News: Astronomical Observing News (12/27 to 1/3)
This week's AON may be a little short, but the ones to come will be packed full with information. I am really hoping for the skies to clear so I can observe soon!
This week's AON may be a little short, but the ones to come will be packed full with information. I am really hoping for the skies to clear so I can observe soon!
Video Introduction to Edit on a Dime. Hey there, Interwebs and welcome to Edit on a Dime, your community for reviews, tutorials and news in the world of free and low cost creative tools. The purpose of this World is to make your video, audio and images look professional without costing you professional money.
After the most troubled development in gaming history, Duke is back. And it's...certainly a game that's been in development for fourteen years. Quality aside, there's still some good achievements in the game. In the latest DLC for the game, "The Doctor Who Cloned Me", released this past week. Along with new multiplayer maps, the DLC brought with it a brand new singleplayer campaign. Which means more achievements!
Welcome to the sixth Community Byte for coding in Python and beating the challenges presented to us by HackThisSite. These sessions are created to bring our community together, to learn from each other, and essentially grow together. Everyone is welcome, from novice programmers to aspiring hackers.
Another Community Byte announcement from Null Byte! The Community Byte projects serve to teach people in a co-operative, hands-on manner. Learning from experience and immersing yourself in a subject is the best way to learn something foreign to you. In our sessions, we have started to both code and complete HTS missions. There is something for everyone here, so make sure you join in on the fun learning experience.
I am thankful for my grandsons, born on Thanksgiving Day 2009! Elliot and Luke were born at 24 weeks into their momma's pregnancy! They both weighed 1lb 9oz and were 11.5 inches long! They stayed in the NNICU for 101 days! They fought through many complications and grew into strong, healthy, bundles of energy! They turned two just the other day and are truly a blessing and joy!
The concept of Scrabble and Words with Friends is the same—play words, score points, win. But the games require different strategy in terms of letter placement, premium squares, tile point values and word choices. Here's the main differences between the two games.
Halloween is just a few days away, and since I've been churning out the creepy Bingo of the Days for everyone the past few weeks, it seems fitting to do a puzzle based on them.
Last week's Community Byte we got off to a great start! We had a few people build our IRC bot, and all went well. We had some great contributers, ideas, and people willing to learn. So, needless to say, we will be having another. Let's try to get a few more people involved this time!
Increasingly, I'm turning to Google+ as a source of news, and it looks like I'm not the only one. On Thursday, news of a small earthquake broke on both Twitter and Google+. One curious user, +Keith Barrett, decided to try and find out which social network was faster with the news. Turns out it was a tie. As Google integrates Google+ more closely with the rest of its services, and more users post relevant stories, I think we'll start to see Google+ as a place that can create and break stories,...
The end game is a very important aspect of playing Scrabble. If you have just a few letters left on your rack and there are none left in the draw bag, but you're currently losing the game, you still might have a chance to win if you play your cards (er… tiles) right. No matter if you're playing a casual game at home with a friend or competing against diehards in club or tournament games, the scoring process at the end provides the same results.
If you haven't noticed yet, I've started dishing out some "Scrabble Bingo of the Day" articles that showcase interesting and somewhat unusual seven-letter words (or longer) that could give you an extra 50-point bonus on the board, as long as you empty your rack. So, for this week's Scrabble Challenge you'll have to get your brain in gear, because it's a tough one based of high-scoring bingo plays.
Now that you have your two-letter words down and have practiced your skills, it's time to move on to another important part of Scrabble gameplay—the opening move. There's a well known adage that states, “The player going first will win 54% of the time—all other things being equal."
I'm a desert island pizza person, meaning, I pretty much never get sick of pizza. When it comes to other favorite cuisines, I operate in cycles - indulge often, grow tired of them, take a break and re-visit in time. But when it comes to pizza, I could eat it every night of the week. I typically practice enough self-control to override this desire, but luckily for me, I made a special concession this past week while creating this article.
Sorry for the wait, but here are some pictures from the contests two and three weeks ago. Thanks to Justin:
We're ending the week with a lot of big announcements and updates. To date, Google+ has updated its name policy, but is still forbidding pseudonyms. Blocking people on Google+ became even easier, and yesterday, games on Google+ launched.
I have had my upgraded storage shed missing for two weeks now. I have emailed many times. You still will not reply to me, what is with this. Maybe if you looked after the people that play you wouldn't need to come up with a silly detective game to get some players back that have had a bad deal from you. This is not very professional . All I want is my shed and all its contents back that I earned by fair means I don't think that is to much to ask
Meet Krampus, St. Nick's evil companion of traditional Alpine mythology. According to Wikipedia, the freaky tradition was particularly popular with the Austrian Nazi-allied fascists, circa mid-1930s:
MIT students get to have all the fun... Mike Nawrot and Romain Teil constructed their fully-functional, homemade wooden roller coaster in just two weeks, aptly named the Reverse Cowgirl. We've seen lots of thrill-seeking backyard contraptions, but this one imprisons the rider in a freaky vertical position:
The release of Tron: Legacy is just two weeks away, and if our in depth guide to Tron-a-Sutra didn't get you revved up, perhaps the street legal Tron Light Cycle will. Via Wired:
It's what every baker needs. If only this were a cake decorating appliance for sale at Williams-Sonoma, instead of a one of a kind art machine showcased at this year's Vienna Design Week, created by mischer'traxler.
Lock up your grandfather clocks; there's a new lady on the scene. Meet "365" by German designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, an electric grandmother clock that completes a two-meter (or six-and-a-half-foot) knitted scarf once every 52 weeks.
The point of any workout is to stress your body and initiate an adaptive training response. Period. What are appropriate levels of stress necessary to achieve the adaptive response? In terms of the cardiovascular system, studies have shown that it usually takes about two minutes to get the heart rate into the training zone. Once there, the heart shows an adaptive response after five more minutes of training in the zone. Total minutes needed to get an adaptive response from your heart? Seven.
Johannes Hjorth of Sweden posts a great guide to growing cress in a co-worker's keyboard: "My colleague Erik Fransén went away on the Society for Neuroscience conference in the USA for two weeks in the middle of November. Those of you who know Erik probably know that he enjoys playing practical jokes on his friends from time to time. This time it was Erik's turn to be on the receiving end..."
Well, not just chicks. A couple LEGO dudes, too. (Oh, and a horse). All I can say is, I'm head over heels in love. With a LEGO People operated, felt tip pen printer. B3ta forum member Squirrelfantasy spent about three weeks building his LEGO printer, which uses a felt-tip pen in place of an ink cartridge.
Cyclists and unknowing vehicle participants "collaborated" on a public guerilla graffiti art piece in Berlin this last week.
Pretty impressive, as far as LEGO portraiture goes. Via The Telegraph:
As a protest to American consumerism, NYC artist Jeremy Dean converted a Hummer H2 into a horse-drawn carriage "to show just how screwed and unsustainable the auto industry has become." Dean believes the gas guzzling SUV is the epitome of everything that is wrong with American consumerism. Whatever your political opinion may be, Dean's conversion is pretty striking.
A typical, tasty vegetable dish from the south of France. Served either hot or cold, as a main course, or to garnish grilled meat or fish dishes. It's equally delicious with some fresh basil. Make classic southern French vegetable ratatouille.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the Inspiration board, and come play on our free server! HELLO, FELLOW MINECRAFTERS. Pmaguire here, bringing you my favorite idea for a competition so far! I hope that you will come to love it as much as I do! Well, starting off, as the title states, this week's Redstone Competition will be PvP Arenas! Except, not just ones where you physically fight. You have to have traps, things that make it hard to fight, and various ideas using...
Wall studs are both critical for maintaining the structure of your home and supporting items of weight and function on the interior walls (e.g. cabinets, shelves, plasma TVs, etc.). With wall studs playing such a critical role, consistently being able to find them is important. The problem with finding them is that drywall and wallboard isn't exactly see-through.
Although the Health app mostly focuses on fitness, Apple has slowly added features to help with other aspects of well-being, including hearing. In iOS 13, there's now a headphones volume tracker in Health that monitors audio levels and lets you know when your music, podcast, movie, or whatever else is too loud.
Samsung has the Bixby key, Pixels have the Google Assistant squeeze gesture. It's nice having a hardware button just for your assistant so you don't have to say "OK Google" or press an on-screen button. If your phone doesn't have such a shortcut, though, you can remap an existing hardware button to trigger the Google Assistant.
Mixed reviews of Magic Leap One aside, it would be hard to deny that Magic Leap has had a big year. And the AR unicorn isn't coasting to the finish line, with a number of new apps dropping and prescription frames finally arriving to bring relief to those who wear eyeglasses.
Snapchat is joining the ranks of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, and Apple in the trend toward streaming original programming, but with a twist that rings true to its roots.
The iPhone XR is the best bang for your buck option among the 2018 iPhones. Splitting the XR and XR Max right in the middle with screen size, it makes small compromises to to keep the price low. However, with the release of the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung has their own formidable middle option as well, the Galaxy S9+.
Sometimes we need to share screenshots, but don't want to reveal the entire screen. This usually requires some editing that isn't typically easy to do on a smartphone. BlackBerry recognized this issue and created a tool called Redactor that makes it easy to hide your data before sharing.
After the success of the Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm now has its eyes set towards the future with the arrival of its next-generation SoC, the Snapdragon 845. Debuting alongside the Samsung Galaxy S9, the 845 is now set to take over the market for flagship Android phones in 2018.
Just like Maxine in Stranger Things 2, Facebook didn't want to be left out of the cool kids group, which, in this case, is the mobile AR space.
A few months ago, we gave you a small peek at a new entrant in the race to deliver augmented reality smartglasses to the masses, and now the device is finally ready for the public. ThirdEye Gen is now accepting preorders for its X1 Smart Glasses, which will also provide users with an AR-centric app store.