Encounter Search Results

How To: Chemically strip wood

Wood can be refinished by sanding off the old stain or paint but sanding runs the risk of removing fine details on the wood. Chemical strippers are the best to remove paint, varnish and shellac. Prepare the area on and around the project, strip, scrape and scrub. You might encounter some tricky situations like finding it hard to clean details on the wood. After project is stripped and cleaned, let it dry over night. It is time to refinish the wood. Bleach wood if needed, stain or leave natura...

How To: Clean a Flag

We hang flags to proclaim our patriotic spirit. This is especially true for retired veterans or those who have loved ones serving in the military. Others hang flags representing the seasons, important events, favorite teams or just a cute and whimsical design as decoration. An American flag can be particularly tricky to wash. Red, white and blue all lying together in one inseparable panel can cause the blue or red dye to bleed onto the white. This is not just a problem with an American flag; ...

How To: Survive a Deadly Animal Attack in the Wild

Whether it's a shark in the ocean, a crocodile in the swamp or a swarm of angry bees, trekking through the wilderness always comes with its fair share of perils. To prepare for the worst case scenario, equip yourself with the right knowledge—then the worst that can happen to you is an awesome bar story when you tell your friends about your close encounter.

News: NYC's Secret Video Game World

While it's unlikely you'll encounter this caliber of insane pixelated madness in real-life, everyday New York City, you might be lucky enough to walk past a tangible "portal" of sorts. Below, images from Pixel Pour 2.0, an installation on Mercer Street in Soho.

News: Everything You Need to Know About Bed Bugs

If you've ever had even the slightest encounter with bed bugs, you know they are the most feared, nastiest vermin in New York City, as well as other closely populated spaces (re: college dorms). The latest nasty bit of news on the topic concerns clothing retailer Hollister- their flagship Soho store was shut down for three days for infestation.

See Jane Pwn: A Primer for Internet Slang

Making your way into an online community can be really exciting. Some life-long friendships and lasting romances begin in humble chat rooms and message boards. But for the novice internet user, one of the biggest hurdles can be trying to figure out just what people are saying to one another.

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 4 - Real Hacking Simulations

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, realistic 4. The fourth in a series of realistic simulation missions was designed to be exactly like a situation you may encounter in the real world. This time, we are told "Fischer's Animal Products is a company that slaughters animals and turns their skin into overpriced products which are then sold to rich bastards! Help animal rights activists increase political awareness by hacking their mailing list."

News: Hone O Oru

This Japanese expression has two basic meanings. The literal meaning is to break one’s bone(s), as when falling from a height. The figurative meaning is “to try harder.” That is, to try so hard that one’s bones break.

HowTo: Take Photos in the Wild Without Getting Mauled

Robots are great for performing tasks that are otherwise too dangerous for man (e.g. dead body extraction bot). BeetleCam is a cute little bot that takes all the danger out of wild life photography. Controlled remotely from a Range Rover about 50 yards away, BeetleCam ventures where no sane photographer dares to go (at the feet of a charging elephant, say). "We thought that Elephants would be an easy subject for BeetleCam’s first outing. We were wrong… we quickly learned that Elephants are wa...

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 1 - Real Hacking Simulations

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, realistic 1. This is the first in a series of realistic simulation missions designed to be exactly like situations you may encounter in the real world. This first mission, we are asked to help a friend manipulate the website voting system for a Battle of the Bands vote count in his favor.

How To: fix the error "transaction was not successful"

So many of you like to save up your gold coins to buy things like castles, treasure cards and clothing. But sometimes when you buy something, an error message pops up. One of them is this extremely annoying one: "Transaction was not successful."This error happens mostly when buying clothes. Let's say you want to buy a robe, but it is too expensive. You change the color of the robe to brown, yellow or white and try to buy it. When you click Buy, the error pops up. You switch realms. No differe...

News: Shibumi

In the dojo, what ISN’T said is often as important as what IS said. To most of us who’ve been raised in the USA, the reticence we encounter in the dojo can be off-putting. American society is very “content” oriented. Our legal contracts, for instance, run for pages and pages. Everything needs to be spelled out. In “context-oriented” societies there is far less reliance on such a literal approach. Much more importance is placed on the relationship between the two parties entering into an agree...

News: Pacific Shark News Reports

The Pacific Shark Research Committee is the sole spot to find ALL shark sightings in SoCal. They're incredibly diligent about indexing all the activity. It's kind of nerve wracking that my two favorite spots: Sunset and San O are the most popular for white shark sightings, but oh well.

News: Is Open Source Really Insecure?

To go Open Source or go proprietary? There is a common conception that open-source is unsafe and insecure and therefore companies should rather go for proprietary solutions. They think that because software is termed "open-source", that the world can see the vulnerabilities of the software and might exploit it, and less informed people tend to think that open-source software can be modified while it is running.

How To: Read Guitar Tab

Guitar Essentials My friends and I would secretly scribble tab in the darkly lit practice rooms in our university even though we were educated musicians. So, being able to read tablature, or tab, is essential for beginning guitarists.

Minecraft Monster Slaying: How to Surprise Your Aggressors with a Long Drop and Sudden Stop

No one likes having their home invaded, and sometimes you just don't want to have to wait those precious few seconds for someone or something to drown, suffocate, or burn up. This trap utilizes gravity to destroy anyone who may want to pillage your home, be they monster or player. No drowning or suffocating here... they just go splat at the bottom of a deep hole, and you can instantly forget about them.

News: Networking Virtual Machines Using VDE

I've struggled for a long time trying to set up a virtual network between my KVM virtual machines. I tried several forums and tutorials on the web, but still on my system it just wouldn't work. I eventually got it owrking, so I've decided to make some notes of my own. Hopefully it will be helpful to you as a reader as well.

News: Minecraft, Meet Terraria

Minecraft was first released just a few years ago, but when a paradigm-shifting piece of media comes along the rest of the world is quick to take inspiration from it. The absolutely terrible XBLA knock-off FortressCraft was the first, and last month a much more interesting game called Terraria came out on Steam for $9.99. It is clearly inspired by Minecraft, and there is a long checklist of identical features. It is, nonetheless, a very different product, and just might be called the first in...

News: The World's Most Expensive Video Games and Consoles Ever

Most of the indie and vintage games discussed in Indie Games Ichiban are pretty cheap to purchase. They rarely top twenty bucks, which is one of the major advantages independent games have against their sixty-buck, major league counterparts. But if you think $60 for a game and $300 for a PS3 or Xbox 360 seems like a lot, then you haven't played Steel Battalion or seen the TurboExpress. They go above and beyond what normal gamers are willing to spend for questionably entertaining products. Her...

News: The Morals and Dangers of Public Art. (A Warning)

I've decided to write this post so some of the fledgling street artists who may or may not follow this world in the future are informed about two things in the urban art world that are either not discussed at all, or distorted (intentionally or otherwise) to the point of misinformation. Those two things are, as the title says, the dangers of street art, and the morals of street art.