Insinuating that women don’t know how to solder perpetuates a gender divide that we should have overcome long ago.
The post Everything About This “Beautiful Woman Soldering” Stock Photo Is Wrong appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
For the uninitiated, the world of board games might seem over-complicated, boring, or only for kids. You may know better, but if getting regulars to come to game night is a hassle for you, all you need is some clever ways to bring your friends and family into the fold and show them that just isn’t true.
What started as a quest for nerf-aided vengeance has turned into a robust 3D Printing business dedicated to modifying off-the-shelf nerf guns.
The post How Modding Nerf Blasters Became a 3D Printing Business appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
jimkoI like the Unnecessarily Complicated Ring Box at the end.
Valentine's Day is upon us. If you're planning on popping the question, make sure you're prepared with a box. And what better box than a DIY?
The post These 9 DIY Ring Boxes Are the Ultimate Valentine’s Day Surprise appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
jimkoDRM is the only part about Steam I don't like. Valve is a huge proponent of open-source & Linux, but all the other publishers, like Lego, want their DRM. So GOG is certainly worth checking out.
Steam has more or less owned the PC gaming market for the last decade, but we finally have a decent challenger with GOG Galaxy. Here’s how the two stack up against each other, and more importantly, what that means for PC gamers as a whole.
Check out a preview for Disney XD's new Lego Star Wars short here.
The post This New Animated Lego Star Wars Short Looks Legit appeared first on WIRED.
If you've ever wanted to know how the animators at Pixar do it, then you need to check out the Pixar in a Box classes from Khan Academy.
The post Pixar and Khan Academy Release Free Online Course for Aspiring Animators appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Finding the right download button on a website is the least fun version of hide and seek ever invented. Now, Google’s taking action to warn users when sites engage in this kind of deceptive behavior.
TT Games' latest Lego game will be out June 28, featuring a Lego-ized version of the film and new content bridging the gap between episodes VI and VII.
The post The Force Awakens Is Getting the Lego Videogame Treatment appeared first on WIRED.
jimkoYou guys like these, right?
The skills you’ll need to land a job as a front-end web developer will vary from one place or one position to another, but there are several skills that are common to most web development jobs. Skillcrush shares 11 of them below.
The longbow was vastly, demonstrably superior to the crossbow, but only England adopted it as a common military weapon; the Scots and French stuck with the inferior crossbow for nearly a century -- why? (more…)
jimkoBecause the internet
The Tsunago pencil sharpener lets you "chain smoke" your pencils by connecting pencil stubs together. The Tsunago ("let's connect") has three blades. One sharpens like a normal pencil sharpener. Another bores a hole in the bottom of one stub. The third makes a plug in the other stub. All you need is a bit of wood glue to keep the pencil pieces stuck together.
Here's some who used the sharpener for a courageous Blackwing pencil rescue.
(Thanks, Kent!)
jimkoInteresting ideas
In this week's episode of the 'Geek's Guide to the Galaxy,' writer Joseph Laycock discusses his new book on the moral panic around role playing games.
The post Dungeons & Dragons Is a Lot Like Religion appeared first on WIRED.
American Panorama is a series of interactive maps that lets you explore American history.
The post American Panorama Is an Interactive Atlas for the 21st Century appeared first on WIRED.
jimkoR2 looks feasible
Gingerbread houses are kinda meh, but these Star Wars gingerbread houses are kinda amazing.
The post 7 Star Wars Gingerbread Houses appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Anybody who knows me will tell you the same thing: I get what I want. Whether it’s food, being held, my binky, you name it—if I decide I’d like it, you damn well better believe I don’t rest until I get it, one way or another. And from the very second I saw those blue and red detergent pods come out of that shopping bag last week, I knew immediately that, come hell or high water, I would eat one of those things.
So with God as my witness, I swear to you: I’m going to find that container of multicolored pods, I’m going to take one out, I’m going to shove it in my mouth, and I’m going to chew it up and swallow it down, and nothing and no one is going to stand in my way.
You can’t ...
jimkodrool
Build a dream gaming table that can even include an embedded digital mapping system
The post How to Build a High-End Gaming Table for as Little as $150 appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
jimkoamazing photos
Although it has been quiet for much of 2015, Etna produced a spectacular but brief eruption last night.
The post Italy’s Etna Unleashes a Short but Spectacular Eruption appeared first on WIRED.
Learn why Bill Hammack calls this Nerf gun "the epitome of good engineering."
The post Watch: Here’s How a Multi-Barrel Nerf Blaster Works appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.
Most sports leagues have live, crowd-friendly games. The Drone Racing League, which has six races planned in 2016, is designed to be seen strictly at home.
The post The Drone Racing League Will Be a Spectator Sport Like No Other appeared first on WIRED.
jimkoCould it be....pirates?
The Metropolitan opera only just stopped using blackface performers. Yes! White dudes were blacking up to play Othello until 2015 and still things needed to be explained to them.
In Shakespeare's time, though—before the Atlantic slave trade, before imperialism, before Jim Crow, before civil rights, before inconsiderate cosplay—blackness was different. Why, then, was Othello black?
To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours.
A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic tragedy about jealousy, and make the husband a Moor? Is Othello’s race a canard, or is it the key to unlocking the play’s deeper meanings?
Would you believe the answer to all of this might involve pirates?
The key, Isaac Butler relates, is to consider that to renaissance Englishfolk, "Moorish" would have been inextricably tied into religion: Othello is a converted Muslim, and his tragedy, then, is possibly one of failed assimilation and acculturation.
The first time we ever see the power of the "light side" of the Force is to psychically dominate a security guard. The first time we see a lightsaber in use, it's to maim someone in a bar brawl. It's the "elegant weapon" of a man so feared that his battle cry sends the local people scattering.
Small wonder, given that his apprentice slaughtered those same people indiscriminately and without repercussion.
This man, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pines for a time when he and his brothers roamed the galaxy, meting out their unaccountable rulings as emotionless judges and executioners— when not using their powers to cheat at dice.
"A more civilized age" indeed.
(more…)jimkoLets read through this together.
Object-oriented programming (or OOP) is an abstract concept, often hard to grasp when you’re new to programming. The “Invent with Python” blog offers an awesome analogy that makes OOP more understandable if you’ve ever played a RPG-style video game like World of Warcraft or Dungeons & Dragons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhS_CjECO90
It's when you carry a frame and door to someone else's door, while dressed as someone who's staying at home and giving out candy; you interpose your door between you and their door, ring the bell, and when they answer, they're confronted with your door, with a PLEASE KNOCK sign. They knock, you open up, and offer them candy. Trick-airity ensues. (via Reddit)
(View this graphic as a huge PDF)
It’s always about the candy. The Candy Hierarchy is full up with this “joy induction” measurement, this thing that the co-principle investigators (PIs) Cohen and Ng go on about each year. From 2006 to 2013, the PIs conducted a longitudinal study, more or less guided by PI expertise and whim (or whimsical expertise) and possible corporation sponsorship. Research by others in the field sought to refute the findings, obviously unsuccessfully. Yet the PIs were so moved by the yearly outpouring of commentary that they opened up the study to additional data sources, namely people. People who the PIs surveyed. Or is it whom? Anyway, nobody cares - this is about sugar. The 2014 Candy Hierarchy was thus defined by data analysis of 43,767 votes obtained from 1286 individuals. Good for them. But not good enough for science. Because the 2015 Candy Hierarchy doubled down and reworked the whole thing with all kinds of more stuff. This hierarchy therefore presents the newly calculated 2015 rankings, based on a total of 518,605 data points obtained from 5459 individuals in a randomized fashion. It also provides the raw data from a secondary study that sought to understand the character of the survey takers, or rather how character affects joy induction. It’s all in there, just go check out the figures.
BC: Don’t you love how they call us Dr.?
DN: I don’t mind.
BC: Well, sure. But you don’t struggle with the medical doctor/PhD doctor thing?
DN: Nope. I’m cool with it.
BC:
DN: You’re not?
BC: No, no I’m not.
DN:
BC:
DN: Something more you wanted to say?
BC: Listen, I’m squeamish, so even the possibility that someone might ask me for medical help, help that could involve blood, it makes me light headed.
DN: It happens.
BC:
DN: Are we gonna talk candy or do this all morning?
BC: We’re gonna talk candy.
BC: Go.
DN: I’m going.
BC:
DN: The hierarchy kind of went through the roof this year.
BC: Way more votes than we knew what to do with, like an order of magnitude more.
DN: Yeah. And the data is open for others to dig into.
BC: Right. More so because there’s so much that we didn’t have time for.
DN:
BC: Did you see anything surprising?
DN: Meh. I’m not surprised by how the bigger data set (see Figure 1) finally showed dominance of full-sized candy bars over everything else. Proving once again that more is better for trick-or-treaters, gluttons all.
BC: I’m not surprised Dots secured their position in the lower tier.
DN: Right, a lot of chatter on the boards about that too. Dots bring out the kind of anger we used to see with Candy Corn.
BC:
DN:
BC: But you know what was weird?
DN: Do tell.
BC: People prefer Vicodin to Dots.
DN: Not weird at all, Ben, totally unweird. You know what I did think was weird?
BC: The floor is yours.
DN: You still can’t accept peanut butter’s ascendancy in the past few years.
BC: It’s a matter of principle. The public’s duped by Big Peanut. Big Mint and Big Caramel need to lobby more.
DN: What?
BC: Mint > Caramel > Peanut Butter. It goes in that order. All are chocolate combinations, but it’s the right combo that matters.
DN: Twix and Snickers were pretty high up. Both caramel-laden.
BC: But Peppermint Patties? Junior Mints? Give them their due. Somehow Nerds were higher than Junior Mints, Dave. Nerds.
DN: So you’re disagreeing with 518,605 votes?
BC: It would seem so, Doctor.
DN:
BC:
DN: Let me reset things, this is taking too long. I’ve got two points: one is the change in the Petersen Inflex (where votes for Joy and Despair cancel each out), which hits right about, ahem, at Vicodin. What does that mean? The other is the ranking pulled from the extra character data.
BC: Did we find anything interesting there?
DN: Maybe? Take a look yourself (Table 1A). You can totally see that the data pulled from kids actually trick or treating provide some interesting insight.
BC: As in the kids really hate kale smoothies. That ranked last.
DN: And also the prominence of fruity chewy things. My God, Skittles is near the top!
BC: It looks like adults hate broken glow sticks the most.
DN: They want ones that work.
BC: That’s the only viable conclusion we can reach.
DN: Check out Table 1B too. It kind of looks like joy induction is similar regardless of whether a person chose Betty or Veronica.
BC: Or Friday or Sunday. I’m especially interested in that one. It’s a big topic in my circles.
DN: Or even those that listed comic sans as their favourite font, despite prior evidence from this report.
BC:
DN: It’s as if Candy Joy Induction is this universal or primal thing.
BC:
DN:
BC: I have no response to that.
DN:
BC:
DN: Can we go now?
BC: I didn’t know I was keeping you. (more…)
October 23 is Mole Day and we celebrate Avogadro's number. But what is a mole and how do you find it?
The post Even Avogadro Didn’t Know Avogadro’s Number appeared first on WIRED.
