Toothbrush holder

I bought a couple of electric toothbrushes for me and my girlfriend and I didn't like them to lay directly on the handbasin so I wanted some kind of holder for them.

I stood in our kitchen and though of a good material to build such a holder in, I was leaning towards metal or wood when the presence of LEGO in our livingroom struck me like a lightening in a thunderstorm.

I started building a stand/holder for the toothbrushes. I had two criteria's; It should contain a small number of parts I didn't use a lot when building and it should have a small contact area with the handbasin.

This is what I came up with, not counting the Technic beams, it only uses parts from my overflow bin.

This is a static project that I won't take apart if I don't find myself in the need of the parts (not likely).

It's pretty straight forward.

A cool feature is that it also can hold the brush tip when the handle is in the AC-adapter for refueling. I don't have any picture of this though. Not that it's that much to see...

The stand w/o the brushes.

It's light and strong enough for the job and stands steady on our handbasin. No accident so far and we've been using it for a couple of months now.

Update: I've broken one of the friction pins and so has my mother. Seems they don't like toothpaste?

Backside of the stand.

Joystick

This is a joystick I built as another side tracked project from the Hercules. I had plans of controlling a not finished cannon I was working on.

I got quite mad on myself and tore both the joystick and cannon down and sat down and worked on the Hercules :) I shot some photos of the joystick first though hence this page.

I'll get back to the cannon some day 'cause it's a marvelous design!

The joystick is highly analogue and uses three polarity switches, on for each axis and one as a trigger.

So, this is the one.

I made it in a colorful black and white scheme.

The stick is almost too short for a nice fit in my hand, if I build one of these again I'll make the stick longer.

Another view...

This is the base. Note that below the Jamaican stripe of 1x2 plates are the connections for the joystick. They are coded that way so that I can remember which one is which.

Also note, the #2 cross axle and the pin in the polarity switches is only there to keep the joystick upright during photoing. They're used as viagra ,)

Trigger happy. I made the top part of the joystick upside-down to get the cross axle sticking down. The white rubber band pulls the trigger back out again after fireing.

Side view...

Top view.