American Standard Search Results

How To: Effectively Play Hooky from Work

On average, about thirty percent of working Americans have called in sick at least once just to take a day off from work. If you are in the other goody-two-shoes seventy percent of the work force who've only called in sick for actual physical illness or have never actually used a sick day, consider giving yourself a mental health day if you ever feel like you really need it.

News: The Cosmic Connection

The recent report of the ubiquity of extrasolar planets coupled with the fact that it bodes well for searches for life friendly Earth twins, brought me back to my reading of Carl Sagan's 1966 Intelligent Life In The Universe and later article in Sky & Telescope where he came up with a remarkable number in favor of such.

News: 5 Deliciously Warm Bourbon-Spiked Holiday Cocktails

With those icy winter months setting in, it's time to start sipping your bourbon warm. Spike your classic eggnog, hot chocolate, and even lattes with a splash of Wild Turkey bourbon. Below, five recipes to add a little fire to your typical cold weather beverages. Adjust the recipes to get more servings, and you've got some great ideas for Christmas party favors.

How To: Deep Fry Your Thanksgiving Bird

Looking for something a little more exhilarating this Thanksgiving? Something with a bit more kick? Forget traditional roasted turkey. If you've got the stomach for it, try turducken, a wonderful triplex of turkey, duck and chicken with sausage stuffing and Cajun seasoning. Or go for good ol' American fried food, the deep fried Thanksgiving bird.

How To: Make Hanging Dried Persimmons (Hoshigaki)

A seasonal tradition brought over from Japan to America by Japanese-American farmers, making hoshigaki (as they're called in Japanese) is a fun outdoor autumn project you can do before the winter season really kicks in. Hang a bunch of peeled persimmons on a string outside, wait for three to five weeks, and harvest yourself some naturally dried persimmons during the winter months. Though peeling the fruit and then regularly massaging the fruit every few days after hanging may be more labor in...

How To: Burn an XDG3 Formatted Xbox 360 Game ISO with Windows

This is the Windows OS counterpart to my tutorial on how to burn the new XDG3 formatted games on Xbox 360. Microsoft invented a new disc format system to trump piracy, it's called XDG3. XDG3's standard is to burn a whole extra gigabyte of data to the disc, to allow more content, but more importantly for stopping piracy. This extra gigabyte of data makes it impossible to burn or rip a game the traditional way. So how on earth can we burn our fully-legal back-ups that we should rightfully be ab...

How To: Make a Human Blockade Lockbox

I'll admit it, yes, I support protesting. It doesn't matter what my opinions are about any individual protest—overall, it is a human right and the only way to avoid tyranny. We can't deify Ghandi and demonize American protesters. That shows a silly shortsightedness that we can't afford to dabble in.

How To: Make an Unbreakable Linux Password Using a SHA-2 Hash Algorithm

In Linux, all password hashes are normally stored using the MD5 hashing algorithm in the /etc/shadow file, but MD5 is algorithmically weak due to collision vulnerabilities. The new recommended standard are the higher level SHA-2 hashing algorithms, SHA256 or SHA512. As a friend pointed out to me, Ubuntu is currently the only distro implementing SHA-2 as the default. With SHA-2, your passwords take an unreasonably larger amount of time to calculate. This will greatly decrease how many password...

How To: Share Your Laptop's Wireless Internet with Ethernet Devices

Sharing a laptop's wireless Internet connection with other computers connected to its Ethernet port is a great skill to know. It can be good for a number of reasons; Your computer may not have proper hardware to have a standard setup, or you may have an awkward network topology where sharing your wireless Internet via Ethernet would just be a better option.

Scrabble Bingo Weekly Roundup: Shlemiels, Cynosures and Yanquis

Bingo! No, this isn't the game where balls fly around in machines and players dab their cards with daubers. In a game of Scrabble, bingo refers to the bonus a player receives when emptying their rack in one turn, which gets them an extra 50 points on top of whatever their play was. Even if you had two blanks on your rack and didn't utilize any premium squares on the board, you'd still have an impressive 56-point turn (at least) by using all 7 of your letters.

News: Minecraft World's Weekly Workshop: Music to My Ears

This Week's Workshop: Music To My Ears The heart of WonderHowTo's Minecraft World is, naturally, “How-To” and so in the spirit of all things tutorial and DIY we will be hosting a weekly workshop showcasing the best and newest tutorials, builds, and inspiring ideas. We hope to inspire creativity and create a place where the community can share ideas and practice skills, right here on our server.

CryEngine 3: Now Everyone Can Make a Game As Good As Crysis 2… For Free

Crysis 2 is the current standard for high-quality graphics in video games. No other game looks so smooth, so colorful, so... ultra-real. German developer Crytek has built their reputation on PC game technology to the limit, and the CryENGINE 3 graphics engine they used to make Crysis 2 might be the most powerful tool for creating 3D video game graphics on Earth. As of yesterday, it's also free for anyone, yourself included, to download from Crytek's website here.

News: Should Google+ Require You to Use Your Real Name?

Google started culling Google+ accounts. There are two main targets: businesses and those who are using pseudonyms. For businesses, Google is promising to provide their own version of Facebook Pages, which will be released later this year. For those who use pseudonyms, they aren't so lucky. According to Google+'s community standards, users must "use the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you". The purpose of this rule is ostensibly to discourage spammers and people from set...

News: Seize the Lightning! Carpe Fulgur Imports Japanese Indie Games to the U.S.

Carpe Fulgur translates to something along the lines of "Seize the Lightning" in Latin. Sometimes that is enacted with golf clubs by idiots. But the three intrepid indie video game localizers who work under that name are trying to do it the right way: metaphorically. They are translating and publishing Japanese games for the Americans market—games that have seldom been seen before because every other company thinks it's mad to release them here.

News: Did George Plimpton Make a Falconry Game for ColecoVision?

George Plimpton may be one of the most interesting Americans ever. Foremost a sports journalist, he was also a novelist, Fireworks Commissioner for New York City and host of Mouseterpiece Theater. Some of you may also recognize him as one of the men who tackled Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. But most of you probably remember him as the pitchman for products like Pop Secret Popcorn and the Intellivision video game console. Actually, his most appreciated work would probably be a s...

News: Google Kills Gaming on Android

One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.

How To: Clone a Banana with Jello

Mold making is pretty thrilling—the ability to replicate objects right down to every little crack and crevice seems like something only a machine would be able to do. But in many cases creating a replica from a mold is surprisingly simple. Found on Tasteologie, La Receta de la Felicidad presents a fun alternative to the classic Jello jiggler. For a Dada-esque dessert, try using a banana peel as your mold. As you can see below, it works quite well at capturing the natural texture of the banana.

Fantasy Food: The $1,000 Popsicle & More

From Fox News, the Marquis Los Cabos resort in Baja California Sur, Mexico is now offering a $1,000 Popsicle made from 24 ct. gold flakes and Tequilas Premium Clase Azul Ultra—a premium liquor that goes for $1,500 a bottle. You can enjoy the gold-laced ice pop as you're lounging by the pool.