How to make a ukulele hard case

Some ukuleles just don't come with a hard case....and some hard cases are just too expensive.  For those of you that are handy with tools, here are a couple of options to make your own ukulele hard case that I've stumbled across. 

A very nice DIY case made out of some 6mm thick plywood.  Check out the blog post here for more pictures and plans.

Ukulele E chord tips and tricks

Does this chord look familiar?  Perhaps it's because it shows up in your nightmares....the terrible terrible E chord.
Coming from a guitar playing background, this chord type wasn't all that uncommon to me when I started to play the uke...but just like with the guitar, it was and continues to be very unpleasant to play for me.  Not impossible, just difficult and unpleasant.  It's best to keep practicing with this chord and train your fingers to form it...but in case you're a bit more impatient like me, here are some ideas on how you can produce this chord and avoid this exact structure.

You can try reproducing it by playing 1-4-0-2 (that's from the G string to the A string).  With this you'll be producing the notes Ab, E, E, B.  This has a neat chorus type of effect since you are producing that same middle E with