How To: Things to Do on WonderHowTo (11/30 - 12/06)

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. 

This week: Create a redstone calculator in Minecraft, participate in a toy-inspired cell phone photography challenge, make your own steel wool fireworks, and more.

Challenges and Workshops

• Goodbye Giveaway Tuesdays, Hello Phone Snap!—Giveaway Tuesdays Photo Challenge is officially over, but don't fret, we've got a very exciting new World to take its place. Head on over to Phone Snap! to meet the newest addition to the WonderHowTo team, Elaine Chang. Elaine will be hosting weekly cell phone-specific photography challenges. Introduce yourself in the forum, and enter the first challenge now for a chance to win a Pop Art toy camera! You have until December 5th to participate.

• Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop—Minecraft World admin Jon Hook will be hosting a technical workshop this Saturday on the basics of redstone and mathematics, where he'll be demonstrating how to build a redstone calculator. More details on the workshop here; if you still haven't joined the server, there are 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 4 in a series on completing HackThisSite missions, as well as tackling coding in the Python programming language. More details here.

• Scrabble Challenge—In this week's Scrabble World Challenge, Justin Meyers reflects on the big Turkey day, now come and gone. How many words can you make just using the letters in TURKEY? Give it your best shot now.

How-To Projects

• Still trying to tackle that fridge full of leftovers? Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse shares 13 delicious ways to re-use your Thanksgiving leftovers:

And with those cold winter months quickly setting in, Yumi also has a quick guide for relieving sore, chapped lips using common household items:

• Feel like celebrating the winter holiday season with fireworks instead of Christmas lights? Check out this how-to on making your own steel wool fireworks (plus the science behind them). The results are amazing.

• Cory Poole of Math Craft World shares two 3-dimensional math-related DIY projects this week. To make the skewer hyperbolic paraboloid, all you need is a handful of skewers, some glue, and a pen.

The second project, a paper-made hyperbolic paraboloid slice form, is taken from the activity section of the the Museum of Mathematics (MOMATH), a new museum which will open in Manhattan next year. Click through for full instructions.

• Math Craft World moderator Imatfaal Avidya also shares a fantastic math-inspired tutorial this week. His guide to creating your own sonobe jasmine dodecahedron is pretty complex—we dare you to attempt it. Instructions here; Imatfaal's results/inspiration here.

• Justin Meyers shares instructions for building origami master Sara Adams' paper Christmas trees. The holidays are quickly approaching, so get crackin', and post your results to the Math Craft corkboard!

• Jon Hook, admin of Minecraft World, shares two guides for enhancing the aesthetic of your interior and exterior living in Minecraft. Check out his guide to improving your architectural builds...

...as well as his guide to creating furniture.

• Cerek Tunca posted a crafty How-To project this week for jury-rigging your own Canon shutter release cable. Head on over to the article to post comments or questions.

• Alex Long of Null Byte has several projects to offer this week: How to get a great deal on an expensive laptop through some clever social engineering, several guides to mastering Skyrim, setting up auto-scheduled backups to avoid data loss, and more. Check out the Null Byte blog for a complete directory.

I Made It

• Inspired by Imatfaal Avidya's sonobe jasmine dodecahedron (as mentioned above), Cory Poole figured it out and made his own impressive version of the model.

• As mentioned last week, I continued my origami obsession throughout the holiday weekend. After completing my first modular origami model, I followed Cory's instructions and churned out tons more.

• Last but not least, the folks on the WonderHowTo Minecraft server have been busy constructing some pretty epic builds. A selection of their work is shown in the screenshots below; visit the Minecraft World community corkboard to see more and/or comment. Details on getting whitelisted for the server can be found 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.