Enjoy!

Tutorials

Turning Your House Into A Haunted Mansion

How To Properly Smear And Splatter Blood

The Dark Book of Photoshop

Creating A Bloody Mouth

Creating A Bloody Eye

Learn To Throw Blood On The Wall

Turn Yourself Into A Zombie Killer

Beauty Is Skin Deep: How To Peel A Face Off

How To Create Bloody Text

Free Halloween Fonts

66+ Free Fonts for Your Halloween Projects

Dafont’s Scary Fonts Collection

Horror Fonts from Sinister Fonts

Urban Font’s Horror Fonts Collection

Free Photoshop and GIMP Brushes

Blood Brushes (GIMP)

More Blood Brushes (GIMP)

Arcane Symbol Brushes (GIMP)

11 Splatter Brushes (GIMP)

More Splatter Brushes (GIMP)

41 High- Splatter Brushes (Photoshop)

Free Horror Brushes (Photoshop)

Free Halloween Brushes (Photoshop)

Free Dark Wing Brushes (Photoshop)

Free Vector Graphics

Free Skull Vectors

Free Desktop Icons (Windows and Mac)

Skelanimals

Spooky Stickers

Bride of Macabre

Creeps

Snappy Hour Halloween

Ravenswood Revisited

Retro Masks

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You need three main things for good Halloween party: something to wear, something to eat, and a creepy atmosphere. Below are costume, decoration, and food ideas for people with more time than money, so there won’t be any store bought junk or kiddie crafts in here.

Be sure to stay tuned this week because there are a lot of resources coming out every day that you probably won’t want to miss…

1. Clever Costumes

First, let’s get you a costume. You’re not going out as a hobo again this year, and it’s 20 years past the point where you should’ve retired your Max Headroom costume. Costumes don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be clever, so your first step should be to check out the How To Have The Best Costume At The Party Guide from Mahalo and get your braaain in motion. If after getting through the guide, you still don’t have any ideas, maybe the following do-it-yourself costume instructions will spark some genius.

$50 DIY Optimus Prime Costume

Sesame Street Yip Yip Costume How To

Megaman Costume Instructions (via Neatarama)

Stormtrooper Costume Resources

Convincing Scar Tutorial

2. Decorations of the Damned

Now that you have an awesome costume, you need to create the party atmosphere with some creepy decorations. These range from easy to complex, so there should be something in there for every skill level.

How To Make A Chicken Wire Ghost

How To Make Corpse Hands

Fake Blood Recipes

The Haunted Mirror Tutorial

The Skull Hologram Tutorial

The Half Monster Illusion Explained

How To Make Squishy Eyeball Doorbell

Spider Web Balloons

3. Feasts For Fiends

Once everything looks right, the final touch is to make some creepy Halloween food. Some of these recipes verge on really gross, but then, you don’t think everyone’s going to be impressed with your bowl of Hi-C just because you call it “blood punch”, do you? No, they won’t. Why not make something that tastes a hell of a lot better than it looks.

Cockroach puree, stuffed cockroaches, an edible ashtray, and worse…

Melon Brain

Brain Pate

Eerie Eyeballs

Zombie eyeballs

Dried Apple Shrunken Heads

Brittle Bones

The Edible Flesh Worm (Am I the only one thinking Shai-Hulud?)

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Because of the way the Sportcraft logo is laid out, the only version of Mr. Sparkle’s eyes that can be done on a Sportcraft ball is the one from the original commercial. I’m not going to admit to talking a screenshot and doing an SVG drawing of the eyeball just to get it correct as I could, but that secret dies with this week’s recycling.

Mr. Sparkle Eye Template on a Sportcraft Ping Pong Ball

Simply draw a line from the M in Made in China to the corner of the R in Sportcraft. From there, draw a second line along the top of Sportcraft to the edge of your circle. The triangle you just made will point at the circular cutout on the other side.

On the opposite side of the logo, draw as big of a semicircle as you can in the white space. Then just follow the instructions for creating a regular pair of cartoonified eyes.

Tips

• If you make a pencil outline before using a marker, you won’t have to break into your girlfriend’s / wife’s / goth child’s nail polish remover to scrub off your mistakes.
• When you puncture each ball with a safety pin, you have to position them so that the round cutouts point up at a 45 degree angle. The original commercial shows the cutouts pointing to both the right and left at different times, so whichever direction you go in is up to you.

The Mr. Sparkle Commercial

If you still don’t know who Mr. Sparkle is, see below:

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These things cost a couple of bucks to make, so there’s no huge loss if you happen to leave them somewhere to make someone laugh. And because they’re only attached to things with a twist-tie, you can stash the ones around your own house so that company doesn’t think that you’re out of your mind. My only regret about this project was that by the time I thought of making a Mr. Sparkle version of the eyes, all my ping pong balls had already been sent to the land of wind and ghosts.

If you want to know how to make your own set, read on. I send you premium answer question, hundred percent.

What You’ll Need

A wire twist-tie (the kind that come with garbage bags),

A safety pin,

A black marker, and

The cheapest ping pong balls you can find.

Instructions

Step 1:
Draw the roundest possible circle you can around the logo printed on the ball. Your circle doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should cover the whole logo. Repeat this for a second ball.

Step 2: Once the circles seem good enough, fill them in. Again, you don’t need to be perfect or do multiple coats because most imperfections aren’t noticeable at a distance of a couple of feet.

Step 3: At a 90 degree angle from the spot you just drew, poke a hole in each ball with a safety pin. Safety pins seem to create the perfect sized hole to fit a twist-tie. Needles are too thin, and a nail gun just makes a mess.

Step 4: Twist the end of the twist-tie like you’re threading a needle, and jam it into the holes you just created. You only have to push the ends in until it seems like you have snug fit.

Optional Instruction: Adding A Touch Of Evil

If you want to make the eyes look more cartoonishly evil than stupidly surprised, use your thumb to push a dent that goes all the way down to the edge of the black circle at a 90 degree angle from the twist-tie. When you want to place the eyes, just tilt them so that the dents are on top at a 45 degree angle like the angry plant above.

Places that have been Cartoonified

• small clocks
• large clocks (not so good)
• tall bushes
• cabinet handles (not so good)
• coffee grinder
• coffee maker (not so good)
• faucets
• the fire alarm
• house plants
• kettle (works best with evil eyes)
• lamps (not so good)
• the microwave (surprisingly works)
• monitors (surprisingly works)
• thin trees

Did you have any successful cartoonifications? Let me know.

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1. You have more time than money,
2. You can’t possibly justify spending money to re-buy music that you’ll stop feeling nostalgic about next week,
3. You don’t want the judgmental eyes of the record store clerks to realize that you secretly still like Winger, or
4. Sadly, the band on your tape is out of print, never made the jump to CD, or broke up before getting a recording contract.

What You’ll Need

• A walkman that plays tapes.
• A set of headphones or speakers.
• A male to male 3.5mm stereo cable. You can usually pick up a stereo cable for a couple of bucks at an electronics store. You don’t need a fancy, brand name cable for this as long as you make sure that the cable is stereo and not mono. A stereo cable has two black lines on the tip, while a mono cable will only have one.
• Audacity, the free, open-source audio editor.
• A fair amount of time.

Physical Setup

• If the batteries in your walkman were installed while you were wearing a “The PMRC Can Suck It” T-shirt, they’re probably corroded and need to be replaced.
• Soak a q-tip in alcohol and clean off the tape head in your walkman.
• Shut off the bass boost, set the tape to Normal or Cr02 depending on what kind of tape you have.
• Plug one end of the stereo cable into your walkman’s headphone jack, and the other end into the line in jack on your PC. The line in jack is usually blue and has a symbol that looks like an arrow pointing into a bunch of lines.
• Plug your headphones or speakers into your PC if you haven’t already.

Audacity Setup

1. Download, install, and open Audacity.
2. Click Edit / Preferences / Audio I/0.
3. Under the Recording section, set the channels to 2 and click Ok If you skip this, you’ll be recording in Mono, which defeats the purpose of that $2 you spent on that male to male stereo cable.
4. Go to the File Formats tab and set the MP3 Bitrate to your bitrate of choice. I think it defaults to 128, but you could set it to 256 for a little better quality. It’s a cassette transfer, so it’s up to you.
5. Click Ok.
6. Set the drop down box that says Microphone to Line In.

Set the Levels

Press play on your walkman to give your cassette a quick test listen. Tapes wear out, and if your old tapes are from your teenage years, the years might not have been to kind to them. Make sure that the tape is in decent shape before you waste your time recording it.

If everything sounds Ok, click the record button in Audacity to do a quick test recording. As you’re listening, you’ll see a red meter at the top right of Audacity start jumping to the music. Use the Microphone volume slider to raise or lower the volume to get that red bar to be as close to -3 as you can without going over. If you have the levels set correctly, you should see the meter filling up to about -6 and bouncing off -3 every so often. If you set the volume higher than this (say at 0 or more), the recording will end up sounding distorted. If you set the volume too low, you’ll miss some of the nuances of the original.

Once you’ve set your levels, rewind your tape to the beginning and delete the test track you created by clicking the X on the track.

Record The Cassette Into Audacity

1. Click the record button in Audacity (the red dot), and then press the play button on the walkman.
2. Walk away for a half hour and you’ll record side one. If you want to practice some air guitar or sing into a hairbrush while you wait, that’s entirely up to you.
3. Hit stop on the tape when it’s done.
4. Click Pause in Audacity after side one.
5. Flip the tape and press play on the walkman.
6. Click Pause in Audacity again to continue recording the second side of the tape.
7. Return to whatever awesome activity you undertook while waiting for side one.
8. When the tape is done, press stop on the walkman and click stop in Audacity.

Noise Reduction (Optional)

Once you listen to your recording, you’re probably going to notice a bit of tape hiss. You can’t get rid of it entirely (you are recording a cassette tape after all), but if it bothers you, you can reduce it a little bit.

1. Use the mouse to highlight a second or so of tape hiss from the beginning of the tape before the music kicks in. You’re going to use this to tell Audacity what tape hiss sounds like so that it can try to remove it.
2. Click on Effect / Noise Removal and click on Get Noise Profile. You just told Audacity that tape hiss is noise. The box will vanish without telling you what happened. This is normal.
3. Now select a small portion of a song and then Click on Effect / Noise Removal again. Here’s where we test out just how much noise removal we need. You should see a slider that reads Less / More which controls how much noise reduction that will be performed. By default it’s set in the middle, which is usually too much.
4. Click Preview to hear what the noise reduction will sound like. Usually, having the slider set in the middle makes the music sound like it’s coming from inside a tin can, so you may need to adjust the slider in the “Less” direction and try again. It’s not unusual to have to move the slider all the way to Less.
5. When you’re satisfied, click Remove Noise and then Close.
6. Go back to the track and listen to the noise removal followed by a portion that has no noise removal. The music shouldn’t change, but you should hear a major reduction in (or full removal of) the tape hiss. If it sounded fine, hold down [CRTL] and Z to undo.
7. Select the entire album by clicking anywhere on the left box of the track. It will turn a bluish purple color.
8. Repeat step 5 and the noise removal will be applied to the entire album.

Normalization (Optional)

You shouldn’t need this step if you did the level setting properly in the beginning, but if you set the levels too high or too low, you may need to normalize it. Volumes that are too high or low can be fixed by selecting the entire track and clicking Effect / Normalize from the menu. Leave both boxes checked and click Ok.

Split and Save the Tracks

Now, you need to split the whole album into separate files. You can see that each song is separated by a period of silence, so they’re not hard to pick out.

1. Click Project / Edit ID3 Tag and type in the information for the first track.
2. Select the first song with the mouse, and select File / Export Selection as MP3.
3. Repeat this process for every track on the album, making sure to change the track title and number in the ID3 tag.

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One day, as I was making myself unnecessarily miserable over having to clean the coffee pot again, I had the temporary clarity to time how long the task took to complete. From start to finish, the chore that had made me monumentally miserable took exactly three minutes out of my life.

From that point on, cleaning the coffee pot became a non-issue because I knew exactly how insignificant it was. When I couldn’t overestimate the time it would require, I minded doing it a lot less. Now when I find that I’m avoiding a chore, I dive into it with stopwatch in hand, and most of the time, it ends up putting the chore back into proportion.

Do you have a chore that you hate doing? Timing it just might make it less of a chore.

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Google Sketchup is a free 3D modeling program that I’ve been using for a couple of weeks to do just that. It allows me plan the renovations to scale and then walk around the house as if I were in it, giving me a better idea of where what works on paper and what works in the real world coincide. I did this once with a kitchen renovation, and it worked out extremely well.

In my short time working with the product, I’ve compiled a number of tips and resources to help minimize your frustration and get you up to speed faster with your own project.

1. Customize Your Toolbar

Sketchup starts with a limited toolbar so that the new users aren’t overwhelmed, but the limited format will have you hunting around for a lot of the basic tools you’ll need. Hunting in a new program can be very frustrating, so do yourself a favor and activate the following toolbars from the View / Toolbars menu. Having only these toolbars visible should give you access to 90% of the tools you need:

• Large Tool Set
• Standard
• Layers
• Views
• Face Style
• Google
• Shadows

2. Learn To Use Layers Early

A Layer is like a group of objects that can be hidden. Getting large groups of items out of the way without having to physically change their positions will make the modeling process much less frustrating. I would suggest storing your outside walls and the related windows and doors as one layer, each floor as its own layer, and all your renovations in another layer.

3. Dock Frequently Used Windows

I have found it useful to keep certain windows available when working on my model. Click the following items from the Window menu and drag them to the upper right to dock them together. Clicking on the title bars will minimize them in place to keep them out of your way:

• Materials
• Components
• Layers

4. RTFM

Playing with Sketchup a little before you read the manual can increase your comprehension, but you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration if you at least skim through the Google Sketchup Users Guide (.pdf) before you dive into a full project. Some things in Sketchup are very intuitive, but others are painfully not.

5. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

There is no reason to spend two hours building the perfect model of a bookshelf if your real objective is to model a renovation. Unless a specific, custom bookcase is essential to the room, you can save a lot of time by downloading pre-built models included in the Sketchup Bonus Packs or some individual, user-built models from Google’s 3D Warehouse.

6. Customize Your Components

When you insert an object from the components list (such as a staircase or counter) and it isn’t exactly what you want, you have the ability to customize it. Start by moving the object away from all your other components (if you don’t, reassembling the object will be painful). With the object selected, click Edit / Component / Explode. This will break the object into its individual pieces. Make the changes you want, highlight all the pieces of the object, and select either Edit / Make Group or Edit / Make Component to reassemble it.

7. Creating a Triangle

You can create squares and circles by clicking on the square or circle buttons, so you would think that creating a triangle would be as simple as clicking the triangle button. It’s not. The triangle button is actually the “Create Polygon” button, which will create a hexagon by default. To create a triangle, create a hexagon and right click its edge. Select Entity Info to change the number of sides to three. If you click the middle of the hexagon instead of the edge, you will slowly go insane looking for a “Sides” parameter that isn’t there.

8. Tell Google Where To Go

Because your model is three dimensional, Sketchup has to interpret the direction you want an object to go when you move it. It usually works pretty well, but when items randomly switch planes and shoot off into the horizon when you move them, it can drive you berserk. There are two ways (that I know of) to guide Sketchup’s interpretations. If an object is moving in the direction you want, holding down Shift will lock whatever plane you’re moving along. If you can’t seem to get an object to move in the direction you want, hold down one of the arrow keys as you drag to force the movement into a particular plane. Left is Red, Right is green, and up & down are the blue axis.

9. Measure Twice, Cut Once

Use the tape measure (shortcut T) to measure off areas before creating your components. The tape measure tool will create dotted lines that your components will snap to. These lines can then be deleted after your components are created.

10. Learn the Shortcuts

Things go so much faster if you learn Sketchup’s keyboard shortcuts. More complete information can be found on the Google Sketchup Quick Reference Card (.pdf).

• Arc Tool (A)
• Paint Bucket Tool (B)
• Circle Tool (C)
• Eraser Tool (E)
• Offset Tool (F)
• Pan Tool (H)
• Line Tool (L)
• Move Tool (M)
• Orbit Tool (O)
• Push/Pull Tool (P)
• Rotate Tool (Q)
• Rectangle Tool (R)
• Scale Tool (S)
• Select Tool (Spacebar)
• Tape Measure Tool (T)
• Zoom Tool (Z)
• Zoom Extents Tool (Shift+Z)
• New (Ctrl+N)
• Open (Ctrl+O)
• Save (Ctrl+S)
• Cut (Ctrl+X)
• Copy (Ctrl+C)
• Paste (Ctrl+V)
• Print (Ctrl+P)
• Redo(Ctrl+Y)
• Undo (Ctrl+Z)

Further Resources

If you’re just starting with Sketchup, you may have a lot of questions beyond what was covered here, so below are some tutorials, forums and extra information that should help. Good luck!

• Google Sketchup Download
• Official Google Sketchup Video Tutorials
• Google Modeling Guide (.pdf)
• Supported export formats for the Pro and Free versions
• Sketchup Compatible applications
• Sketchup Google Group
• The Sketchup Wiki
• Sketchup Community Forums

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Because men have been trained not to spend excess amounts of time on their personal appearance, they generally fail to recognize a few simple aspects of personal grooming that should be undertaken to keep them attractive to the moister sex.

But how does a gentleman know that his hair is unsightly? Because this type of revelation is reserved for close friends or people that can take a punch, he generally doesn’t. That’s where the Gentleman’s Guide to Trimming & Grooming comes in. The Gentleman’s Guide is a cumulative set of tips to give men the trimming and grooming info they need whether they are 5 or 45. All you have to do is match your age to the sections below to find out where your personal grooming may need adjustments.

Remember that the guide is cumulative, so you’ll need to read all of the tips up to your current age. When you’re finished, stash it in your library or rumpus room and come back to it when you hit another milestone age. The Gentleman’s Guide is guaranteed to transform even the most disheveled dork into a lifetime ladies man.

The ladies are waiting, so let’s get to it!

Age 5

Hey, you’re 5. Your Dad loves you very much, but he’s tired of people at the park asking how old his daughter is. He’s going to take you to Tony, the shaky, old Italian barber, and he’s going to make you look like a little man. Your Dad isn’t going to tell you this, but I will: Tony is probably going to give you a boo boo on one of your ears and then douse it in some medicine that’s going to sting like crazy. This is standard procedure when you get a $2 haircut from a 600 year old man, so don’t freak out and cry. Boys who act like men get loose change and new Tonka trucks. Boys who freak out and cry have to go with Mommy to the hairdresser and end up looking like little girls again. Understand? You’re not even paying attention anymore, are you? Tell your Dad to stash this away where you won’t pee on it. Oh, and don’t do drugs.

Age 15

Hey, you made it to 15. Awesome. A hundred years ago you’d be working in a factory to support your wife and five kids, but as this is the modern age, you’re about as close to impregnating a woman as you are to getting one to read the Lord of the Rings fan fiction you wrote this summer. You probably think it’s because you live with your parents, have no license, and can’t get into R rated movies, but I’m willing to bet that it has something to do with that badass peach fuzz mustache you’ve got going on. Sorry, bro, but someone had to tell you. The mustache isn’t fooling anyone into thinking you are Juan Carlos the Macho Sex Machine, and if you want to be able to grow something more substantial later on, you’re going to have to shave the baby stash now. You’ll attract more girls if you shave off the peach fuzz at least once a week. Years later when you’re able to grow a mighty beard and have no idea what Dungeons and Dragons is, you’ll be thankful for this.

Age 25

As if a slowing metabolism and the onset of strange back and arm hair weren’t bad enough, you’re probably here because you suddenly realized that your nose looks like it’s harboring a tiny Repunzel who’s waiting to be rescued. If that’s not why you’re here, then you just got a bonus tip. This is the modern world, and you will immediately lose all traction with a modern woman if she notices one of your nose hairs crossing the nostril line into the visible world. Invest a couple of bucks in a rotary nose hair trimmer and shove it up your nose every couple of weeks. It will smell funny and make your nose run, but that’s the price you have to pay to keep women continuously violating your personal air space.

Age 35

Hey, welcome back. You’re just about middle aged, so I can only assume that you’re here because your barber has started asking if you want him to trim up your eyebrows for you. Your barber isn’t asking because he wants to shape your eyebrows and make you a pretty, powdery, little girl. He’s asking because your eyebrows are out of control. Unless you can squash the world into juice or are a 400 year old kung fu master who uses his eyebrows to steer when he flies through the air, let the man give the caterpillars a trim. Treat it like someone asking you if you want a piece of gum. Never refuse a little free help.

Age 45

You pretty much stopped caring about hair issues five years ago when you folded this up and stuffed it under the short leg of your kitchen table, but this is pretty much your last stop before you start wishing you had more hair instead of less. Just like nose hair, ear hair is a natural human protection to keep things out of the body that don’t belong there. It fights the good fight for you and is necessary and acceptable as long as it stays in your ear. When it enters the outside world and cascades down your ear like a hairy little waterfall, it isn’t doing anything for your health, and it definitely isn’t helping your image. Dig out the rotary trimmers you bought 20 years ago and get in the habit of giving your ear hair a little trim every once and a while. Social security and pensions aren’t what they used to be, so when you get old enough to start thinking that it’s perfectly acceptable to repair your clothes with duct tape, we want that rich widow to find your quirks endearing and not be grossed out when she goes to put her tongue in your ear. The only way that is going to happen is if you get in the habit of trimming the ear hair now.

Congratulations!

Congratulations, you’ve completed the Gentleman’s Guide! If you’ve found it helpful, don’t put it back under the short leg of your kitchen table. You can always re-level that thing with of few of your sugar mama’s hundred dollar bills. The gentlemanly thing to do is to leave this guide where another man can find it and reap its benefits. The simple act of dropping this guide in a Home Depot or strip club may ensure that another man doesn’t needlessly spend his senior years alone and dining on dog food.

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The default Links Widget in WordPress works by pulling your entire blogroll into an unconfigurable list. This is fine if your blogroll only contains five or ten very descriptive links, but it doesn’t scale well if your blogroll contains a ton of obscurely named blogs. The longer the list gets, the less your readers will be able to see the individual links in it. The more obscure the link titles are, the less they’ll trust them.

If your readers don’t see a it, or they don’t trust it, they’re not going to click it.

So how do you fix that? The Better Blogroll Widget for WordPress does it by displaying a small, random subset of links from your blogroll that changes each time the page is refreshed. This should allow you to spread link love to your entire blogroll without overloading your reader’s eye. It also gives a description when the reader hovers the mouse over each link, and it puts the link’s category to its right so that readers don’t have to guess what they’re clicking on.

Better Blogroll gives the links in your blogroll more focus and more credibility.

Simple, right?

The widget can be found on the Better Blogroll Widget for WordPress Page.

Take it for a spin and help your readers to get more out of your blogroll.

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Warnings

The Kubb set that I am presenting here is not exactly standard, but the Kubb Governance Committee rarely travels all the way to a tiny beach town in Massachusetts to harass me about it. My king is 4″ taller than normal simply because I think it looks better. It makes no difference in game play. If someone is at the point that they’re knocking down the king, four inches of height is not going to matter much. Also, my throwing batons are 2″ longer than is generally accepted, but they have a little more weight and feel better than the standard ones. If you fear the rules committee, you can shorten the batons and king to the 12″ standard, but I’m telling you that the odds of getting caught in an international kubb scandal are pretty low.

Also, this requires a saw, so don’t cut your friggin’ fingers off.

Materials and Tools

All the materials can be found at your local lumber yard or home center for less than $20. You’ll need:

• 6’5″ of 4×4 non-pressure treated lumber (there are a lot of chemicals in pressure treated that I didn’t think would be as safe as using regular lumber.)
• 7′ of 1.5″ wooden closet pole
• masking tape (optional)
• a saw (preferably a table or chop saw)
• a table router (optional)

Building the Set

This shouldn’t take more than an hour.

1. Create the King
   Cut 16″ off of the 4×4. This is your king. Hail him. If you want, you can rout a line 4″ from the top to dress him up. If you really want to get fancy you can make the top look like a crown. I’m a minimalist. And lazy. And I love my fingers. So my monarch got a line routed all the way around, but no crown.
2. Make 10 Kubbs
   Rip 1/2″ off of two adjacent sides of the remaining five feet of 4×4 to create a solid 3″ x 3″ beam. If you’re doing the math and this doesn’t add up, a 4×4 is really only 3.5″ x 3.5″.

   Cut the beam you just made every 6 1/8 inches to create the kubbs. The extra 1/8″ is to account for the wood lost by a standard saw blade.



3. Make 6 throwing batons
   Cut the 7′ of closet pole every 13.9″ (you’ll lose 5/8″ to your cuts, and if you don’t account for it at the start, your last baton will be a 1/2″ short). Wrapping a piece of masking tape around the pole and cutting through it will minimize the number of splinters that break off the ends of the batons when you make your cuts.

And that’s it. Clean up all the sawdust, load the set into a strong bag, and head out to your next BBQ or beach party to spread the love.

Get a Copy of the Rules

Check my Illustrated Rules of Kubb for complete rules.

And that’s all there is to it. Now you can take your set, throw on your viking helmet, and go forth to conquer the yards of America this fall.

So what do you think? Are you going to make a set?

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Here’s how you can create a ringtone from one of your MP3s for free.

What You Need

If you don’t confirm that you have all three of these before you get started, you may end up wasting a lot of time on something that isn’t going to work. If you’re unsure, check your manufacturer’s and/or service provider’s websites.

• A phone capable of playing MP3 ringtones,
• A way to get the MP3 to your phone (PC to phone USB cable, etc.), and
• An installed copy of Audacity (a free and open source audio editing software).

Instructions

1. Open Audacity.
2. Select File, Open and open the MP3 you would like to make into a ringtone. After Audacity loads it, your screen should look somewhat like the screenshot above.
3. Click the point in the file where you want your ring tone to start.
4. While holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse to the right to highlight the section of the MP3 that you want use.
5. Clicking the green play button will play your selection.
6. When you move the mouse pointer close to the edges of your selection, your cursor will turn into a hand. By clicking and dragging with the hand you can shorten or lengthen your selection as needed. This can be done at either side of the selection.
7. If you have trouble getting the exact point you want, click the zoom button (or [CTRL]+1) a few times so that you can make the start and end points of your selection more precise.
8. Once you are happy with your selection, select File, Export Selection as MP3.
9. In the “MP3 Save As” box, change the name of your ringtone to make sure you don’t overwrite the original file.
10. Connect your Phone to your PC and follow your manufacturer’s instructions for transferring the ringtone onto your phone. With my phone (Sony-Erikson W810i), it was as simple as connecting to the PC with a USB cable and dropping the ringtone into the “ringtones” directory.

And you’re done!

Tips:

• Holding down the shift key when clicking play tells Audacity to play your selection as a loop.
• Some phones have size limitations for ringtones, so if you can’t get yours to work the file may be too big. Try cutting the length of the ringtone down to ten or twenty seconds.
• Sometimes carriers lock the ability to load MP3s on a phone so that they have a monopoly on selling you ringtones from their store. If this is the case, you may be out of luck.
• Be careful of what you use as a ringtone. That mushy song that reminds you of your significant other is bound to make you look like an idiot when you’re out in public. Unless of course, that sentimental song is “Brick House” by the Commodores (She’s a brick… Hauuuuus. She’s mightay mightay. Lettinitallhangout.).
• Assign custom ringtones for each of your contacts so you know who is calling without looking. If it’s Slayer, it’s Darryl. If it’s Michael Bolton, it’s probably one of the Bobs.
• Please don’t ever use Michael Bolton as a ringtone.

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And all these Stormtrooper posts have awakened that secret childhood desire to dress up like Stormtroopers, haven’t they? It certainly has for Kerry and Johnny Wadd, and it probably has for you too. No one should have to deny their inner ‘trooper, but with Stormtrooper costumes starting at over $650 on Ebay, getting your trooper on will probably require that you sit down and make the costume yourself.

Of course if you spend all that time and money on your new obsession, you’re bound to try to get your money’s worth. You’ll probably start slowly by wearing your costume to designated events, but that will eventually give way to you wearing it on special occasions like “Saturdays”. You’ll soon be wearing it on errands and out to dinner because the armor feels so natural against your Imperial skin. Eventually you’ll run out of places that you haven’t worn it.

I figure that that’s about the time that you’ll start wearing it to work. And while most of your co-workers and former co-workers will think that you are the most completely awesome LAN admin in the galaxy, your boss probably won’t. And that’s when you end up like TK822, The Unemployed Stormtrooper.

For you’re own good, maybe you should skip the following section and just go directly to the video at the end…

Stormtrooper Costuming Resources

• The 501st Stormtrooper Legion
• Garrison Carida Stormtrooper Resources
• Studio Creations Stormtrooper How To
• TX-899′s Stormtrooper Armor building
• TK560′s Stormtrooper armor reference
• Star Wars Helmet Archive
• Vacuum forming demonstration videos
• Stormtrooper tutorials and reference from TK300 Blast’em

Video: The Unemployed Stormtrooper

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Netflixwatchnow.blogspot.com unofficially publishes the full list of Watch Now movies about once a week, but the list is over 2400 movies long, making it very difficult to scan for new items.

In a rare moment of clarity, I cobbled together a little Perl script to compare the Watch Now lists from week to week to keep track of what the new additions are. If you think this is useful, let me know and I’ll continue running the script until Netflix gets on the stick and adds an RSS feed.

Netflix Watch Now Additions for August 7th (28)

2005 Glitter Awards (2005)
Aristide and the Endless Revolution (2005)
Battlestar Galactica: Complete Epic Series (1978)
Been Rich All My Life (2006)
Bizarre (1970)
Buffalo Boy (2004)
Dangerous Living (2003)
Final Approach (1991)
Galactica 1980 (1980)
Gideon’s Daughter (2005)
Go For Zucker (2005)
Hercules: Season 1 (1994)
Hercules: Season 2 (1995)
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Season 3 (1996)
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Season 4 (1997)
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Season 5 (1998)
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Season 6 (1999)
Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral (2004)
Into the Fire (2002)
Joyride (1996)
Peach/ A Bitter Song/ Lavender Limelight (2000)
The Cameraman’s Revenge & Other Tales (1958)
The Internationale (2000)
Therese and Isabelle (1968)
Torremolinos 73 (2005)
Utawarerumono (2006)
Who Am I This Time? (1982)
Yes: 35th Anniversary Concert (2004)

Netflix Watch Now Additions for August 1 (47)

49 Up (2005)
A Life Without Pain (2005)
A.K.A. Cassius Clay (2001)
Angel on the Right (2002)
Dad (1989)
Daughter of Keltoum (2001)
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions (2004)
Fangoria Blood Drive (2004)
Female Misbehavior (1992)
Giuliani Time (2005)
High Times Presents: The Cannabis Cup (2003)
Hoffa (1992)
Hollow City (2004)
Insaniac (2002)
Jane Eyre (1983)
Margarette’s Feast (2003)
Mary of Nazareth (2004)
Morvern Callar (2002)
Motherland Afghanistan (2007)
Murder, Inc. (1960)
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Nowhere Man (2005)
One Bright Shining Moment (2005)
Our Brand is Crisis (2005)
Paul Mooney: Analyzing White America (2002)
Race with the Devil (1975)
Shakespeare’s Women and Claire Bloom (1999)
Silent Waters (2003)
Six O’Clock News (1996)
Slaughterhouse Five (1972)
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
The Alley Cats (1965)
The Champagne Safari (1995)
The Chances of the World Changing (2006)
The Darwin Awards (2005)
The Gates of Jerusalem (2003)
The Innocents (1961)
The Legend of Zelda: Complete Series (1989)
The Night of Truth (2004)
The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Thunderbolt (1995)
Time Indefinite (1994)
Today and Tomorrow (2003)
Uncivil Liberties (2007)
Uniform (2003)
Whisky (2004)
Women’s Prison (2002)

Netflix Watch Now Additions for July 14-27 (104)

100 Kilos (2001)
America’s Castles: California Dreamers (1996)
America’s Castles: Hearst Castle (1995)
American Short Story: Paul’s Case (1980)
Andrew W.K.: Who Knows (1992)
Battlefield Britain (2004)
Beast from Haunted Cave / Brain … Die (1962)
Beast from Haunted Cave / Brain … Die (1962)
Bed and Sofa/Chess Fever: English (1925)
Beer Drinkers in Space (1983)
Bela Lugosi: Invisible Ray / Black Friday (1936)
Billy Bragg and Wilco: Man in the Sand (2001)
Bela Lugosi: Invisible Ray / Black Friday (1936)
Frankenstein / Bride of Frankenstein (1931)
Californication: Season 1: Preview (2007)
Cold Case Files: The Most Infamous Cases (2005)
Corey Holcomb: The Problem Is You (2004)
Count Dracula’s Great Love (1972)
Cowboy Junction (2006)
Cry of the Banshee/Murders in the Rue… (1970)
Cry of the Banshee/Murders in the Rue… (1970)
Dancehall Queen (1997)
Discovering Greece (2001)
Dog the Bounty Hunter: Best of Season 1 (2005)
Film Geek (2005)
Filthy McNastier / Filthy McNastiest (2002)
Filthy McNastier / Filthy McNastiest (2002)
Filthy McNastier / Filthy McNastiest (2002)
Flynn (1996)
Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2006)
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Frankenstein / Bride of Frankenstein (1931)
Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1973)
Fuse (2004)
Great Train Rides / Lodges and Inns (2006)
Hard Questions, Straight Answers (2005)
In Praise of the Lord (2006)
Invisible Invaders / Journey to 7th Planet (1959)
Invisible Invaders / Journey to 7th Planet (1959)
Jane Doherty Investigates (2004)
Karate Kid III / Next Karate Kid (1989)
Kickboxer 3 / Kickboxer 4: Double Feature (1992)
Kickboxer 3 / Kickboxer 4: Double Feature (1992)
Kickboxer 3 / Kickboxer 4: Double Feature (1992)
Kingdom of David: Saga of the Israelites (2003)
Learn Yu-Gi-Oh!: Level 3: Master Duelist (2004)
Legendary Lighthouses (1998)
Legendary Lighthouses II (1999)
Michael Michael Motorcycle (2004)
Mini-Skirt Mob / Chrome and Hot Leather (1968)
O’Henry’s The Last Leaf (2004)
Pablo Francisco: Bits and Pieces (2004)
Panic in Year Zero / The Last Man on Earth (1962)
Panic in Year Zero / The Last Man on Earth (1962)
Peace Kids: The China Trip (2005)
ProStars: Slamdunking with the Airman (2004)
Relentless 3 / Relentless 4 (1994)
Relentless 3 / Relentless 4 (1994)
Relentless 3 / Relentless 4 (1994)
Rock Fresh (2006)
Running Free (1994)
The Oblong Box / Scream and Scream Again (1969)
Seven Up / 7 Plus Seven (1964)
Shadow Kill (2002)
Shakespeare Tragedies: Hamlet (1980)
Sheen Gems: The Best of Fulton J. Sheen (2005)
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars (2005)
Small Town Gay Bar (2006)
Son of Frankenstein /Ghost of Frankenstein (1939)
Son of Frankenstein /Ghost of Frankenstein (1939)
Spacemen & Go-Go Girls Double Feature (2004)
St. Clare of Assisi / Poor Clares (1994)
St. Clare of Assisi / Poor Clares (1994)
Stray Dogs (2001)
The Abductors (1972)
The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973)
The Doomsday Machine (1972)
The End of the Road: The Final Tour ’95 (1995)
The Hallelujah Trail (1965)
The Homes of Frank Lloyd Wright (1998)
The Mummy’s Ghost / The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
The Mummy’s Ghost / The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
The Mummy’s Hand / The Mummy’s Tomb (1940)
The Mummy’s Hand / The Mummy’s Tomb (1940)
The Murder Junkies: European Invasion 2005 (2005)
The Oblong Box / Scream and Scream Again (1969)
The Sheik / The Son of the Sheik (1921)
The Sheik / The Son of the Sheik (1921)
The Story of Amy Carmichael (2002)
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (2003)
Troll / Troll 2: Double Feature (1986)
Troll / Troll 2: Double Feature (1986)
Voltron: Defender of the Universe: Vol. 2 (1984)
Voltron: Defender of the Universe: Vol. 3 (1984)
Voodoo Island / Four Skulls (1957)
Wolf Man Double Feature (1935)
Working Girls (1986)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 1 (1995)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 2 (1996)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 3 (1995)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 4 (1998)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 5 (1999)
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 6 (2000)
Your Child 6 to 12 (2000)

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The reference is to a character on Trailer Park Boys who lives in a shed with all his cats.

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One of the most common things that people say when I tell them about 1KBWC is that they’ll just make a card that says “infinity points” and win. Because they are thinking linearly in terms of a single winning scenario, they don’t immediately realize that there are a number of ways to creatively trump a seemingly unbeatable number of points in a game with flexible rules. A couple of simple examples are below.

If you can change the rules, games become more about playing and less about winning. And that mentality can provide a lot more laughter, creativity and satisfaction than the win itself.

Below is everything you should need to get started.

Enjoy!

Materials

• 500 3″x5″ notecards cut into 1000 3″x2.5″ cards
• A pack of black ballpoint pens

Black ballpoints are not required, but they are recommended to give the cards a little bit of consistency. Markers and felt tip pens should be avoided because notecards are cheap, and the ink will leak right through. All the materials can be found at an office supply store like Staples (including the card cutting) for about $6.

Deck Preparation

Put a pile of blank cards in the middle of the table
3-4 Players use 40 cards
5-6 Players use 60 cards

Add previously made cards
If you have played before, add 20 (or 30) previously made cards.
If this is your first game, add 20 (or 30) blank cards.

Depending on the number of players, you now have either a 60 or 90 card deck. Don’t shuffle it just yet.

Deal out the starter cards from the deck
3-5 Players: Deal each person 6 blank cards.
4-6 Players: Deal each person 5 blank cards.

Create your cards
Each player then takes a few minutes to turn the blank cards they were just dealt into actual cards. When all the cards have been created, add them back to the deck in the center of the table and shuffle it well.

Playing the Game

Deal five cards to each player. Play moves clockwise from the dealer’s left.

A turn consists of taking the top card from the deck and then playing a card. Cards can be played either on yourself, on another player, or to the center of the table (in which case it affects all the players, including yourself).

If the card has a point value or some other sort of lasting effect, it stays in front of the player it was played on (or in the middle of the table) until it is nullified by another card. Otherwise, it is placed in the discard pile.

If you have a blank card in your hand, you must turn it into a playable card during another player’s turn.

If a player cannot play a card, then they draw a second card from the deck and pass their turn. If there are no cards left in the deck, the game is over. Any cards left in players hands are discarded, and the winner is determined.

Winning

Typically, the player with the highest score wins, unless this is modified by a card during the game.

Epilogue

Take all the cards from the game and spread them out on the table, face-up. If this is only your first or second game, keep only 30 cards. If you’ve played several games, keep 60. If you’re a 1KBWC regular, you may want to keep 90. Divide whichever number you choose by the number of players. This is the number of cards each player can choose as their favorites.

After all the favorites have been chosen, they are collected and put into a pile. You now have a stockpile of the best cards in the game, which will be used as a starter deck for future games. Unchosen cards can be put aside.

Doing this after every game ensures that the deck gets better and better.

Recommendations

If you’re still on the fence about playing or you need some creative fodder to get your card building brain revved up, take a look at a 1KBWC Random card Server to get an idea of why this game can be so much fun.

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