an old first aid kit from our camping gear:

• Instead of buying a “saddle bag” I reused the free bag they gave out at WWDC:

• My last example is “upgrading by downgrading”. I had an old PowerMac G4 which I was using as my “always on” build server. From the sale, I got just enough money to buy a MacMini. The G4 drew a large amount of power (>200 Watts) compared to the mini (~85 Watts). By selling the G4 and getting the Mini not only did I get an arguably better computer, it also uses less power so our electricity bill went down.

Obviously, none of these are things that can be made into tutorials (unless you happened to have gone to WWDC for example), but they are simple examples of simple problems solved without spending any money. When I step back and look at them, I am kind of proud of them in a way. I figured out how to solve my problem without dipping into my pocket book. Best of all, we have a fun time doing it – an added bonus of entertainment while working through problems.

Hopefully these simple examples will inspire you to approach problems with an air of fun, and not just a sigh.

The US was built by people doing insane things with bits of string, paper clips, and slide rulers. We sent some dudes to the moon with the computer power of a Commodore 64. If you can tap into that rush of fun – the rush of solving problems with your mind not your checkbook – you might just start having a lot of fun (oh and save some money too).

Here are some nice sites for inspiration: Make LifeHacker