How To: Things to Do on WonderHowTo (05/09 - 05/15)

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.

Thanks to all of the active World moderators and contributing members from this past week, including, but not limited to James Andrew Marshall, Patrick Maguire, Matthew Herman, K. Met,  Christopher Voute, JT Newsome, Cory Poole, and Noah Hornberger. If you want to see your name listed here, then stop lurking and start contributing.

Below are this week's highlights, including DIY circuit boards, bicycle tire repair, a shoulder-fired compressed air rocket launcher, an intro to building a Java-based Caesar cipher app, amazing supermoon pictures, and more!

Community Activities, Challenges and Workshops

Before we get to any of the activities, we'd like to welcome Austin Sirkin (aka Dr_Moustache) as the new head admin of the Minecraft World. He will be working closely with all of the current server admins and players to keep everything running smoothly. If you haven't joined the server yet, what are you waiting for? An invitation? Consider this it. Go!

• Minecraft World's Workshop — Though there's a new admin in town, Austin will not be spearheading this weekend's workshop. Instead, James (SaintJamez) will be taking lead, showing you how to turn an ordinary block into a super secret chest to keep all your goodies safe and secure. Want to learn how? Be there Saturday, May 12th at 12:01 PM (PST). More details here.

• Minecraft World's Redstone Competitions — iDwarf is hosting the sixth official redstone competition, and this time it's all about making things easier on yourself in the long run! Make harvesting crops easy by building your own automatic farm! What kind of farm will you build, and more importantly, how creative will you get? Hop on the server and start building, then submit pics or videos of your farm to the Minecraft World corkboard. More details here.

• Mad Science's Photo Contest — The second week of Mad Science's contest is underway, but in order to get your hands on a DIY kit for Will's lucid dreaming goggles, you need to submit a photo of your own DIY project. Post your photos to the Mad Science community corkboard for a chance to win. Full details here. And here's an example entry, so you know what to do.

Recent How-To Projects from the Community

• Hard-boiled eggs are delicious, but oh so infuriating when you're trying to get past that shell. But with the right egg and skill set, you can boil yourself the perfect peel-friendly egg. Get it right with Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse! Click to enlarge, or click through to view.

• What happens if you run into a snake in the wilderness? How about a deadly spider? Scorpion? Rabies infested dog? Hopefully, you'd just walk away unscathed, but only if you're lucky. If not, you need to know what to do. Yumi's got you covered. Click to enlarge, or click through to view.

• Will has been on kind of a circuit board kick lately in Mad Science. Over the last week, he's shown us how to etch circuit boards using a laser printer, how to make an etch tank for faster PCB production at home, and how to design your own Arduino. He's also even made a simple circuit for some DIY post-modern vandalism, i.e. solar-powered light graffiti throwies.

• Having bicycle troubles? If it's the tire keeping you off the bike paths, fix it yourself! Karissa Metcalfe gives thorough instructions for fixing that flat. And after you've repaired your bike, congratulate yourself for a job well done with a nice batch of baked banana bread.

• Christopher was hard at work in Fear of Lightning building yet another air gun from pipes and propane tanks, but this time it's more like a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. If you want to make this compressed air rocket gun, check out the how-to!

• Want to get into data encryption? Before you start making unbreakable codes, you've got to start with the basics. And nothing is more basic than Caesar Cipher. JT Newsome of Invisible Computer wrote up a great intro to cryptography where you can build a basic encryption program using Java. Check it out.

I-Made-It

• The night was full last Saturday, with the moon was bigger and brighter than usual, thanks to being at perigee. If you missed the supermoon action, Cory Poole took some amazing snapshots with his GH2 and telescope. I took a few myself, but I obviously need a bigger lens if I'm going to compete with Cory!

• This week, Cory also posted up a great time-lapse of the Lyrid meteor shower from last month. Do you have any astrophotographs to share? Moon pics? Meteor shower videos? Then post your images and videos on Astronomy World's community corkboard!

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.

Remember: WonderHowTo is a community effort, and the site belongs to all of you. So, the more knowledge we can pool together, the more we can learn from each other.

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