Answer life's burning questions - win the thanks of many (and an Instructables t-shirt)
This is no longer the current Burning Questions Forum Topic. Please refer to The New and Official Burning Questions Instructable from now on for all matters related to the Burning Questions Contest, group, and discussion.
The original forum topic is preserved below for reference.
People search for stuff at Instructables all the time. Sometimes they find what they're looking for, sometimes they don't. But there are a few common how-tos that come up often enough for we stewards of Instructable-dom to wonder, "why don't we have an Instructable on that?"
The answer is of course, because no one has written one. But you, noble Instructable citizen, can change that. Below I've listed out a number of popular 'wanted' Intructables. The bounty: 1 Instructables t-shirt and the thanks of many (including our own.)
A regular Instructable about this has been posted, but keep your ideas, thoughts, and comments coming!
Instructables most wanted:
- how to braid hair (your own)
- how to braid hair (someone else's)
- how to cut hair (someone else's - Steve Blair already did how to cut your own)
- how to clean a mattress
- How to snowboard
- How to make wine
- How to make soap
- How to paint a car
- How to make a pinata
- How to cure a headache
- How to do a donut
- How to drift (Automotive drifting, not just wandering around aimlessly)
- How to surf
- How to paint (Like, art and stuff.)
- How to Dance
- Learn poker
- How to make rubber molds (Suggested by Honus)
- How to cast with resin (Suggested by Honus)
- The Instructables have to be of good quality. (Ie, they have to be detailed, contain pictures, and actually provide a good answer to the question.) If they're lousy (and you know damn well when they are), no t-shirt for you.
- They have to be titled as above (or with very minor variation). Why? Because that's what people are looking for. If you write a great Instructable on how to build a hovercraft, but title it "poly-surface air powered vehicular lifting machine" no one is ever going to know you wrote it.
- They have to be new Instructables. (We might be willing to make some exception to this, should have you *really* answered one of these questions in the past, but titled your Instructable poorly. However, new Instructables > old Instructables.)
I've created a group to house everything, called Burning Questions. If you want to get the shirt, you've got to add it to the group.
When we've determined an Instructable is of high enough quality, we'll add a link to it below, in the "Answered Questions" section. Before that, the topic is still open!
Are there questions you want answered? Comments? Post them on the Burning Questions forum thread!
Answered Questions:
- how to boil an egg - Answered by TheCheese9921
- how to meditate - Answered by sardines454
- how to write a resume - Answered by Weissensteinburg
- how to cook - Answered by drinkmorecoffee
- how to shave - Answered by Brennn10
- how to lose weight - Answered by jessyratfink
- how to gain weight - Answered by royalestel
- how to write a research paper - Answered by Brennn10
- how to play tennis - Answered by jknight
- how to get a passport - Answered by zieak
- how to build a custom pc - Answered by technick29
- how to ask a girl out - Answered by spiralsyncrasy
- how to clean dog/pet/cat urine - Answered by Zaen
- how to play guitar - Answered by josh92176
- Learn photography - Answered by Weissensteinburg
- How to stop global warming - Answered by Weissensteinburg
- How to make a kite - Answered by (who would have guessed...) Kiteman (also, more kites!)
- How to swim - Answered by Gbutton
- How to jump start a car - Answered by tbonecb
- How to cure hiccups and How to cure hiccups - Answered by joejoerowley and Lebowski
- How to parallel park - Answered by Kiteman
- How to fix a flat tire - Answered by trebuchet03
- How to solve a rubik's cube - Answered by T3h_Muffinator
- How to sell on ebay - Answered by grimsqueaker
- How to remove gum from clothes - Answered by kqrpnb
- How to play baseball - Answered by gamer5
- How to play chess and How to play chess - Answered by llama13, latobada, Hugo.B, and pyr0man1ac (Though the former Instructable is a big collaboration, and is still in progress.)
- How to download iTunes shared music on a mac - Answered by blckleprd
- How to make money (online) - Answered by Sam Noyoun
- How to cure (and prevent) a hangover - Answered by zieak
- Learn to type - Answered by Brennn10
- How to make moonshine (For fuel purposes only, of course) - Answered by AdamK
- How to clean leather - Answered by Beastbunny
- How to pick a lock - Answered by _Soapy_
- How to build a robot - Answered by robomaniac
- How to make a diaper cake - Answered by dennisyuki
- How to flirt - Answered by pestisbest
This is how to add an Instructable to a group.
And this is how to add a group or person as a collaborator.
Embed a 3D viewer in your Instructable
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This has sub-questions:
"How to charge batteries with kinetic energy"
or
"How to charge batteries with body movement"
This is a recent technical challenge. Many engineers are working on it, but the Instructable community has great resources!
It would seem, then that more visitors want to learn to snowboard than ski, but that doesn't stop you writing a How to Ski Instructable. Go for it.
Mr. Beer
It's a commercial kit, but I figure it's a good way to get started. Plus it comes with a corny plastic 2 gallon "brew keg". ;-)
I might do an instructable on this one, as I follow along in the instruction booklet. Not a great "DIY" project, but it should be fairly easy to replicate using household equipment.
I assume plastic bottles are slightly safer than glass. If need be, you could always vent them a little, if you notice the bottles are getting rock-hard.
Some company who's name slips my mind right now started developing it, and it was called something else, until they joined with Java to try to be match Microsoft. In joining, they agreed to let Java name the product. They wanted to use their name in it, and I can only assume that back then, it was a scripting language.
They are really radically different languages.
You have 5 Apples and 6 Bananas, because every Can you buy has that many things in it. If you have 6 B, you have 1C and 5A. Logically, if you found you had 18B, you could work out how many A and C there were. You call the unknowns x and y. Mathematically, you would write:
5A = 6B = 1C
xA/5A = 18B/6B = yC/1C
Shift the x and y away. We will do the x first.
xA/5A * 5A = 18B/6B * 5A
xA = 18B/6B * 5A
We know B & A have a constant ratio, so we can be sure this is true. So,
18/6 = 3
3 * 5 = 15
so we have 15A's! Easy. We know that
5A = 6B = 1C
so we can now either do 15A/5A = yC/1C or, (and this is safer because we didn't work it out) 18B/6B = yC/1C
If you re-arrange, you will see that y = 3, so you have 3 boxes, with 15 Apples and 18 Bananas.
Yes, the example is quite trivial, but it shows the powerful technique that you get when you can put an unknown into an equation, and then solve it. It gets really fun when you have 7 unknowns and have to work each one out. You can find these in logic puzzle books around the world!
You might want to add a link to Tim's rice cooker still and be on the lookout for an additional still that's in the works.
http://www.instructables.com/id/EMXHDSPF2L4FTB0/
Learn Poker is up. If anyone has anything to add, be sure to let me know, and I'll collaborate.
Just wondering, is it (if it isn't I'll redo it, but..) up to Instructables' standards?