Distance Between Two Points

We're officially seeking Null Byters interested in teaching others! Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (if up to par, of course). This is a job meant for anyone with the will to share knowle ...more

Windows 8 Beta (Developer Preview) It wasn't that long ago Windows 7 was released - now Windows 8 Beta is here. I did do a Google search to see when the stable version will be out but wasn't able to find an official statement from Microsoft. However - I saw several articles o ...more

In honor of the new Astronomy World, I thought we should look at a few planetary icosahedrons. The icosahedron is the most round of the Platonic solids with twenty faces, thus has the smallest dihedral angles. This allows it to unfold into a flat map with a reasonably acceptab ...more

Although most religions have inspired a variety of art, Buddhism seems to have a special relationship with the arts. Something about the endless circle of birth and rebirth seems to intrigue the minds of artists. Of course even if the art is not directly related to Buddhism, t ...more

MineCon 2011 (held at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas) was in a word, awesome. The crowd was overwhelmingly young, the vibe was fun and nerdy, and best of all, the costumes were inspired. Below are my favorites, which unfortunately aren't of the best quality (lighting was low and su ...more

Bokeh (which translates to "blur" in Japanese) is a photography technique referring to the blurred areas of a photograph. Basic bokeh photographs often have one point of focus, while the background falls away into a dreamy, blurred haze. The technique can be taken even furthe ...more

CARRION n pl. -S dead and putrefying flesh 59 points (9 points without the bingo) The word CARRION refers to the dead and putrefying flesh on the carcass of any dead animal. Yes… humans are animals. Carrion differs from plain old dead bodies (cadavers, corpses, LICH, etc.) b ...more

BURKITE n pl. -S a burker 63 points (13 points without the bingo) There's no better time than Halloween to have the BEJABERS scared out of you, and no better way than with a slasher flick or horror movie about HEXEREI. To some, Halloween is a time for candy, costumes and cel ...more

This week's review roundup is a diverse lot. They really only have two things in common—their indie origins and puzzle elements. Otherwise, they come from France, Spain and the U.S., a few from unknown designers and one by the guy who inspired Minecraft. Gauge French indie d ...more

Lockpicking is a skill that takes years upon years to master. Locks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but have common ground in how they work. Most cylinder locks have "tumblers," which are metallic cylindrical objects that sit vertically to the actual locking mechanism. ...more

In this Null Byte, we are going to be installing Packet Injection capable drivers in Linux. These are the open-source drivers required to sniff wireless traffic, inject packets to crack a wireless access point, and go into "monitor-mode". These drivers are superior because the ...more

While using Google+, it's been apparent that there are two types of posters. There are the people who post thoughtful, serious posts about everything from tech to dealing with cancer. And then there are the meme propagators, the people who decide to rick roll others (ahem, +Br ...more

Most indie game developers will never see a million dollars in their bank accounts, and I certainly doubt that Eul, the anonymous developer responsible for the original version of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), expected to. But now even the fans can earn a little green. Some ...more

The UK print media has been yellower than the middle traffic light for a long time now. The News of the World scandal has cast that into particularly sharp relief of late. The Sun, one of the biggest newspapers in the United Kingdom, demonstrated it again last week when they r ...more

Most stateside gamers have probably never heard of Level-5. If they have, it's more than likely due to the charming and maddening line of Nintendo DS puzzle games, Professor Layton. Some might even remember Dark Cloud and its sequel from the early days of the PlayStation 2, an ...more

Image via Tiger Mom Says. Amy Chua didn't realize what she unleashed when the Wall Street Journal published a string of excerpts from her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and titled it "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". The article sparked a lot of interest and anger, ...more

Do you ever really know someone? I mean really really? Super really? Sometimes we can talk and be with people normally for years and then bam: five people dead, house on fire, dog missing. All the while people shake their heads and regret that if they had just put the little ...more

Tera Online is a beautiful Korean MMO with real time combat. The game is coming to the states towards the end of the year. Unlike other MMOs were combat is target specific (lock on target) and dependant on skill timers and macros, Tera Online focuses on fast area of effect act ...more

You're walking down the street, minding your own business. Then you see it—a large, bright fireball in the near distance. A tremendous heat wave speeds towards you at one thousand miles an hour, and before you can think, before you can even blink, the extremely heated wind pus ...more

This is one of my previous posts that was initially rejected by WHT. So I'll post it here: Okay Flyers fans, it been way too long since the Flyers have won the coveted Stanley Cup. The cup belonging in Philadelphia is long overdue since its visit in the 73-74 and 74-75 season ...more

Choosing the right axe for you There are many choices and factors when it comes to buying a new electric guitar. Price, style, quality and comfort are major players. Many new guitarists start off with a box set, one that includes a guitar, amp and cable. These are good for t ...more

In this article you will learn how to understand written origami instructions, called diagrams. You can follow the video below or read the entire article Video: . History of Origami-Diagramming While many do not realize, the now accepted system of explaining how to fold origa ...more

We've gathered some of our favorite pranks with the seasonally appropriate for all you college kids out there. You're more than likely cohabitating with a complete stranger, and what better way to make a good first impression and develop a strong personal relationship than sub ...more

There is an abstinence game being created by the University of Central Florida with $400k+ of taxpayer money. The game is directed at middle school girls to help them handle and cope with sexual advances. From the article: Fox News Orlando reports that the University of Cent ...more

West LA Seido Karate-do embeds its personal protection program into its on-going classes. Private instruction in this aspect of Seido can also be arranged with Kyoshi on an individual basis. Personal protection, i.e. self-defense, at Seido uses a model of escalating stages of ...more

Kizeme This Japanese word, kizeme, means "spirit of attack." It is said of Miyamoto Musashi, the famed Japanese swordsman, that as he grew older he relied more on kizeme to defeat adversaries and, as a result, emerged victorious from challenges without taking the life of his ...more

Finished Act 1 (3 total) of Red Dead Redemption and it was disappointing. The act is divided into five important people who you have to do missions for in order to progress the story. Around five missions per person on average. Only Bonnie and the Marshall's story missions fel ...more

Good news. Facebook has finally listened. After severe criticism for ignoring the world's privacy norms, Facebook will finally release simplistic, user-friendly privacy settings soon. Wired reports: “'Now we’ve heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex,' ...more

What Am I Doing???? Last night, I was reminded on the negative impacts of striving for perfection. It's not possible to be perfect. We describe many things as being perfect. IE, an afghan, a hat, a tablecloth and more over, there is always something better... a different colo ...more

Minecart rides primarily serve two different functions—transportation or entertainment. We rarely see minecart-based transportation systems in Minecraft these days because most servers support warps or allow users to set multiple homes that they can simply teleport to. That le ...more

Since the invention of the printing press, books have been a dominant and iconic paradigm in our culture and throughout the world. During my years in elementary and high school, the digital world was on the rise sparking the conversation: Are Books Obsolete. Over the last year ...more

Just a couple Saturday's ago, we were blessed with the Supermoon, where the moon was at perigee with our planet, creating a larger than usual Moon for us here on Earth. Now, we've got another spectacular show in the skies coming up, only this one isn't at night. There will be ...more

Even if you live in a big city, chances are you have some wild raccoons or foxes that cannot abide a vertical trash barrel. While apparently omnipresent, these phantasmic critters usually vanish in the night leaving only a shameless trail of refuse you never wanted to see ever ...more

Let's say today is your birthday. You've just put those boisterous, vicenarian times behind you, reaching the first big step to your upcoming midlife crisis—30 years old. Maybe this is your midlife crisis. After all, if you're not where you want to be in life when you join the ...more

If you've ever been inside of a real laboratory, you probably noticed how expensive the equipment is. You'd never be able to afford even just one of those ultra high-tech machines required to splice genes or split atoms. Even the lesser machines can be prohibitively costly, in ...more

How underrated are cacti in Minecraft? Cactuses can be used for so many wonderful things, so why not have a great way to farm them? Cactus is known for its use in making "cactus green," which is a colored dye that can aid in making cyan wool, lime green wool, and green wool. C ...more

No doubt you've seen some of the hack logs being released. One part that stands out over and over again is the heavy database usage. It used to be early on that virus and hackers would destroy data, usually just for lulz. However, with the explosive commercial growth of the In ...more

This article is dedicated to sugarcane, because we all want more sugarcane in Minecraft. The best way to generate sugar cane is with an automatic reed farm that uses pistons and redstone. The pistons push the canes into the water canal you'll build, then delivers them to the c ...more

If you read my article on the OSI model, you got a good overview on communications from that model's perspective, but how does that relate to TCP/IP? We're going to take it a step further, getting into the idea behind the two address concept. How does an IP address and a MAC a ...more

Have you always wondered how to make a customizable and efficient TNT cannon in Minecraft? Are you looking to raid some bases on a PVP/factions/griefing server, but don't know where to start? Well, this tutorial will go over how to make a TNT cannon, and the different ways you ...more

In my recent Darknet series, I attempted to connect the dots on the Deep Web. I covered the two largest anonymity networks on the Internet today, Tor and I2P. While my initial four articles were meant as an introduction, I ended up receiving a lot of interesting comments and m ...more

Imagine you're in Paris and you need to get to Versailles. Looking around for directions, you come to a cold realization—you do not speak a lick of French! How are you going to get to Versailles and what happens if there is a detour? It will be a difficult struggle, and you'd ...more

Social engineering is described as the clever manipulation of the natural tendency of human trust. All of the passwords, locks, and encryption in the entire world are useless against a good social engineer who can charm or trick you into giving it up. But what once started as ...more

For a moment, picture a situation where you want to host some files or images, but you do not want it traced back to you. Perhaps you're working on a project with others and need secure data storage. Anonymity is the new shield of the 21st century—and you best protect yourself ...more

You've probably seen those deep-web images floating around on the Internet. Usually, it goes something like this: There is a towering iceberg and the deeper the underwater portion extends, the more “hidden” and “exotic” the content is described to be. Sometimes these images ar ...more

In this series on weaponized lasers, I'll be exploring the function, operation, strength and building instructions for three basic laser weapons; CO2, Diode, and Flashlamp. These laser types are just a few of many, selected because of their simplicity and basic construction (d ...more

Hey everybody, here is my entry for the medieval building contest. I don't actually care if I win, it was just fun to think about. I have this great book series called The History of Private Life which goes into wonderful detail about how people did everyday things throughout ...more

We're officially seeking Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the community. Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (IF up to par, of course). There is no ne ...more

Many windows users, if not all, run into a virus infection once in a while. This is unavoidable when using Microsoft's operating system. Without digressing too much, the fact that Windows is such a popular OS with no controlled software sources makes it easy for viruses and ma ...more

We're officially seeking Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the community. Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (IF up to par, of course). There is no ne ...more

About Today's topic Today we will talk about diagnosing and fixing connection problems. Let's face it - the truth is everyone who uses a computer and has an internet connection will have to deal with this at some point. Connection problems often occur at the wrong time and it ...more

Introduction I will not go into some time-waster of a story about how I came to build this app. It was a prerequisite in a bigger project I am still tinkering with from time to time. What are QR Codes? No doubt you have seen these all over the place in recent years. Origina ...more

Two weeks ago I reviewed browser-based video editor WeVideo and was amazed. Amazed not because WeVideo is a competent iMovie replacement for the casual editor (which it is), but amazed that a browser-based editor can work at all. Today I'd like to have a look at another brows ...more

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 withou ...more

You're currently playing a heated game of Scrabble or Words with Friends. The game is close, too close for comfort. But you're not sweating because you're confident. You play a huge word that puts you in the lead, but then when your letter tiles are drawn... We've all been th ...more

Last Thursday's post demonstrated how to Make Yin-Yang Pillow boxes, which were based on equilateral triangles and squares. The units for making these boxes were created by Phillip Chapman-Bell, who runs an amazing origami blog and has a spectacular flickr photostream. Using t ...more

Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play with us on our free server. In the past, we've gone over how to improve the architecture of windows, doors, walls and other such structures. In last Saturday's workshop, we looked into some specific te ...more

Being able to spell a seven-letter word on the board is one of the most enjoyable things about playing Scrabble. It's even better when those seven letters are all from your rack, giving you a bingo—those 50 bonus points in addition to your regular score. But just because you ...more

Modular origami is a technique that can be used to build some pretty interesting and impressive models of mathematical objects. In modular origami, you combine multiple units folded from single pieces of paper into more complicated forms. The Sonobe unit is a simple example un ...more

Lisa Nichols, contributing author of The Secret and one of the great inspirational speakers of our time, believes the best way to stay motivated when continuing your education is to “begin with the end in mind.” Pushing forward through challenges is what makes accomplishment s ...more