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How To: Make an Arched Roof in Minecraft

This week, I will be covering one of my favorite styles of roofing in Minecraft—the arched roof. This is basically just a roof that starts out steep and slowly slopes down until it meets in the center. I think this type of roof looks great in Elvish-styled buildings and can make any build look very elegant and tall.

10th Time's the Charm: Success and Failures of Making a Jam Jar Jet Engine

I finally got around to trying out this jam jar jet project. The most successful and longest lasting pulse was somehow the only one I did not record. You can imagine how frustrating that probably was, though my tenth and final attempt was nearly as satisfying. But even the failures were fun to watch, especially the blue flame floating, almost dancing, around the jar. I especially liked the small foghorn sound that my first failed attempt produced.

How To: Make a BB Machine Gun from a Soda Bottle

In a previous article, I showed how to make a powerful airsoft BB machine gun with a portable air supply using about $50 worth of PVC and air fittings. For this project, I have simplified the design to make a machine gun out of only 4 parts totaling about $15 that runs directly off of an air compressor.

News: Change from BASH to zsh

Hello fellow Null-Byters today I will be showing you how to change from the simple but powerful BASH system to a more powerful and faster Z - Shell system. This change can be permanent if you want but doesn't have to be, and it is an extremely simple one to perform.

Edit on a Dime: The Week Ahead

Happy Monday to all of you out there, thankfully the Consumer Electronics Show is now behind us. It feels quite possible that a cold was caught by yours truly simply by reading the numerous reports of germs being spread from booth to booth on the show floor. I'll do my best to soldier on, in the meantime if you haven't already, you can experience the convention vicariously by reading my 'Best of CES' post here.

How To: Build Your Own "Pogo Mo Thoin" to Flash Any Xbox 360 DVD Drive for Under $5

The biggest struggle with flashing DVD drives on Xbox 360s has been the price tag of the probe to extract keys on some drives. The probe and kit is required to extract the DVD key, which is needed to perform a drive repair, flash, or backup of any kind. Who wants to pay big bucks for the "pro" kit and then get added to a huge waiting list behind a million other people looking to buy the same product? We can hack the same thing together at home!

Scrabble Bingo of the Day: MIASMIC

Scrabble Bingo of the Day: MIASMIC [adj] Miasmic is an adjective for miasm (or miasma), which means a noxious vapor—"bad air" harmful to health. The word miasma comes from the ancient Greek word for pollution. And the concept of bad air also gave rise to the name malaria, from old Italian "mala" (bad) "aria" (air).

News: Resurrecting the Video Game Magazine: PC Gamer Digital

PC Gamer represents all that was awesome about games journalism in the '90s, now sadly diminished. Brilliant, funny, full of integrity, and solid print sales were always present, and with the tragic exception of the latter, still are. Video game magazines were hit harder than nearly any other magazine vertical when the internet began its uncoordinated, but inevitable assault on print media. Magazines are now struggling to find their place in a world filled with more competitors than paying cu...

How To: Sign Up to Play in the Diablo 3 Beta

By now you may have heard that the Diablo 3 Friends and Family beta testing has begun. Diablo III is the next highly anticipated addition in the Diablo trilogy, and is the sequel to Diablo 2, originally published all the way back in 2000. The game is the product of Blizzard Entertainment, a company well known for its very successful Warcraft and Starcraft franchises. Like the other Blizzard series, Diablo III will be exclusively for PCs at launch. Console players can rejoice as the lead proje...

Jonathan's Starbucks Card: A Social Experiment in Sharing Ends

Last month, mobile application consultant Jonathan Stark unleashed his Starbucks Card to the public as an "experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones." Basically, he purchased a Starbucks Card and registered it via the Starbucks Mobile App for iPhone (there's an Android one, too) which allows caffeine addicts to pay for coffee and baked goods with their mobile device. He then took a screenshot of the barcode and let anyone on the web download it for...

News: The Epic Danny MacAskill's Greatest Hits

Danny MacAskill has been a cycling and internet god since the day he surfaced on YouTube back in April of 2009. A Scottish street trials pro rider for Inspired Bicycles Ltd., MacAskill has been practicing his stunt riding for over 12 years. He gave up his job as a mechanic to ride full time, and now appears in music videos and commercials.

News: Life in 30 Seconds!

Sitting around thinking about my average sexual performance, I wondered if there were other things in life that were also 30 seconds long. I was extremely relieved that such things were possible! These 30 second movies are the mobile text equivalent to major films or projects. From film to parody to games, it looks like you can really recap everything in half a minute! So stop checking your texts on every red light, give your thumbs a rest and check these out instead!

Super Marrow Brothers: The Story of the Greatest Pun Ever

Playing Super Mario Brothers for the NES is the first thing I can ever remember doing, at age 3 sitting on the carpet at my grandparents' house. It was a special game for an entire generation, including British youths Andrej and Adam Zamoyski. It inspired them to eventually become video game testers and designers themselves; Andrej at Lionhead Studios and Adam at Headstrong Games, and then Zynga Mobile UK (until recently called Wonderland Software, developers of Godfinger for the iPhone).

Jan Kounen: Undisputed Master of Psycho Stop Motion Animation

As inspiration for the Levitation Challenge, a demonstration of pure stop motion genius: Jan Kounen's Gisele Kerozene, the tale of four extremely odd witches "flying" on motorized brooms. If Tokyo's Levitating Girl has to jump 200 times to get the perfect shot, imagine how many times these four guys had to jump to get a full 4 minutes and 30 seconds of stop motion magic.

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.

DIY Anthropology: International Obscura Day this Saturday. Go Wild.

Calling all curious minds—scientists, anthropologists, relentless tourists: Saturday, April 9th, is International Obscura Day, the day to "explore hidden treasures in your hometown," or so says Atlas Obscura, a website dedicated to public curiosities and esoterica. If you're the kind of person who appreciates public oddities every day of the year, tomorrow is icing on the cake. Celebrate Obscura Day in one of hundreds of locales—from Los Angeles to Sydney, from Berlin to Manila.

How To: Play Music With Your Mind

Tired of getting calluses from incessantly strumming along to 'No Woman No Cry'? Just hook up to the brain-music system and use your brain power to play a tune instead. I'm not talking—humming along in your head. The machine, created by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, is composed of electrodes taped directly onto your skull that pick up tiny electrical impulses from neurons in your brain and translates them into musical rhythms on a co...

The Secret to Stock Trading: Instant Messaging Swarms

Traders are in a frenzy of instant messaging all day long. The best ones, at least. A recent study says the best traders are the ones that IM the most and the least successful traders were the ones that IM the least. So, it seems like if you can find a way to jump on the bandwagon, you can beat the odds, too. But, what's their secret? Are they passing around insider information?

How To: Ikea Makes Beautiful (Not Quite HowTo) Cooking Videos

When images of a rumored Ikea cookbook surfaced through the blogger grapevine, foodie and graphic design fetishists alike grew ecstatic. The leaked images from the 140 page coffee-table baking book presented pristinely assembled, OCD patterns of ingredients and the resulting desserts for 30 classic Swedish baking recipes. Forsman & Bodenfors, the Swedish agency behind the project took a different approach to the typical organization of the standard baking cookbook.

News: A Quick Homage to Our Benefactor

Without Richard Channing Garfield the world would be a much grayer and less interesting place today, at least for all of us. He created Magic in college, playtested it throughout, accidentally found a publisher for it, and wound up the the most well-known and successful paper game designer in the world (sorry Guygax, make something new why don't ya?). He does not seek the limelight, has not had a snappy biography written about him (or his game, amazingly enough) and I thought we should pay a ...

HowTo: Build a Vibrating Lock Pick With a Toothbrush

Unbeknownst to the general public, picking a lock can be a very easy process once you get the hang of it (yes, surprising AND frightening). A vibrating lock pick set takes the general ease of picking even further by speeding up the process. Now, with the help of Invent Geek, you can make your own DIY Vibrating lock pick for about a tenth of the price of a manufactured kit.

News: FIX WINDOWS 7 SLOW STARTUP TIMES...

How to Fix Windows 7 Slow Start Up Is your Windows 7 slower on start up? Wondering how to make Windows 7 super fast? There are various reasons why this operating system performs slower but one common reason is that mostly it happens because of too many start up programs and services running in the background.

Do Not Try This At Home: The Human Torch

PopSci's Gray Matter demonstrates again and again what the layman should absolutely Not Try at Home. Which is precisely what makes Gray's experiments so fun. Remember when the mad scientist fully submerged his hand in liquid nitrogen? Today's demonstration also plays with what is (quite reasonably) assumed to be extremely dangerous and painful: torching the human hand.