How To: Things to Do on WonderHowTo (12/21 - 12/27)

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: A holiday-themed cell phone photography challenge, mini weapons of mass destruction, a new World on low-cost editing, several DIY holiday projects, and more!

Challenges and Workshops

• Phone Snap!—This week's cell phone photography challenge calls for your most festive, holiday-themed shot. Post your entry to the Phone Snap corkboard by Monday, December 26th, 11:59pm PST for a chance to win a set of silly photobooth props just in time for New Year's Eve. More details here.

• Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop—Log on to the WonderHowTo Minecraft server on Saturday, December 24th at 4pm CST (2pm PST) to learn how to build your own redstone sorting machine. 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) lists several stargazing activities for you to partake in during the Christmas break:

     - Through March 2012: The Garradd comet shines in the sky.
     - December 21, 2011: The moon is at its perigee.
     - December 22, 2011: Winter solstice.
     - December 23, 2011: There's a Mercury-moon conjunction.
     - December 24, 2011: Mercury and the bright star Antares conjure in the sky.

• Scrabble Challenge—You're playing Scrabble and you get a rack full of vowels—what do you do? Exchange letters or build a word? Find out in the last official Scrabble Challenge by Justin Meyers in the Scrabble World, where you're given a game board and the letters below. Can you find the best move?

• 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 will take place on Mondays and Wednesdays (instructed by moderator Sol Gates), and HackThisSite walkthroughs will continue to take place on Fridays (instructed by admin Alex Long). Meet up on the Null Byte IRC at the appropriate time! More details here.

How-To Projects

• Still grabbing last-minute Christmas gifts? Yumi of Secret Tips from the Yumiverse shares with you her 6 DIY gift-wrapping ideas for the holidays:

• And if you've got snow on the ground, Yumi also has some great tips for making snowmen, snow caves, and even colored snow spray. Check out her cool ideas for making stuff with snow:

• New to Worlds is Jett Loe from Edit on a Dime, a place for reviews, tutorials and news in the world of free and low-cost creative tools for audio, images and video. Check out his intro post, then dive right into his first low-budget guide to editing—tricking YouTube into being a decent video editor. To stay updated on future projects, join Edit on a Dime now!

• Ben is back with more amazing projects in his NightHawkInLight World. This time around, he gives instructions for crafting a paper crossbow—quite possibly the best paper crossbow we've ever seen. Also, he shared a tutorial for his ingenious miniature cannon made with a lighter. Make sure to join the World to keep updated on future projects.

• Still have one of those old 1st generation iPod nanos? Well, good news! You may be able to swap it out with a brand new 6th generation model, complete with a touchscreen, pedometer, and FM radio. To see if you can upgrade your Apple device, check out the guide in Tech Pr0n.

• You've got a couple days left to hack together those last minute Christmas gifts. How about a set of personalized DIY marble photo magnets? Phone Snap! shows you how easy it is. If you make one, post your results to the Phone Snap! community corkboard.

• Losing too much time in Minecraft? Jon Hook shares a great guide in the Minecraft World on making a real-time redstone clock using a piston array.

• And newbie moderator in the Minecraft World, Andrew Osborne, has some great tutorials of his own. First, he filled everyone in on the basics of using redstone in Minecraft, something that can be quite tricky for new players. Then, he shared his guide to making a T flip-flop, something that can replace those large, clunky levers.

• As always, there's plenty of tutorials from Null Byte for you to browse. This week: How to hack your Xbox 360 gamerscore, how to defend from keyloggers in Firefox, a last resort method for fixing the red ring of death, and more! Check the blog roll for a full rundown.

I Made It

• Justin Meyers posted the results of his previously shared origami Christmas tree tutorial. Have you folded any Christmas trees yet? If so, share yours on the Mathcraft corkboard.

• Still on my modular origami kick, I posted several small-scale cubes, octahedrons and icosahedrons made with Sonobe units, folded from metallic origami paper. I'm planning on attaching some fishing wire so I can hang these from the tree. To make your own, see Cory Poole's instructions 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.