Easy Lamp

Home chemistry is great, but what happens when you forget to label your chemicals? How do you know if you turned a clear glass of ammonia into a clear glass of unobtainium? Chemists have a tool for just that. Litmus paper are small bits of filter paper saturated with a reacti ...more

When I think about about concrete, I usually picture a bunch of hairy bros whistling at attractive women walking across the street from their worksite. Have I ever actually witnessed this? Not really. That's just what comes to mind. But concrete isn't just material used on si ...more

General Electric isn't known for their Christmas lights, but maybe they should be, because their GE Color Effects are pretty awesome. Especially the LED Color Effects G-35 String sets. And especially when someone named Darco hacks them. Darco, whose real name is Robert Sun Qu ...more

The annoying thing about pantyhose? They snag and tear very easily. The amazing thing about pantyhose? They have about a gazillion practical uses even if you can no longer wear them. Shine and dust your fragile lamps and candlestick holders without fear of leaving a scratch. ...more

A rainbow table can be thought of like a dictionary, except instead of words and their definitions, it holds combinations of characters on one side and their hashed form on the other. What is a hash and why would you want to know what random combinations of characters are hash ...more

I like to grow vegetables all year round, and I couldn't afford the big gas bulbs, or the power to run them. The big gas bulbs: can explode can burn you and your plants cost upwards of $50 a month to operate raise the temperature in your home, causing the air conditioning to ...more

Mason jars are a DIYer's best friend, nearly on par with duct tape and paper clips. Why? Because you can use mason jars for so many things besides just canning and drinking, and I'm not talking about other obvious uses like basic storage containers or miniature terrariums. I'm ...more

There are tons of ways to make simple DIY lamps out of things you have lying around at home. If you've got an empty container, (even an orange or tuna can), there's probably a way to upcycle it into a lamp of some sort, and they can come in handy if you ever lose power. After ...more

Ever since the much-lauded effects of the Mediterranean diet became widely known, people have been buying olive oil by the gallon. A diet that prevents heart disease, is based on fresh, seasonal foods, and includes a tasty as hell fat like olive oil? Duh—that's a no-brainer. ...more

A relay is an electrical component that works like a light switch, where it's turned on or off with an electrical signal. By connecting a relay to a Wi-Fi connected microcontroller like an ESP8266, you can build a connected switch that can be controlled from the web browser of ...more

First of all, I would like you all to meet my good friend Iggy. There he is, in all his scaly reptilian glory. As you can see, he spends a lot more time on top of his cage than inside of it. You see, Iggy here doesn't deal well AT ALL with confinement. I don't know if it's pos ...more

A PirateBox creates a network that allows users to communicate wirelessly, connecting smartphones and laptops even when surrounding infrastructure has been disabled on purpose or destroyed in a disaster. Using a Raspberry Pi, we will make a wireless offline server that hosts f ...more

Valentine's Day is almost here, and if you're like me, you're scurrying to do something special for your mate. The standard chocolates and flowers just isn't cutting it anymore, and you can only make so many homemade cards before it becomes banal and meaningless. So, what can ...more

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 ...more

Ever wanted to display text in Minecraft? It's actually not overly difficult. In this tutorial, I will endeavor to guide you through the process between storing and displaying text from memory. To do this, we will examine two different methods of displaying and storing text in ...more

Reading in bed with a book and bedside lamp is so 1990s. As tablets get smaller and content continues to be digitized, reading on an electronic device is pretty standard. If you want to stay nice and bundled up in your bed while reading the latest article from WonderHowTo, th ...more

Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the community corkboard, and come play on our free server! Several new block types were introduced to Minecraft when 1.2 was released, expanding the potential for builders throughout the world. Actually, so many new ...more

Unless you're living in some weird parallel universe where plug-in light bulbs are the norm for household lighting, chances are you've had to unscrew a light bulb every now and then. Sometimes, replacing those burnt out Edison-based bulbs can be tricky, particularly in high c ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

When the power goes out, having the ability to contact others becomes extremely important, and your cell phone can be one of the most important tools to have. But if the power is out for an extended period of time, battery life becomes a constant problem. Without the ability ...more

Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more

Most of us love Ikea because it is cheap, contemporary design-conscious, and the megastore's cafeteria serves 15 delicious Swedish meatballs for the low price of $4.99. Now there's an even better reason to love Ikea: why not treat their goods as raw materials, a good starting ...more

Invented by Philadelphia tinsmith John L. Manson in 1858 for canning and preserving perishables, mason jars are experiencing a major resurgence in the DIY community. In addition to being a handy storage device for both food and non-food items, its old-timey, quaintly antiquate ...more

Besides the obvious, fingernail polish can be pretty useful around the house—for men and women. It can keep your buttons from falling off, sort your keys, prevent your shoelaces and hoodie strings from fraying, and even curb rust rings in the shower. Turns out, nail polish als ...more

Sitting in a cubicle and never seeing sunlight during the workday is unpleasant to even think about—and sitting in a flourescent-light cube can have terrible effects on both our work performance and overall attitude. Yet there are ways to counteract the effects of cubicle sitt ...more

Omniscience is not required to make some really cool shit happen. Yes, it took a while, but we can make fuel from the Sun! Solar panels are basically our answer to God. And now that we can make solar electricity, finding the most efficient way to harvest it is tricky. Some so ...more

Day for Night courtesy of Videomaker.com Those 3 Words We Love to Hear, Day for Night (DFN). What better three words could a director ask to hear? No huge generators, no freezing temperatures, no vampire-style living... what's not to love? Are you perplexed? Well, long ago, ...more

Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process ...more

Last week, I did a short tutorial on three main types of flooring for your Minecraft builds. This week, I will be focusing on just one of those—inset floors. This was the first of the three types I briefly covered, and the example I used was an inset fireplace. Here, I will be ...more

The original NES controller has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Nintendo gaming culture, thanks to its perfectly rectangular shape and simple button design. But despite its popular appeal, people just don't game with them anymore. So, what do they do with th ...more

We all love it when the Google logo changes to celebrate or commemorate special events— pop-culture touchstones, civic milestones, scientific achievements and holidays— their latest one for this holiday season is a Christmas card to everyone— an interactive Google Doodle with ...more

There are many hacks for increasing productivity, but so many depend on tricking your own mind or behavior. When it comes to motivation in the workplace, though, sometimes the space within which you work dictates how you behave and the work you produce. So if you want to incre ...more

In a surprising twist of expectation management, Magic Leap managed to not only ship but deliver the Magic Leap One I ordered on Wednesday by 4 p.m. PT on the same day. After spending about an hour with the headset running through set up and poking around its UI and a couple ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

SHAITAN n pl. -S an evil spirit 60 points (10 points without the bingo) For the closing of these Halloween-themed bingo words, there's no better word than SHAITAN, the evilest of all evils, which is present in all horror movie monsters and demons. Generally speaking, SHAITA ...more

National Ignition Facility What is the NIF? Located in California, the NIF is a large facility housing two humongous lasers. The facility is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Basically, NIF's main purpose is to focus lasers on a small, compressed amount of h ...more

Let's take a look at the softer side of illusions! Check out the images below and see if you can crack what's really behind these photos. This type of optical illusion is usually referred to as an ambiguous image. Your brain tries to make quick sense out of the information com ...more

If you ever run out of shaving cream in the morning, just step over from your bathroom to the kitchen and use olive oil as a substitute. Not only does it save you a future trip to the drug store, it also helps moisturize your skin. Commonly used in the kitchen for cooking or ...more

I grew up in a household where bacon was considered its own necessary food group. My mom saved the bacon fat in a jar and reused it in other dishes, which my friends considered vile, unless they were also from immigrant families or the American South, where saving bacon fat ha ...more

Nikola Tesla In my opinion, one of the most neglected inventors of all time. The names Edison and Marconi come to mind as familiar, but Tesla? Most think of a car. Few know that Tesla is responsible for alternating current, florescent lights, radar, remote control, generators ...more

The widely used expression "free as a bird" intimates an enviable existence: delicate, yet mighty wings transporting to destinations no human could so breezily venture. But despite their fanciful, superhero ability, in truth, the avian race leads one of the most difficult exis ...more

Sound production doesn't get any cheaper than this. If you need some quick, professional-sounding voice-over dialogue for a student film or YouTube project, then all you need is an iPhone, an app called VoiceRecord and an ordinary blanket to block the background noise. Make s ...more