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Day of the Dead: DIY Sugar Skull Halloween Look with Rick Baker, Horror Makeup FX Master

Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos, is a Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1 or 2 each year to honor the dead. It's often lumped in with Halloween, and while some people do dress up in costumes, the day is much more focused on remembering the lives of friends and family members who have passed. People who are unfamiliar with the holiday sometimes consider one of its most pervasive symbols, the sugar skull, rather morbid. And special makeup effects artist Rick Baker is no stranger to the ...

Cozy How To: Microsoft Office Ribbon Interface & Work Space

PowerPoint Tutorials for Microsoft PowerPoint presentation software. In this introduction tutorial we will be using PowerPoint 2010 and will focus on the interface workspace by reviewing the ribbon, slide pane and slide tabs. The ribbon is designed much like a website navigation menu bar and has multiple categories to separate all of the tools into an organized bar. By default the Home tab is selected and will include most of the tools that are commonly used when editing and creating a PowerP...

How To: Monitor Cellular & Wi-Fi Data Speeds from Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2's Status Bar or Notification Tray

Whether you're pressed against your bedroom window, hidden deep inside your linen closet, or lounging on the rooftop, finding that area of maximum Internet speed around your house is usually just trial and error. And when you finally find the sweet spot, apps like Speedtest.net can help you determine how fast your Wi-Fi or cellular connection is overall on your computer or smartphone, so you know your full capabilities. But, if you want to know exactly how fast your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is u...

How To: Hack Your Old Phone Line into an Emergency Power Supply for Your Cell Phone

"Ahoy-hoy." If telephone titan Alexander Graham Bell had his way, we'd all be answering phones like Mr. Burns. Thankfully, frienemy Thomas Edison had enough sense to realize we weren't always on the briny. He preferred "hello" as our standard telephone greeting, which he is credited with coining in 1877. Fellow American pioneer Davy Crockett actually used it as a greeting first in 1833 (as compared to an exclamation)—but in print, not over the phone.

How To: Get Siri to Play Music for You on Spotify—Without Jailbreaking Your iPhone

While Siri's integration with the iPhone is becoming increasingly substantial, restrictions with the intelligent personal assistant are apparent when it comes to third-party apps like Google Maps, Netflix, and Spotify (unless your iPhone is jailbroken, of course). As an avid Spotify user, it's distressing that I can't use Siri to navigate through the music streaming service's extensive library. In the car, I use Spotify about 90% of the time and it can become increasingly frustrating to chang...

How To: Still Using Notes? Here Are 3 Better Word Processing Apps for Writing on Your iPhone

As someone who writes an extreme amount, it's a necessity for me to have an organized and multifunctional text editor. The stock iPhone Notes application is useful to an extent, but it sorely lacks in features and design. Writing and text editing applications are nothing new to the iPhone, but many of them are overloaded on features, making it even harder to keep organized. Here are just a few alternatives that I find helpful in my day-to-day writing.

How To: Make Your Photos More Fun with These DIY Bokeh Effects Lens Filters for Your DSLR

In photography, bokeh refers to the blurry or out-of-focus parts of a shot. Bokeh can be good or bad—it all depends on how you use it. There are tons of ways to create a bokeh effect, whether you go the traditional route with lens filters, digital with Photoshop, or even from your iPhone. With filters, you can use the blurred spaces to produce different shapes and colors. If you have a DSLR and want to experiment with bokeh, this tutorial by Chris Perez over on Apartment Therapy will show you...

How To: This DIY Arduino Bicycle Safety System Includes Turn Signals, Brake Lights, Strobe, and More!

As dedicated bicyclists are well aware, riding can be very dangerous. Now that daylights savings time has ended in the United States, darkness appears quicker, and the night is especially dangerous for cyclists because of the low visibility that drivers have. Not only is darkness a danger, but also fog, blizzards, and heavy rain—all wreaking havoc on the vision. To combat this, bikers attach reflectors: clear front reflectors, red rear reflectors, amber pedal reflectors, and clear side reflec...

How To: Turn an Old Kit Lens into a DSLR Macro Lens in Five Minutes

There are tons of ways to make a macro lens for your smartphone, but if you need one for a DSLR, it's not quite as simple as using a magnifying glass or a drop of water. If you have an old kit lens, though, you can turn it into a macro lens in no time—all you have to do is remove the front element. For this hack, Juha Loukola over on PetaPixel used a Canon 38-76mm lens, but says that the process should be pretty much the same for other lenses.

How To: Send Your Secret Spy Messages Wirelessly Through Light with This DIY Laser Audio Transmitter

Looking to transmit some super-secret audio communications to your other spy buddies? A laser is the perfect tool for getting your sounds heard from a small distance—without anyone intercepting them— even if it's just a cover of your favorite pop song. A laser audio transmitter uses light rather than radio waves to transmit sound. This is a much more secure way to send audio communications because the laser is a focused beam of light, whereas radio waves are not controlled, so they can be pic...

How To: This Easy Photo Trick Makes Fireworks Look Like Brilliant Sky Creatures

Anyone who does a lot of photography knows that the right exposure can make all the difference in the world. Taking a picture of something in motion requires a long exposure, so if you've ever wondered why your fireworks photos never quite turn out right, your shutter speed could be the key. Photographer David Johnson decided to put a twist on the classic long-exposure fireworks photo. Normally, when people take photos of fireworks displays, they just set a long exposure for somewhere over 3 ...

News: Quite Possibly the Best Lightsaber Replica Ever (This Is Not a Jedi Mind Trick)

Bradley Lewis is a visual effects artist for BioWare by day, but in his spare time he runs Slothfurnace, a blog dedicated to showcasing his incredibly realistic lightsaber replicas. His latest, which took 18 months to build, is Obi-Wan Kenobi's Reveal Lightsaber from A New Hope. It was made with a real crystal, just like the movies, and has a Crystal Focus Saber Core designed by Plecter Labs which controls the light and sound. The blade is composed of 84 LED lights and powered by two 3.7 volt...

How To: Fix Blurry Photos in Photoshop

It's very easy to get a slightly blurry photograph due to a moving subject, camera shake, or just an incorrect auto-focus, but you don’t have to let that ruin an otherwise terrific picture. All it takes is a little finesse in Photoshop or another photo editing software. This guide covers sharpening a blurry image using Photoshop specifically.

How To: UV texture in Houdini 9

This series of videos focuses on a typical UV workflow in Houdini 9. Learn how to create projections, edit UVs with a variety of tools, save out UV maps, and apply textures. Please download the project files below to follow along with these Houdini 9 texturing lessons.

How To: Practice Emotional Freedom techniques

Craig Brockie delivers the goods with a how to video on Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT. Learn these powerful techniques to reach your highest potential and reduce stress, increase focus and will, and overall acheive positive results. Watch this tutorial and you will be able to overcome cravings and reduce stress with EFT.

How to Play Assassin's Creed 2: Bonfire of the Vanities (DLC)

Assassin's Creed 2 was so popular of a game, that it spawned not one, but two downloadable content expansions, for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. The first DLC was called The Battle of Forlì, and the second, Bonfire of the Vanities. This video game walkthrough focuses on the latter, in 1947 Florence, Italy, where the mass burning of sinful objects is an everyday event.