Intended Break Search Results

Inventables: A Store for Superheroes & Hackers

Founded by Zach Kaplan, a "serial entrepreneur" with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Inventables is a futuristic online hardware store based out of Chicago. The company sells innovative materials at much smaller quantities than typically available—largely to artists, inventors, developers, and researchers. If you've got a brilliant idea and cash to spare, careful, you just may go hog wild. My premature "Dear Santa" wishlist-in-progress:

Weasel Out of a Ticket & More: Life Lessons from the Creator of COPS

In 1988, John Langley created COPS for the fledgling FOX network. 23 years later, the show is still running. It is the Energizer bunny of prime time television. Since John has followed more police officers and witnessed more crime than any human being on earth (absolutely no question), I had to ask some advice for hypothetical unwanted encounters with the men in blue.

How To: Create Strong, Safe Passwords

Movies like to show hackers breaking passwords with fancy software and ludicrous gadgets. The reality of busting passwords open is much more mundane. Simple as it may sound, most passwords are broken purely by guesswork. Check out this infographic from ZoneAlarm, as well as this list from the Wall Street Journal of the fifty most common passwords gleaned from the 2010 Gawker hack. If your password is on one of those lists, you need to change it. Right now.

News: 10 Ways to Lose Weight Using an iPhone

Sounds like a false promise à la infomercial or typical spammy web headline—how can a 4.8 ounce gadget aid in weight loss? But, in truth, "who" better to act as a dedicated personal trainer and nutritionalist than the iPhone? The smartphone is completely and utterly tethered to the daily life of the average middle to upper class American. It's reliable and exact. All it needs is a charged battery, the right app, and of course, as with every diet and fitness regime, a user with unwavering self...

How To: Restring your electric guitar

Learn how to change the strings on your electric guitar. Most guitarist's agree, your guitar sounds best with new strings. After an initial break in period, new strings are brighter, warmer, increase sustain, and even tune better. Restring your electric guitar.

How To: Play fill-ins and rundowns on the acoustic guitar

The objective of this lesson is to break up the same old up and down strumming pattern and sound better. Otherwise your playing can sound the same after a while even though your playing different tunes. By adding rundowns, fill-ins, and alternating bass notes, we can take ordinary strumming up to a more advanced level. Play fill-ins and rundowns on the acoustic guitar.

How To: Create a half tone grid pattern in Photoshop

In this video tutorial you will learn to take an image and turn into a half tone grid pattern. A halftone is the simulation of a continuous-tone image, such as a shaded drawing or a photograph, with groups of dots. A halftone breaks a continuous-tone photo into tiny dots. Create a half tone grid pattern in Photoshop.

How To: Promote a Web Comic

There’s a lot going on in your head when creating a comic book and it doesn’t stop after it’s done. There are other things that you have to do once your comic book goes online. You have to market it, introduce it to the right market, and find a way how to get it published.

How To: Make Zanata's Famous Crab Cakes

This Crab Cake recipe comes from one of my favorite places in Rockwall, Texas called Zanata. You can't go wrong fwith anything on the menu. Its always fantastic or wunderbar, as you would say in German. So, let's get started.

How To: Make Thai street vendor style shrimp fried rice

Thai street vendor food can be quiet inexpensive, not to mention absolutely delicious! But what is their secret to these sidewalk dishes? Here is a basic fried rice commonly made by street vendors and fine restaurants alike. It's best to use day-old rice that's been cooked and sitting at room temperature (just leave it in the rice cooker for best results). We add roasted chile paste which gives a perfect, authentic flavor which is just a tad spicy. Try making some Thai shrimp fried rice.

How To: Perform the magic paper tree trick

Take out your wand and get ready to give it a whirl…'cause conjurer Ryan Oakes is going to show you how to make an awesome magic paper tree! All you need is a newspaper, scotch tape and scissors! Sometimes we use materials that require adult supervision... like scissors so make sure you have friends and family around whenever you do magic tricks.

How To: Make a Canon Shutter Release Cable

This article will show you how to make a shutter release cable for a Canon camera. It took me about half an hour once all of my materials were gathered. I came in at a total of about eight dollars. It has three switches and buttons. The black button on mine triggers the auto focus. The red button triggers the shutter. Finally, the switch triggers the bulb mode, or long exposure. This can be used to take astronomical photos that show the movement of the stars in the picture. The release cable ...

News: Laser Blasts 2 Megajoule Beam 1,000 Times Stronger Than All U.S. Power Plants Combined

You might already know a little bit about what the National Ignition Facility has been up to lately, or what they could possibly achieve. But last week, even the scientists at the Livermore, California station couldn't predict the awesome power that their humongous laser was capable of. NIF's laser is already the record holder for the world's largest laser, and now it can also claim to be the first ever 2 megajoule ultraviolet laser after it generated nearly 100 times more energy than any oth...

How To: Make Macaroni and Cheese

Packaged macaroni and cheese dinners can be a quick, guilty pleasure, but making the real thing can be easy, too. This is the perfect recipe for a rainy day (and great for kids on spring break!)

Minecraft Aesthetics: Improving Your Build with the Right Flooring

Sometimes, at the end of a build, you may find yourself saying, "I'm pretty much finished, but what should I do next?" One element of a build that is always good to revisit once you're finished is the floor. It's not really a significant part of a building, but it can help make your construction look even better. Having a plain wood or cobblestone floor is fine, but depending on the style of the build, you may want to make it a little more interesting.

How To: Read a Poem

How to Read a Poem Poems can be read many ways. The following steps describe one approach. Of course not all poems require close study and all should be read first for pleasure.

How To: Dropped Your Phone in Water? The Quick Response Guide to Saving Wet Electronics

It's no secret that water and electronics don't mix well, but somehow, people always manage to combine the two. I've had my fair share of water-damaged electronics, everything from cheap headphones to a desktop computer. My devices are getting dunked in water so much, it's like doughnuts in coffee. And I know I'm not the only one. That jam session with your favorite song will end really quick when your iTouch is chilling in the toilet bowl.

How To: Hack Coin-Operated Laudromat Machines for Free Wash & Dry Cycles

Most people have had the unfortunate experience of not having a washer and dryer at some point. Apartments in my area tend to charge at least one hundred dollars extra for the units with washer and dryer hookups, and even more if you want a unit with an actual washer and dryer installed already. If you are young and just starting out, this may be hard for you to manage with your current salary. If you have no washer and dryer, the only alternative is the laundromat.

How To: Watch the 2012 Super Bowl Online (Legally)

UPDATE: New York Giants WON! Super Bowl XLVI has concluded. The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21 to 17. If you missed the big game, there doesn't seem to be a full replay of all the action, but you can visit NBC.com or NFL.com to get information and video highlights on the game and player interviews, as well as a list of all of the records broken and tied.

News: A Last Resort Method to Fix the Xbox 360 E74 Error (The Red Ring of Death)

I've come across a few very stubborn Xbox consoles in my day. A previous Null Byte demonstrated how to fix the Xbox with just eight pennies and some electrical tape. But if you've got one of those hell-born boxes that just refuses to be fixed in any way, shape, or form, there is always one last ditch approach. I'm talking about the infamous "towel trick". It works over 90% of the time, from my personal experience. Though, please note: This is only a temporary fix.

How To: Fix a Bricked iPhone or iPod Touch After a Failed Jailbreak

I can't believe it, but I've actually read about dozens of people getting their iTouch, iPhone, or iPad stuck in a bricked recovery loop and then going out to buy a new one. This is overly unnecessary. When it gets stuck in the recovery loop, some people mistake themselves by thinking that it is impossible to get the device back into DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode. Getting the device back into DFU mode would at least allow us to jailbreak the device, essentially bringing it back from its ...

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite Walkthrough, Part 2 - Legal Hacker Training

Welcome to the closing of the second HackThisSite and programming Community Byte. First and foremost, I would like to ask that people start showing up on time to the Community Bytes. If you need help converting your time zone to PST, go to Time Zone Converter. When users do not show up on time, we have to go backwards and catch everybody up. This wastes time and will also make other users' experience less enjoyable when they have to watch and listen to the same thing 100 times. Punctuality as...

How To: Install "Incompatible" Firefox Add-Ons After Upgrading to the New Firefox

To the displeasure of many loyal Firefox users, Mozilla has been deploying what seems like a new marketing strategy to "catch up" to Google Chrome. I have no idea if this is because the version number is higher than theirs, but it is downright annoying. It's not all complaints, though. Firefox has done an amazing job at completely revamping its source code and redesigning all of its engines, making it a more than worthy competitor to Chrome. However, we are displeased with Firefox because eve...

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...

Goodnight Byte: Coding a Web-Based Password Cracker in Python

Our mission for this week's Community Byte was to create a Python program to crack web-based passwords, like the ones you would see on an email or router login. I wanted it to be universal in the sense that it could be easily modified and adapted to another website just by changing a few variables. That was a success! Even though people weren't on time to the coding session, everything went well.