How To: Things to Do on WonderHowTo (11/23 - 11/29)

WonderHowTo is made up 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. 

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone enjoys the long holiday weekend, and if you happen to create any of the projects below, let us know by commenting or posting your results to the appropriate World. This week: Architecture in Minecraft, a Blurb Photo Challenge, a couple Math Craft baking projects, and more.

Challenges and Workshops

• Giveaway Tuesdays Photo Challenge—In the spirit of Thanksgiving, this week's Giveaway Tuesdays Photo Challenge calls for a photo of what you're very most thankful for. Post what you treasure most to the Giveaway Tuesdays community corkboard by Monday, November 28th, 11:59pm PST for a chance to win a $30 gift card to online bookmaking service Blurb. More details here.

• Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop—Things have been busy in Minecraft World! Last weekend, admin Jon Hook and myself attended MineCon in Vegas, which was a great event with interesting panels, discussions and awesome costumes. After partaking in a particularly active MineCon panel on architecture, Jon has decided to host a series of architecture-themed workshops, the first of which will be held this upcoming Saturday on the server. More details on the workshop here; if you still haven't joined the server, details on getting whitelisted here.

• Community Byte—Both newbie and veteran programmers are welcome to join Alex Long of Null Byte's weekly community coding projects. Held every Friday at 5:00 pm PST, beginning on the Null Byte IRC, this week's session is Part 3 in a series on completing HackThisSite missions, as well as tackling coding in the Python programming language. More details here.

• Scrabble Challenge—Did you know there are 24,000 seven-letter words playable in Scrabble? And only 16,000 that are six letters long? In this week's Scrabble World Challenge, Justin Meyers gives you five examples of seven-letter words with six-letter words built within them—and five examples without any six-letter words. Can you find out which ones are which?

How-To Projects

• Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse shares two handy DIY web comics week, the first of which you may want to print out and stick on your fridge, in the event of disaster as you prepare for the big holiday meal today and tomorrow:

Yumi's previous post highlighted 4 handy tops for unclogging your kitchen sink (another potential mishap this weekend, with all the upcoming dish washing!):

• Cory Poole of Math Craft World shares two math-inspired baking projects this week, both from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Try your hand at their Sierpinski Carpet cookies...

...or their fractal cupcakes:

If you tackle either of these projects (or any from the past), please post your results to the Math Craft community corkboard.

• Music in the iTunes Store may be DRM-free now, but you probably still have a few of Apple's old protected AAC song files (.m4p) which can only be played on Apple products. You can upgrade to the new iTunes Plus versions (.m4a), but not without forking out more cash. However, you can keep your wallet closed if you have iMovie and a little time. Check out Justin Meyer's tutorial on converting protected M4P files to MP3 songs using iMovie and iTunes.

• As usual, Alex Long of Null Byte has several projects to offer this week: Add some performance hacks & tweaks for Linux to your repertoire, learn how to run an FTP server from home, fix defective pixels on your LCD & LED monitors, and more. Check out the Null Byte blog for a complete directory.

I Made It

• Math Craft World moderator Imatfaal Avidya posted beautiful results from two different projects this week: his 30-square sliding modular origami and 3-D weaving with sticks. To comment or ask questions, go here and here.

• Math Craft World admin Cory Poole posted pics of some fantastic earrings he made for his wife, based on the Orderly Tangle tutorial from last week. If you'd like a tutorial for the earrings specifically, make requests here.

• Yours truly finally tackled the modular origami project posted in Math Craft last week. With a little practice, folding sonobe units can be very quick and easy—it's the assembling of the geometric objects that gets difficult. However, I'm now officially hooked, so look out for more elaborate constructions over the next week. I know how I'll be spending the holiday weekend. :) More pics of my first attempt here.

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.