Minecart rides primarily serve two different functions—transportation or entertainment. We rarely see minecart-based transportation systems in Minecraft these days because most servers support warps or allow users to set multiple homes that they can simply teleport to. That leaves the primary purpose of entertainment.
Minecraft just wouldn't be the same without all of those pesky monsters trying to break into your house and jump on you until you die. But that gets tiring after awhile, and sometimes you just want a safe place to go where you don't have to worry about being eaten, shot, or blown up.
Only a few people turned out for last week's workshop on Saturday, but they were all interested in learning this technique for hiding secret stashes with ordinary blocks. After that was covered, we even went on to teach each other different designs afterward! It was a great learning experience for everyone who attended, so consider joining us next week!
So, you want to decrease your hard-boiled egg peeling time because you don't want the time- consuming task to cut into your limited lunch break. Or maybe you've somehow been burdened with the task of cooking a lot of homemade deviled eggs for a big family gathering. How do you peel a hard-boiled egg as quickly and efficiently as possible?
The possibilities are endless for 3D printing. With your very own 3D printer, you can make spare parts, circuit boards, inflatable balloons, duplicate keys, Minecraft cities, and even tiny replicas of your face. From a more artsy standpoint, you can make complex sculptures, like this cool mathematical sculpture of thirty interwoven hexagons by Francesco De Comite:
Another week has passed on the online battlefield as the CISPA legislation continues to grind away at our freedom. Here at Null Byte, we try to keep our community informed and knowledgeable at the same time—and that means creating content for them to learn from.
Christian Cantrell, Adobe's Air Product Manager and Evangelist, has released a video to demo websites that take advantage of the motion sensors in a mobile phone, tablet, or laptop via JavaScript. Now, let's take a look through the code and break down the core pieces that you'll need in order to build your own sites that can determine the 2-axis tilt, 3-axis gyroscope, and compass direction of the mobile device it's being displayed on.
Want to protect your home from unlawful entry? You may not have the means to invest in an expensive alarm system, but you can definitely use cheap and practical methods around your home to deter burglars from breaking in when you're not home.
If Null Byte had a large Batman-like spotlight calling for help, we would definitely be using it right now. However, we don't, so this is my digital equivalent. Information security is a huge field, far too much for one man to cover adequately, so I need your help!
Jet engines combine oxygen from the surrounding air with on-board fuel to burn at very high temperatures and create thrust in the direction of the flame. Rockets, which we will learn about in a later post, are similar but carry oxygen internally and can therefore function in space!
Snapshot: 12w08a brings us a few nice things a few things I'm not so sure about and a few things I just hope Mojang doesn't incorporate into the next official update.
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.
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!
If you've ever wondered how software pirates can take software and crack it time and time again, even with security in place, this small series is for you. Even with today's most advanced methods of defeating piracy in place, it is still relatively easy to crack almost any program in the world. This is mainly due to computer processes' ability to be completely manipulated by an assembly debugger. Using this, you can completely bypass the registration process by making it skip the application'...
With a lot of Null Byters playing around with Linux because of its excessive use in the hacking world, some of you are bound to run into some trouble with the installation at some point or another. If you make a mistake, or you're intimidated by the wonky-looking installation screen, you may want to just stick with Windows. However, you may notice it can be hard to go back once you've crossed a certain point in the installation. Your Windows installation may be broken or unbootable.
Ever since kernel 2.6.xx in Linux, a lot of the internet kernel modules for wireless interfaces ended up becoming broken when trying to use monitor mode. What happens commonly (to myself included) is a forced channel that your card sits on. No good! For users of airodump and the aircrack-ng software suite, the software has become unusable.
I love this project. It involves fire, projectiles, electricity, and is easy to put together from commonly available parts. This mini cannon fires airsoft pellets, is fueled by alcohol, and is made almost entirely from parts found in a standard BBQ lighter. The total cost is under $5. About half of the BBQ lighters out there have a divide in the gas reservoir which makes them not work for this project. In case you have trouble finding a suitable lighter, the exact one I use in this video is a...
I got hooked on origami sometime after Math Craft admin Cory Poole posted instructions for creating modular origami, but I had to take a break to finish a quilt I've been working on for a while now. It's my first quilt, and very simple in its construction (straight up squares, that's about it), but it got me thinking about the simple geometry and how far you could take the design to reflect complex geometries. Below are a few cool examples I found online.
The last tree on earth The world looks new today.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server.
Gamers who have their Xbox 360's firmware flashed may have recently noticed an inability to play backups, or even make backups of newer games that have come out, such as Gears of War 3 and Dead Island, to name a few.
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.
Aesthetic Houses: What are they? If you've played Minecraft for some time now, you most surely know how hard it is to build a great looking house to live in, that meets both your vision of your dream house and expectations for functionality. This brings us to the definition: in terms of Minecraft, its a structure that dosen't compromise beauty and appeal for functionality.
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
If you didn't think you could make a high speed photography trigger or hack together some creepy googly eyeballs for Halloween, then you've got another think coming, because learning how to use Arduino just got easier thanks to Jody Culkin and her wonderful comic book introduction to the Arduino platform (and electronics projects in general).
Minecraft may seem like a game for just hardcore gamers and computer nerds, but it's totally not. It can hook anyone and everyone, from casual gamers to online addicts to total newbies—it can even turn its users into serial killers. And now, Notch and his Mojang crew have made it possible for more people in the world to become Minecraft addicts who'll never leave their servers. A console version for the Xbox 360 will be available this winter, but for now you can all enjoy the cubed sandbox wo...
Always falling asleep behind the wheel? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that there are over 56,000 sleep-related accidents each year, resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths annually in the United States. Don't want to be a statistic? Then you may want to try out ASP Technology's mobile application which aims to keep you awake when you're fatigued on the road.
Remember Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez homage to B films? Well this game is just like that. It could literally pass off as the third feature in that movie. The action looks clunky, the acting is not the best, but it still looks like a fun ride. It comes out tomorrow (June 21st) and I'll have first impressions ready the next day.
In just a few days, the biggest expo in the video game industry will unleash the newest games and hardware from all of the major companies. Nintendo is set to unveil its Wii-replacing Project Café and Konami will showcase its upcoming lineup, including new Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid games. But what will Sony be presenting at E3 in Los Angeles this year?
It's not uncommon for nature to inspire technology and innovative products. Airplanes were inspired by birds, Velcro by burrs and dog fur, bullet trains by owls and kingfishers, and gecko tape by... well, you can probably figure that one out. And one of the deadliest fish ever to swim the oceans has also influenced its share of merchandise; Sharks made humans faster in the water with Fastswim Suits, and now they've helped make one of the most rugged smartphone cases in the world—SharkEye's Ru...
Ever had your car broken into? Or worse, your apartment? Ever been pickpocketed? Handheld electronics—iPods, iPhones, iPads, GPS devices, digital cameras—are easy to snatch, light to carry, and useful to most. And when they're gone, they're gone.
If you powered up the ol' Xbox 360 last night to watch Netflix, you probably noticed that a new streaming service moved into Xbox LIVE—Hulu Plus. Netflix finally has some competition. Or maybe not. But with a week of free service, they're sure to attract some would-be watchers.
It seems the French have carefully observed the hacking achievements of one super clever Carnegie Mellon grad, turning his hack into a modern iPad application-to-be.
Introduction PostgreSQL is a very popular Open-Source database management system. It competes heavily with many proprietary and commercial database management systems. More information on what it is and it's history can be found here and here.
TGIF. What better day to take a break from the week's dwindling grind? Below, a video demo plus instructions for indulging in a little tech-aided vanity during your next water cooler hiatus. An iPhone is necessary, so if you don't have one, find a co-worker stat. 1. Buy & Download.
Can you dissect an equilateral triangle into pieces that can be rearranged into a square? If you think you can, you may have mastered the Pythagorean theorem.
Do you remember when video games came on tiny chips in plastic cartridges? When the CD and 3D graphics just meant ugly games with long load times? Before epic cinematics, spoken dialog, or cordless controllers? Do you still have all of your old games and lament that the consoles, cords, and controllers required to play them have either been stolen by exes or broken while moving apartments?
Dandruff -- the embarrassing white flakes that end up like snowfall on your shoulders and clothing. There are plenty of dandruff shampoos on the market to choose from, unfortunately, they are all very expensive. If you have ever wondered what ingredients make them so expensive, the simple answer is there are no expensive ingredients that make them so effective. So, the next question might be, why are they so expensive? And the answer to that is dandruff shampoo companies know they can charge ...
Go out and find a bag of Qualatex Balloons from your local party suplier or party store. Qualatex is the "Very Best Balloons" you can get and they tend to be easiest to work with.Buy a quality hand pump that you can use to blow up the balloons. A quality pump should run anywhere from $3 - $7 for a basic dual action hand pump. It may not be easy to find a quality one in a party store, but I'm sure they'll have something that will work. Anything is better than nothing when it comes to having a ...
In a word... WOW. 22-year-old Taimane Gardner, a Honolulu native, stuns the audience with her electric uke rendition of Bach's Toccata. Forget the fact that Taimane's skill level is incredible... her stage presence is insane! Taimane has been performing and winning ukulele contests since the age of five. Says Taimane: “I remember the day I got it. It was lying on the table and the first thing that popped into my head was ‘rock star’. I picked it up and played in front of the mirror until I br...