How To: Things to Do on WonderHowTo (01/11 - 01/17)

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. 

This week has been an exciting one. The community is really flourishing, and we've been seeing some top-notch contributions. We'd like to to extend a warm welcome to all of our newcomers, and anybody who has been lurking—join in! Write a tutorial. Post to a World. We want to see what you've got.

Below, this week's highlights: A self-portrait phoneography challenge, heart-shaped hard-boiled eggs, homemade explosives, a beautiful meteor shower photo, & more.

Challenges and Workshops

• Phone Snap!—Last week's phoneography challenge was all about silhouettes, but this week's challenge places the light in front of the subject—that subject being you! Post your best phone snapped self-portrait to the Phone Snap corkboard by Monday, January 16th, 11:59pm (PST). Enter for a chance to win a portable USB power supply! More details here.

• Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop—Log on to the WonderHowTo Minecraft server on Saturday, January 14th at 4pm CST (2pm PST) to learn how to build a redstone telegraph. It's a great communication alternative to the chat box. And who doesn't like Morse code? More details on the workshop here; if you still haven't joined the server, there are details on getting whitelisted here.

• Astronomical Observing News—Cerek Tunca's Astronomy World is a community hub for posting astronomy-inspired pictures, art, news, and more. This week's AON (Astronomical Observing News) shows you what's going on in our solar system from January 9-16. There's comets, conjunctions, and full moons; Click through now for the full rundown.

• Community Byte—Both newbie and veteran programmers are welcome to join Null Byte's weekly community coding projects. Held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:00pm PST, coding sessions take place on Mondays and Wednesdays (instructed by moderator Sol Gates), and HackThisSite walkthroughs take place on Fridays (instructed by admin Alex Long). Meet up on the Null Byte IRC at the appropriate time! More details here.

• Looking for another way to get involved with Null Byte? Alex is calling for contributors to help continue making Null Byte a collaborative hacker resource. Can you code a web spider? Know how to create a GoogleBot? Then share your knowledge and skills! Some have already stepped up, and now it's your turn. Check out all of the article ideas that you could write about.

How-To Projects

• Suspect someone's lying to you? Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse has you covered. Read up on these 9 key signs and keep an eye out for them during your next interaction. Click on the image below to enlarge, or click through to view.

• Valentine's Day will be here before you know it, perhaps it's time to start logging ideas for that special someone. Skip the cheesy roses and surprise them with heart-shaped eggs for breakfast in bed. Click on the image below to enlarge, or click through to view.

• ChristopherVoute shares his weaponry knowledge with his instructions for building a sweet air gun from metal pipe. Also, if you have a hankering for electricity, you can join his new Fear of Lightning World and learn about pioneers such as Nikola Tesla. He's also recently contributed to Null Byte, showing you how to build a laser tripwire alarm system.

• Null Byte welcomes a new moderator to the team, Mr Falkreath, who has already contributed several great articles. Check out his tutorials on shell scripting, simple XOR text encryption, and the first part of writing a QR code generator. Stay tuned for more!

• NightHawkInLight World's latest tutorial shows you the secrets behind amazing fireworks, where Ben covers the basic principles of how an aerial fireworks shell operates AND shows you the basic chemistry makeup of pyrotechnic black powders. Join the World now to keep updated on future projects.

• DIY camera filters are cheap, easy to make, and can add pizazz to any of your photos. Elaine Chang from Phone Snap! shares some of her quick tips for creating your own filters with items you found lying around the house. If you make your own, post your results to the Phone Snap! community corkboard.

• Have some secret files to hide on your Windows desktop? Then conceal them in an invisible folder! Siva Cool shows you how easy it is to create a camouflaged folder that is invisible to untrained eye.

• Missed last week's Minecraft World workshop? That's okay, because Jon Hook posted details on how to build the automatic animal harvester, perfect for collecting items from cows, pigs and sheep. Check out the full how-to instructions.

• Chris Unknown shared a great browser alternative to Chrome called Comodo Dragon. Why? To stop Chrome from sharing your information with Google. Also, learn how to permanently erase data from your computer. Check out his blog roll for more great articles.

• Bamboo is a great material for DIY projects, so maybe it's about time you started growing your own? Jim Mortensen shares his expert knowledge on successfully growing cold hardy (running) bamboo at home. But bamboo can be invasive, so check out his followup article on controlling it.

• Aside from the contributions of Mr Falkreath and ChristopherVoute, Alex Long of Null Byte continues to churn out top-notch tutorials in the world of hacking. This week: Hacking Wi-Fi passwords, bypassing software registration and generating keys, controlling computers remotely with a VPN, and more! Check the blog roll for a full rundown.

• Jett Loe from Edit on a Dime checks out a time-lapse app for the iPhone called Reel Moments. He also reviewed the browser-based automatic video editor Mixmoov and sparred three automatic editors against each other to see who'd win—Magisto, Vidify or V.I.K.T.O.R. To keep up on the latest photo and video editing apps, join Edit on a Dime now!

I Made It

• After noticing Cory Poole's how-to on Sierpinski Carpet cookies, Bridget M posted a link to her mathematically minded recipe for DIY fractal gingerbread men.

• Cory Poole spent all night last Tuesday (and all Wednesday morning) taking snapshots of the Quadrantid meteor shower. Below is a composite he made from over 300 pictures! If you like that, check out his time-lapse video on YouTube.

Got Something to Share?

If you've got a relevant How-To, a source of inspiration, or a finished project, post it to the corkboard in one of the applicable Worlds above. If your project is unrelated to these areas, you can publish a How-To article directly on WonderHowTo, or you can start your own World if you've got the passion—or just post directly to the WonderHowTo company corkboard.

Got a question? Comment below or email rmansur@wonderhowto.com.