When it comes to the holidays, there's definitely no shortage of ways to geekify your experience. You can make your own nerdy ornaments with a Weeping Angel tree topper, or go with traditional decorations that are mathematically perfect.
Facebook recently revamped its Newsfeed in order to save us some time when scrolling around the website. But an even cooler, more underground time-saver are these super legit keyboard shortcuts. Facebook actions have been around forever, but I bet you never even knew about them. I sure didn't.
So it is Christmas Eve and you are just getting started on your Christmas gift shopping. Thankfully, even for the last-minute Christmas gift shopper, you have a good variety of options to choose from within driving distance or on the internet without worrying about shipping costs or waiting in ridiculously long lines at the mall.
Halloween is one of those things that always seems to sneak up on you before you're prepared, so if you don't have tons of free time to make your own kickass costume, you might have to throw together something a little more last minute.
Have you ever come across somebody on the streets looking like this? Pretty freaky, especially if it's not Halloween. But you know what, Halloween is almost here, so freaky is good. Thanks to creative folks like Eric Testroete and Bhautik Joshi, you can now create an awesome papercraft portrait of your own head for Halloween this year.
Let's face it, ladies: Salsa dancing is a guy's dance. By that we mean that whether or not you have a thrilling time dancing and look professional depends on how good your male partner is, since he's the lead.
The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus is a project developed by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus. The drawing device illustrates a never-ending story through the use of 7 million patent drawings (linked by over 22 million references). Scroll past the instructions to go straight to the video demonstration.
Yowsa. Mariah Carey 38, came out from a paparazzi vortex last week marrying Nick Cannon 27. She and her cougar cohorts are not ashamed to be the older woman in their relationships.
Potholders are a good way to practice stitches and they make great gifts. Here's a nice seed and garter stitch potholder to make. You need to know only two stitches for this project - the GARTER STITCH and the SEED STITCH. Photo below is my potholder in progress. The white thread down the middle is my stitch marker.
Knowing how to knit a picot hem is a good technique to learn. Usually, at the bottom of a garment you will have a ribbed edge. A picot hem, as pictured below, is a nice alternative. It's quite easy and here's how to do it.
There are different kinds of knitting needles to choose from for different projects. You will find wooden, plastic or aluminum in different lengths and shapes. There are straight, circular or double pointed.
If you have been curious about how a Brother garter carriage works, this 2 part video will show some basic steps to casting on and knitting a baby blanket. The charity blanket pattern used is available free on the internet. This video machine-knitting tutorial also shows a trick to switch yarn without the joint showing. Follow along with this video and learn how to knit a baby blanket using the Brother Garter Carriage knitting machine.
Staining wood is an exciting and fun step in your refinishing process. Staining brings out and enhances the patterns in the wood grain and it unifies an overall color. At this stage your project piece begins to look more finished. Allow enough time to complete this task from start to finish to ensure continuity of color. You have the choice of using either water or oil-based stain, and each offers advantages and disadvantages.
Watch this video from This Old House to learn how to make deck stairs. Steps:
Gathering the materials is probably the most challenging part of the project, though it's great fun.
Warfare strategies have become an inspiration to different marketing professionals, many of them drawing influence from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. This ancient Chinese text provided treaties on how to effectively manage resources, tactical positioning, and timing attacks. It also states that “..if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss”, a basic concept in which you have to always watch your competitor to anticipate his next move.
There are times when your pattern will direct you to slip a stitch. Usually, this is done on a knit row. I always slip the first stitch of every row because it makes a neater selvedge. It's a very simple technique. Here's what to do:
It's once again Monday, which means it's time to highlight some of the most recent community submissions posted to the Math Craft corkboard. Since two of these posts were on polyhedral versions of M.C. Escher's tessellations, I thought we'd take a look at building a simple tessellated cube based off of imitations of his imagery.
Here's a quick, simple prank to pull on anyone in under 2 minutes. It works especially great for someone who has tons of icons on their desktop! It makes the computer look the same, but nothing on the desktop works!
Recently I've been interested in spicing up my choices in undergarments, but as some of you may know, designer underwear for men can be quite expensive. Prices usually range from about $20+ for one pair. With this helpful tip, you can turn any pair of cheap high rise briefs into a fashionable pair of low rise briefs.
Gather Supplies Ready to make the best Scrabble tile pendant possible? This easy tutorial will show you how to make your own custom necklace out of a Scrabble® tile.
If you like designing using InDesign, why not offer your service to design business cards at home? In this Indesign video tutorial you will learn to create a setup ready to make business cards. Learn to set margins, and set bleed for proper printing. Create business cards using InDesign CS2.
A press release should be about news. It should have a sense of urgency about it and grab the reader’s attention from the outset. A good press release must quickly answer the journalist’s immediate questions:
This is one of the easiest and best computer pranks ever invented. It's simple to do, and works great. This prank causes all of the icons on the desktop to be unclickable, as well as the start bar.
Join Magician Ryan Oakes as he reveals step by step a really cool card trick! Grab and audience a deck of cards and get ready to have a magic show of your own! So cool! You will need one deck of playing cards. Sometimes we use materials that require adult supervision... like scissors so make sure you have friends and family around whenever you do magic tricks.
A photographic enlarger is a piece of equipment used to produce photographic prints from film or glass negatives. Learn more about photographic enlargers and how to use them from a professional photographer in this free video. Use a photographic enlarger - Part 1 of 26.
Knitted balls can be used for all sorts of projects. The obvious is a Christmas ornament, but knitted balls can also be the basis for knitting toys or snowmen. And of course, they can be used simply as balls which make a lovely gift for a baby. They can be all one color, striped or patterned. To get started, follow the directions below for a one-color knitted ball. You will need to know how to knit on double-pointed needles, so if you need help with that, check out my other article.
You're hellbent on taking over the world, but one race of robotic minions isn't enough for you. With your hexapod robots acting as your ground forces, it's only natural to take to the skies. These cardboard quadcopters are the perfect air force for you. Combined, you are mere steps away from starting your evil takeover. Now you just need some water bots. The cardboard flying quadcopters are built around the MultiWii platform with the twin power of Processing and Arduino, so they are actually ...
I like exploring and building underground in Minecraft. Finding a ravine, or even better one with an abandoned mineshaft. Exploring caves, and discovering dungeons. So this challenge is right up my alley. Right from the warp point to the challenge I notice the way some of the sand was sunken in zig zag patterns. I knew There had to be something down there so I started excavating. I quickly found a series of caves and the story of my build unfolded as I explored. I won't go into the history of...
For the holiday season, a great knitting project is a snowflake design. It's perfect for handmade Christmas gifts. You can knit just one, or a row of them, or use them as full pattern on a sweater or blanket—or whatever project you choose.
Thanksgiving. It's sadly over. But happily replaced by the Christmas season!
Here's my Sonobe Jasmine Dodecahedron built from Imatfaal's instructions.
Last week Math Craft admin Cory Poole demonstrated how to make three of the platonic solids from Sonobe units: the cube, the octahedron, and the icosohedron; but where was the dodecahedron? I was pushed to find out how to make a sonobe dodecahedron from this beautiful picture (below) that Rachel Mansur posted on the corkboard.
Eric Gjerde is a master of origami who devotes much of his energy on origami tessellations. Some of his pieces fold nearly flat, forming layers that add just a hint of depth. These pieces look beautiful when lit from behind, due to the variations in brightness and color. Other pieces utilize three dimensions more fully, with repeated structures rising out of the flat page.
Reuben Margolin builds large scale kinetic sculptures based off of mechanical waves. Some of his sculptures contain hundreds of pulleys all working in harmony with each other to create sinusoidal waves and their resulting interference patterns. He designs them all on paper and does all of the complicated trigonometric calculations by hand. Everything is mechanical; there are no electronic controllers.
For those who need security on their Android devices, the standard swipe lock screen just isn't enough, so it's necessary to install applications like GOTO and WidgetLocker to enable either pattern, password or PIN protection. This protection is great overall, but when you're frequently using your smartphone, having to keep unlocking the lock screen becomes quite an annoyance. You could be in a heated text conversation, following directions on a map or compulsively checking the news feed on F...
Making Your Own Roman Shades Are you an everyday Martha Stuart? You know, one of those do it yourself creative people who can make better household items than you can find at the store. It so, I found a great (quick to the point) video that will help you design and make your very own set of Roman Shades.
In recent years, communication has become more intimate with the advent of applications like Skype and FaceTime, but what about the longing for actual physical contact? What if you could feel a loved one's hand, or even exchange a kiss? Impossible, right?
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.
Loom Knitting is so nice because it is easy to learn and great for people of almost all ages. There are no needles required. Just a loom, a small special knitting tool and yarn are all you need to get started.
