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Things to Do on WonderHowTo (11/16 - 11/22)

Nov 16, 2011 08:54 PM

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.

Hacking, crafting, mining & more… just another week at WonderHowTo! As we approach Thanksgiving, we have several activities and projects for you to take advantage of over the weekend and your upcoming days off. This week: Recreating the Antikythera Mechanism in Minecraft, a Pet Portrait Challenge, several Math Craft DIY projects, and more.

Challenges and Workshops

Giveaway Tuesdays Photo Challenge—This week's Giveaway Tuesdays Photo Challenge presents a prize as cute as the theme. Submit your very best pet portrait for a chance to win a DigiDude keychain tripod. We'll be selecting two winners, so gather some inspiration, and submit now!

Camera equipment with colorful accessories and figurines.

Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop—This week's Minecraft Workshop is pretty nerdtastic. The server has been working on a Minecraft replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient computer built in 100 BC, capable of calculating the occurrence of various astronomical phenomena like solar and lunar eclipses. This week's workshop will take place on Thursday instead of the usual Saturday slot, as Minecraft World will be attending Minecon in Vegas this weekend! More details here.

Ancient bronze artifact resembling a gear mechanism.

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 will continue with the legal hacking of HackThisSite.org, with an emphasis on Basic Mission 3. More details here.

"Digital notice of a security breach."

Scrabble Challenge—Justin Meyers' logophile-centric Scrabble World Challenge is all about Words with Friends this week. Justin compares and contrasts the classic board game with the Facebook alternative, and challenges the community to come up with a worthy first move in both games. More details here.

How-To Projects

Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse shares a Japanese family tradition this week. Yumi's mom makes hanging dried persimmons (AKA hoshigaki) every fall, and Yumi reports they are super tasty and make for beautiful outdoor decor. Check out the original post or click on the image below to enlarge.

How to make decorations from orange peels.

Cory Poole of Math Craft World shared two How-To projects this week. First, instructions for making an "Orderly Tangle of Triangles"...

3D paper star sculpture on a coin.

...and second, instructions for making Modular Origami (a cube, octahedron and icosahedron made with Sonobe units). If you tackle either of these projects (or any from the past), please post your results to the Math Craft community corkboard.

Colorful origami star made of geometric shapes.

Cerek Tunca shared a great tutorial for creating a custom banner for a lightweight RC plane. Don't miss his previous project on making your own DIY iPod projector and screen.

A colorful windsock blowing in the wind near a tree on a fall day.

Alex Long of Null Byte has several projects to offer this week: Learn how to recover and remove Windows passwords, install "incompatible" Friefox addons to the latest version, or set up a virtual computer within your host OS. Check out the blog for a complete rundown.

Abstract blue digital circuit pattern with a glowing light at the center.

I Made It

Justin Meyers posted photos of a beautiful creation he refers to as "Curve Stitching Takes on the Rubik's Cube". Read more about his process here.

Geometric cube with intricate spider web patterns in various colors.

Imatfaal Avidya joins Math Craft World as a new moderator this week. We're all anxiously awaiting How-To's for the two projects shown below. Amazing work! To comment, go here and here.

Colorful geometric star sculpture made of interlocking shapes.

A decorative piece made from curled white paper strips.

Inspired by Cory Poole's post on creating parabolic arcs from straight lines and creating concentric circles, Watermelonlemon shared two amazingly time intensive pieces. To comment, go here or here.

Geometric abstract art featuring star-like shapes and circular patterns in grayscale.

Geometric design with star-like shapes and circular patterns.

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.

Images via promediablog and flickr

The next big software update for iPhone is coming sometime in April and will include a Food section in Apple News+, an easy-to-miss new Ambient Music app, Priority Notifications thanks to Apple Intelligence, and updates to apps like Mail, Photos, Podcasts, and Safari. See what else is coming to your iPhone with the iOS 18.4 update.