Short Stories

In this article, I'll show you how to build a simplistic circuit to generate negative ions. Negative ions have been known to contribute to fresher air, happier mood, and general health benefits. However, they also look amazing in the dark (check out the photos below, purple pl ...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

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

Improve your bingo skills with a roundup of this week's Scrabble Bingo of the Days. What exactly is a bingo? It's when a player empties his or her rack in one turn, placing all seven of their letters on the board to create a word that's at least seven letters long. The term " ...more

Who would have thought that dryer sheets can be a quick remedy for super-staticky flyaway hair? But it's true. It's all about the positive charges in the sheets and their ability to neutralize electron buildup. And that's not the only surprising quick fix for hair problems tha ...more

Difficulty Level: If you have eyes, you can do this. Ambient light is often called available, natural or existing light. Lots of professional photographers have quotes on lights, but this is my favorite: "I only shoot available light. Any damn light that’s available." I wish ...more

Much of the press around the launch of Google+ has pitted it squarely against Facebook. This was highlighted painfully for Facebook with their (misguidedly dubbed) "awesome" announcements yesterday. Their launch of a new design, video calling, and group chat might have been ex ...more

Animation Training: In terms of training, few actually get the "right" training. They go to a crash course program like Mesmer f/x (which teaches you about brand X software in 3 short weeks), put together a rather weak demo reel in the same timeframe, and then hit the streets ...more

The trend of online video sharing came to the mainstream with popularization of YouTube, which let users view, submit and share video clips. YouTube started off in the year 2005, and quickly became one of the most visited websites on the internet. Sensing the emerging trend, l ...more

There's gonna be a rumble.... For this week's GJ article, I thought I would jump right into talking about a mortal-lock favourite of mine: West Side Story. If you haven't seen it (and a lot of folks havent - dudes especially) and you want a lesson in filmmaking craft from a b ...more

Periodically, motorcycle and ATV exhaust system can be rebuilt to maintain the proper performance and sound level expected from the exhaust system. My experience was with a dirt bike that had an aftermarket high performance exhaust installed.I bought my 99 XR400 second hand an ...more

So our GUY has traded wallets with a gangster, met a beautiful Grocery Store cashier, and used the Gangsters credit card. Act 2 Now that GUY has used the gangster's credit card, this is a great time to show MUGGER (the villain). Let's say some things about MUGGER in the foll ...more

There are no spoilers in this writing, read without worry. Finished Episode 3 of Alan Wake yesterday, impressed by different reasons. I originally bought the game for the possibility of great story, dialogue, and voice acting. That part of the game has been disappointing. Wha ...more

A first hands look at the first chapter of the game. "When the wife of best-selling writer Alan Wake disappears on their vacation, his serach turns up pages from a thriller he doesn't remember writing. A dark presence stalks the small town of Bright Falls-"  Suspense thrille ...more

I’m terrified of you. Yes, you- Director of Photography (DP). Your framing is beautiful, but your lighting could kill me, and my career. I am the Makeup Artist, and I don’t believe we’ve met. In most Film schools they’re still teaching using film in this digital age.  Same is ...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

Big brother is watching when you're playing around on another system—and big brother is that system. Everything from operating systems to intrusion detection systems to database services are maintaining logs. Sometimes, these are error logs that can show attackers trying vario ...more

If you've been reading, watching or listening to the news, you sure know about the Trayvon Martin case. If you visit this site often, you may also have noticed that I've not put up any news on this case. I have my reasons. And this post will describe why. Before continuing, I ...more

Culinary collective Studiofeast is known for thinking outside the box, especially when it comes to food. They've hosted inventive and spectacular events like the L Train Lunch, where a high-end meal was served to guests on a moving train, and the Datalicious Last Supper, where ...more

I first heard the term molecular gastronomy while watching an episode of Bravo's Top Chef a few seasons back. Intrigued by the concept, I sought to find out more about this modern, deconstructed type of cookery. If you happen to be around foodies and the topic of molecular gas ...more

Red Dead Redemption is hard to pin down in game play and story. The game offers this massive multi-layered world in which the player can roam freely, offering plenty of challenges, beautiful graphics and atmosphere for the player to experience. Yet after some point the whole w ...more

Posted with permission via HereComeTheYanks.com What follows is the result of extensive research, history, gut instincts, hope, and just plain guessing. But it may represent the most logical progression through the world's greatest competition: the World Cup. I believe that a ...more

Looking back on Alan Wake, more than a year and a half after its release, it's still one of my favorite games. The graphics and ambience have held up well in comparison to any other story driven game, and it's still the best third-person horror game out there, in terms of game ...more

Like the press covering film and many other specialized fields, video game journalists use all sorts of jargon to convey to their knowledgable readers as much information about a game as quickly as possible. For non or newbie gamers, this can be extremely confusing. Those of ...more

Synopsis: Tell one guy that a girl that one of the other guys knows just had some sketchy demonic encounter/satanic experience at some Wicca gathering she went to last night while she was trying to get answers from the past. Then say she’s incredibly creeped out right now and ...more

jackass crew members each take ex lax and wrestle for a key taped to the ceiling. first to grab the key wins. the key unlocks the bathroom so long story short, winner gets to poop first.

There's two senile senior citizens disguised from Steve-O and Johnny Knoxville who claims they have "gotten sick of hospital food", and decided to rob a local supermarket. One guy is wearing his sports shorts, walking with a walking stick, and with parts of his genitals exposi ...more

The director of 100 Musicians and Nurse/Fighter/Boy talked with us about old school filmmaking Charles Officer has directed shorts, music videos for K’naan, and the features Nurse/Fighter/Boy and Mighty Jerome, a documentary about Canadian track star Harry Jerome. His new shor ...more

Shorts, learning from your audience and the fundamental plausibility of being hustled in the desert Mike Clattenburg, creator of Trailer Park Boys and Afghan Luke, was kind enough to talk to us from Nova Scotia, where he was hard at work in preproduction, about Crackin’ Down H ...more

After my hard drive crashed recently, I lost everything. Old college essays, half-written stories, short films, and most importantly, all of the photos that I had saved from the past five years... all gone. Since I didn't back up my hard drive (stupid mistake #1), or upload p ...more

Thought I would cross-post a piece I did a while ago. So here is a piece I made a while back. I found this brass and glass bottle at the thrift store. At the time of purchase it had a broken music box on the bottom. I actually was able to fix the music box and it plays "How D ...more

While you can't turn art into a formula, the film industry has managed to come stupidly close. While many storytelling principles still stand across mediums, successfully crafting a compelling, immersive narrative in virtual reality requires a brand new rulebook. Through trial ...more

The year 2020 was a pivotal span of time during which the word "virtual" took on a brand new meaning. Instead of referring to VR or augmented reality, the term was hijacked to describe meeting across long distances through a variety of software tools, most often through video. ...more

Long before the HoloLens or the Magic Leap One, a California-based team of independent filmmakers envisioned what the future of augmented reality might look like. Now, after millions of people viewed the initial short film called "Sight," the directors, operating under the na ...more

Our attention spans have vastly shortened thanks to the Internet and our subsequent procurement of information from it at a rapid pace. It's tough to pay attention to something for a good amount of time, unless it's ridiculously interesting and stimulating. It's gotten so bad ...more

After announcing another massive round of funding to the tune of $502 million, Magic Leap is adding another powerful weapon to its creative arsenal: John Gaeta, the man who helped develop the iconic Bullet Time effect for The Matrix series of films. Gaeta made the announcemen ...more

Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am a cyberpunk junkie. The conflict between lowlifes, corporations, and the government, flavored with dystopian future, high technology, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and noir storytelling, just does something for me. Since I ...more

I am often asked about getting started with HoloLens development and most of the time my answer, in short, is: Install Unity, install Visual Studio, install the HoloLens emulator, and make something. I suspect most of the time this advice is ignored, since the idea of develop ...more

Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more

Tin cans have resin linings that contain bisphenol-A (BPA), which has been linked in animal lab testings to a number of ailments that include reproductive problems, heart disease, and obesity. Tomatoes are high in acidity, which means that the content of canned tomatoes eats a ...more

So I noticed that a lot of the writings on this section of wonder how to are by a great author known as Austin Sirkin. I would just like to throw a huge thank you and keep going his way! Thank you for all of the stories and topics Austin, they have helped me learn a lot about ...more

Steampunk music is an oft-debated genre, full of bands playing all sorts of different sounds. While this can make it difficult to generalize about the genre as a whole, it means that the average person is bound to like at least some Steampunk bands. That's why it's a great ide ...more

It's impossible to predict the future, but it's fun to try. Adapted from Daniel H. Wilson's short story of the same name, filmmaker Giacomo Cimini's short film "The Nostalgist" shows a futuristic world where mixed reality serves as an escape from a less-desirable physical wor ...more

Mixed reality filmmaking isn't a new concept. Disney managed to make it work in 1988 with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but not without an enormous amount of work. We haven't seen many mixed reality films of that scope since, and perhaps that's because it's still hard to accomplish ...more

Yesterday, I talked about what I think is the most immediately mainstream-friendly app on the Magic Leap One is (Screens), and now we'll touch upon the runner-up: Helio. In short, Helio is how Magic Leap One users can browse the web in augmented reality, something we've seen ...more

Using Netcat to backdoor a macOS device has its short-comings. If the compromised Mac goes to sleep, the Netcat background process will occasionally fail to terminate correctly; This leaves Netcat running infinitely in the background and the attacker with no new way into the d ...more

The misconception that macOS is more secure than the Windows operating system is far from the truth. With just one small command, a hacker can completely take over a MacBook and control it remotely. The sheer volume of Windows computers currently in operation around the world ...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

After watching Samsung's exploding phone fiasco this past year, I took comfort knowing that the likelihood my iPhone would suddenly combust was slim. However, after hearing about a recent incident in Wisconsin, iPhone owners may have reason to worry. According to a man named ...more

When Facebook launched its first hardware products last year, the Portal and Portal+ smart displays, the company mostly touted its video-calling features as it faced off against Amazon and its Echo Show. But Facebook also had an interesting feature that mostly flew under the ...more

Last month, Leap Motion's vice president of design and global creative director, Keiichi Matsuda (a member of the NR30), suddenly left the company. Just days later, a story leaked that revealed that Leap Motion had twice failed to lock in a potential deal with Apple. Now, as ...more

On Sunday, the annual Grammy Awards delivered its usual mix of fashion, live performances, and music industry magic, but this time with one important difference: Animojis. During the broadcast, two iPhone X commercials ran that showed off how TrueDepth camera, in combination ...more

With augmented reality comes an infinite realm of possibilities for storytelling. We have seen it through wineries telling their history with interactive AR experiences and through authors that use augmented reality to bring portions of their books to life. However, filmmaker ...more

Snapchat began rolling out a massive update on March 29th, dubbed Chat 2.0, that gives users a plethora of new features, basically transforming Snapchat into an all-purpose messaging app. New features such as one-tap video chatting, audio-only chatting, and the ability to mak ...more

Playlists are more than just a list of songs that you enjoy listening to while in traffic or hosting a party—they're stories that illustrate who you are or your frame of mind at a certain point in your life. While some of my Spotify playlists are relatively short and expendab ...more

Sometimes specs aren't everything, especially if you prefer value over the bleeding-edge. Enter the ZTE ZMAX, an Android phone that you can get right now for less than $200—cheaper than even the Nexus 5 or OnePlus One. If you're looking for a cheap high-end phone, it's hard to ...more

Unless you've been hiding under a (moon) rock for the past month, you already know that Saturday, July 20 is the 50th anniversary of NASA's Apollo 11 lunar landing. And while it has been 50 years since man first visited the moon, no human has set foot on its surface since 197 ...more

People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the out ...more