http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Z_hx_-87Lp4/five-best-wallpaper-sites

Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs.

Photo by goincase. Wallpaper on monitor available here.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite wallpaper site. We quickly learned that—while not everyone has a strong opinion about Linux distributions or encryption software—everyone has a favorite wallpaper site; readers logged nearly 500 votes for their favorite wallpaper sites. Now we're back to share the five most popular sites used by Lifehacker readers to dress up their monitors with fresh wallpaper.

VladStudio

Vlad Studio features the work of Russian wallpaper artist Vlad Gerasimov. He cranks out hundreds of great wallpapers, ranging from holiday themes to abstract art. Vlad Studio has wallpaper in a wide range of sizes suited for everything from your mobile phone to a multi-monitor setup. Mobile wallpaper and desktop resolutions at 1600x1200 and below are available for free. Images larger than that are available only to registered users. If you want access to the larger resolutions, now is a great time to pick up a subscription. Vlad is running a Christmas-special where the $30 lifetime membership is available for $20.

4Chan Wallpapers/General/

4Chan is an image-based forum where anyone can anonymously post and share images and comments. It's divided into sub-boards devoted to all sorts of topics like Anime, video games, etc., but has gained notoriety for some of its more unsavory sub-boards. The /Wallpaper/ board, nonetheless, is bustling and updated nearly 24/7 with images from around the web. Since the 4Chan boards are a bit kludgy to use if you're not trying to comment and just looking for images, a variety of scrapers have sprung up to help you pick through all the images in /Wallpaper/. You can visit 4Chan directly at the link above or you can use services like Nik.Bot and 4Walled to browse through the wallpapers available through 4Chan. Be strongly forewarned, however: although the /Wallpaper/ forum is much tamer than other areas of 4Chan, you'll still find a large number of Maxim-level NSFW wallpaper images and the occasional Playboy-level NSFW images when you're browsing. If you're not prepared to explain some really awkward internet memes to your boss, you'd better save 4Chan /Wallpaper/ for home.

Social Wallpapering

Social Wallpapering borrows the vote up/down model used by many social aggregators (Reddit, Digg, etc.) and applies it to desktop wallpaper. Users vote up their favorite, vote down their least favorites, and upload their own images to be ranked by other users. You can browse by rank, category, view random images, and sort by screen size to help you drill down through the huge collection to find the wallpaper you want. Prefer to grab everything and sort it out later? Social Wallpaper makes their entire wallpaper collection available for download via BitTorrent. If you're looking for a site where you can not only find fresh wallpaper but participate in helping your fellow wallpaper lovers find the best images, Social Wallpapering is a solid choice.

Interfacelift

Interfacelift is an enormous repository of wallpaper images. Thanks to the button-based layout at the top of the screen, you can easily drill down through wallpapers using factors like rating, number of comments, screen type, and so on. Once you select your screen type—widescreen, full screen, dual monitors, etc.—you can pick from available resolutions so you never end up clicking on an image and finding out it's not available in the resolution you want. Every search result gives you information about the image plus a drop down menu for size selection and a quick download. Interfacelift has recently added a feature called "The Loupe" which allows users to vote on incoming submissions to accelerator the process of new materials being added to the database.

DeviantART Wallpaper

If you've visited your fair share of wallpaper sites and gotten tired of the endless stream of glowing line-art and video-game wallpapers, then you'll enjoy browsing the wallpaper archives of DeviantART—a subdivision of the artist-centric site. You'll find everything at DeviantART from the more common to glow-lines variety of abstract wallpaper to quirky paintings, photographs, and computer-rendered images. Most of the users at DeviantART are prolific contributors, so if you find a wallpaper you really like, make sure to check out the user's gallery to see if they have any other gems to share. DeviantART doesn't have the advanced wallpaper-oriented search features that many of the other wallpaper sites have, but you can still search by image size and sort by popularity.

Which Wallpaper Site Is Best?(polls)

We have two honorary mentions to hand out this week to extremely deserving sites that have contributed a multitude of awesome wallpapers over the years: Digital Blasphemy and Mandolux. Got more to say about your favorite (or a favorite that didn't make the list)? Let's hear it in the comments.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Rav4QXldUrY/use-hidden-rope-lights-for-subdued-accent-lighting

If you're looking for a way to add soft ambient lighting to an area of your home or office, rope lights are a great way to provide accent lighting without the harshness of focused spotlights or lamps.

We've showed you how to set up home and office lighting with rope lights before, but it's a technique that's cheap and flexible enough to be worth revisiting.

In the above photo Melinda, an Apartment Therapy reader, put rope lights behind her headboard to cast a warm glow up the wall and provide subdued bedroom lighting. While rope lights have a pleasant warm color to them to begin with, the deep red color of the walls certainly doesn't hurt.

Rope lights can also be placed above cabinets for soft down-lighting or beneath furniture for a diffused floor-level light. If you're looking for interesting new lighting ideas, take a stroll through our Featured Workspaces to find quite a variety of novel ways for using subtle—and not so subtle!—lighting.

Have your own favorite way for varying and enhancing the lighting in your home or office? Let's hear about it in the comments.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/flexible_furniture.html

Part card trick, part slinky, the Flexible Love chair seems like it could be more than a novelty. The end pieces look shopbottable, but the bellows seems like it would take a lot of patience to cut, fold and glue.

FlexibleLove™ furniture incorporates an 'accordion-like, honeycomb' structure to create durable furniture pieces produced from widely-available recycled materials. FlexibleLove furniture, such as FlexibleLove Earth 16, are made from recycled paper and recycled wood waste, and are produced using pre-existing manufacturing processes in order to reduce their overall impact on the environment.

The name "Flexible Love" was derived from the concept of a 'flexible love-seat' - seating that could hold from one to as many as sixteen individuals; changing length and shape with a simple pull at each end. A honeycomb structure, used throughout the entire Flexible Love line, produces an accordion-like result that allows each piece to be extended and collapsed with ease.

http://toolmonger.com/2009/12/27/tv-tonight-shop-night-30/

http://toolmonger.com/?p=36144

(TV Tonight, Sunday, December 27th, 2009) Not much on — spend the night waxing your skis.

All times are central

• How It’s Made: Motorcycle Engines, Glass, Enamel Sculptures, Paper, and Vaulting (Science, 5:00 pm)
• How It’s Made: Baseball Gloves, Medical Electrodes, and Stetson Hats (Science, 5:30 pm)
• Holmes on Homes: Taking a Bath (HGTV, 9:00 pm)
• Successful Farming Machinery Show (RFD-TV, 9:30 pm)
• Deconstruction: Paint (DIY, 10:00 pm)
• Deconstruction: Bricks (DIY, 10:30 pm)

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/universe_ring.html

Universe ring...

To22 created something nearly perfect. A continuous ring, delicately proportioned, beautifully polished and seemingly flawless. There is only one tiny imperfection. A speck, no larger than a piece of dust. At a glance, it is barely noticeable. Upon close examination, it appears intentional and more clearly defined. Only magnification reveals the actual object set within the miniature interior. It is a model of the known universe. Inspired by the writing of Stephen Hawking and loosely based on the anthropic theory to22 puts our daily pursuits into perspective and reminds us that we are always a part of something bigger.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/cool_maze-box_on_thingiverse.html

Thingiverse user wizard23 designed this cool puzzle box (which he calls the "A-Mazing Box") using a custom Python script and Clifford Wolf's freeware OpenSCAD program, then printed it on a MakerBot. His script lets you import your own maze as a PNG so you can design one with a unique solution.

More:

• Make: Projects - Simple 3D models with OpenSCAD
• OpenSCAD: Constructive solid geometry CAD at long last

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/L8DDcgoWwX0/this-weeks-top-downloads

• XBMC Updates to 9.11 Camelot, Brings Awesome New Look, Improved Features (Windows/Mac/Linux)
  XBMC is a killer open-source, cross-platform media center, and today they've released XBMC 9.11, introducing a whole new default look and feel, and it's very friendly on the eyes.
• Opera 10.5 Pre-Alpha is All About Speed (and Private Browsing) (Windows/Mac)
  Opera's developers have released a very unstable but promising version of their web browser into the open. What does Opera 10.5 have to offer? If a quick test is any indication, faster JavaScript speed than any browser out there.
• Songbird 1.4.2 Released, Brings New Look, CD Ripping, and Device Support (Windows/Mac/Linux)
  Previously mentioned Songbird, the open source, Mozilla-powered, supposedly iTunes-killing media player has updated to 1.4.2, bringing a host of new features, including AAC metadata support, a new feather (skin), CD ripping, and support for many mass storage devices.
• LogMeIn Express Makes Screensharing Simple (Windows)
  LogMeIn Express is a screensharing tool from the makers of the popular remote-desktop software, LogMeIn. With this new offering, sharing your desktop is as simple as sending your friend or associate a URL.
• Speed Dial Beefs Up Chrome's New Tab Page (Chrome)
  The oft-imitated New Tab button on Google's Chrome browser isn't bad, but it's not the most customizable either. Soup it up—and access your favorite bookmarked web sites quickly—with Speed Dial.
• Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 Available, Faster, and Less Buggy (Windows/Mac/Linux)
  If you've been riding the Firefox 3.6 beta train, Mozilla just pushed out the whopping fifth beta of Firefox 3.6—with over a hundred bug fixes to improve performance, stability, and security, along with several all-around improvements.
• Bodega Is a One-Stop Shop for New Apps for Your Mac (Mac)
  Trying out new software is fun. Digging around all over the internet to find cool stuff—not so much. Bodega is a download that does makes quick work of finding new apps for your Mac.
• Get the Classic Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7 (Windows 7)
  If you miss having a network activity icon that actually indicates if your network is active or not, this handy little hack will swap the static Windows 7 icon for the classic version.
• Googsystray Notifies You of New Activity Across Google Services in One System Tray App (Windows/Linux)
  Google has so many different services these days that installing a notification app for each one gets cumbersome quickly. Free system tray utility Googsystray watches Gmail, Google Voice, Calendar, Reader, and Wave so you can set it and forget it.
• Droplr Offers Simple Drag and Drop File Sharing for Mac OS X (Mac)
  Feeling left out because of all the neat file-sharing applications for Windows? Droplr adds drag and drop support to OS X for sharing just about everything.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/audible_emf_detector_in_steampunk_s.html

JingleJoe's electromagnetic field detector looks quite awesome -

This device uses a circuit that I constructed myself to detect electromagnetic fields. All flowing electricity gives off an electromagnetic field, with this device you can hear them all! They can be musical and harsh, the variety of electromagnetic sounds you can detect is limited only by the number of electronic doohickeys you own! As an added bonus it also detects ghosts.

The device has three outputs for displaying the electromagnetic fields to your human senses: a speaker, a stereo quarter-inch jack socket and an analog meter.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Jn8BX25WrTY/turn-light-art-into-an-animated-movie

You might remember when we shared a cool way to make light-based art with an LED flashlight and a long camera exposure. Take it a step further by creating not just a light art picture, but an animated movie.

The process is simple in concept, but pretty ambitious in what you can create. How ambitious?

"Lucky" by All India Radio, is the viewable blood, sweat and tears of Australian based animation company ‘Dee Pee Studios'.

It involves a painstaking animation technique, whereby the team paints in the air with glow sticks, frame after to frame to create entire sequences of animation, usually taking a whole night to shoot.

Check out the video below to see their light-art masterpiece:

Once you've shot your hundreds of light-art pictures, you'll need a way to animate them. You'll find plenty of simple animation tools online like previously reviewed PhotoLapse, more than adequate for turning your SD card's bounty into a glowing animated movie.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/ZW6KTnNo_E0/turn-an-inexpensive-ikea-shelf-into-a-kitchen-bar

Apartment kitchen design often leaves a lot to be desired. If you want to make your kitchen floor plan more efficient, this IKEA shelf turned kitchen bar will expand your counter space without much hassle or expense.

IKEA-centric site IKEAHacker posts a how-to story from reader Solangie, who had a kitchen that lacked for counter space and storage. A kitchen peninsula would have been added a huge amount of both to his kitchen but landlords frown on structural changes. His solution? Remix some cheap IKEA components in a novel way:

I bought the Expedit shelving unit and placed it horizontally. Then went to Home Depot and bought two peace of lumber 2x4 and made a base to bring it up by 7". Also I got a plywood, cut it to fit the shelving unit (I wanted to hide it and not leave open on both sides) and spray painted the plywood black. I used the Lagan countertop which only cost $40 dollars for 8'.

The irregular shape of the Expedit shelving makes for varied heights and storage spots for equally as irregular kitchen appliances, pots, and pans. Check out the full site for additional pictures of the project in progress. If you're inspired to turn a bookcase into something new, check out how to turn an IKEA bookcase into a window seat. If you have a kitchen hack of your own to share, let's hear about it in the comments.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/jeris_homebrew_pinball_day_7.html

Jeri Ellsworth continues work on her homebrew pinball machine, now themed: "As Seen on TV!" It's cool the way she's involving her chat rooms in brainstorming ideas for the build. Can't wait to see the finish product.

Jeri Ellsworth's YouTube channel

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/cloak_of_invisibility_here_we_come.html

From PhysOrg.com:

A team of researchers at the FOM institute AMOLF (The Netherlands) has succeeded for the first time in powering an energy transfer between nano-electromagnets with the magnetic field of light.

This breakthrough is of major importance in the quest for magnetic 'meta-materials' with which light rays can be deflected in every possible direction. This could make it possible to produce perfect lenses, and in the fullness of time, even 'invisibility cloaks.'

[Thanks, Alberto!]

Above picture is of invisibility artist Liu Bolin (which has nothing to do directly with this story, as his method of invisibility is far more low-tech).

Tiny nano-electromagnets turn a cloak of invisibility into a possibility

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/use_digital_io_pins_to_measure_anal.html

Building a cool microcontroller-based project, and wish you had just one or two more analog inputs? Or perhaps you are trying to make something using the tiniest microcontroller possible, and don't have any analog ports in the first place? Well, it turns out that you can use a couple of digital I/O pins and a single capacitor to build a crude analog to digital converters (ADC). Let's Make Robots user Telefox has a nice overview about building a Low-cost ADC using only Digital I/O. The technique isn't new, but it is a cool idea, and building your own would be a great way to learn how ADCs work.

If you are itching to squeeze as much performance out of your tinly microcontroller as possible, I second his recommendation of Microchip's Tips 'n Tricks manual. It's a neat guide that I read when I was getting started with microcontrollers, and learned all sorts of cool tips from- including the technique that is now referred to as Charlieplexing.

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/XqEyAaKlcrY/build-a-color+aware-backlight-for-your-hdtv-setup

If you're looking to add some polish to your home theater setup, this guide to creating a DIY clone of the Philips Ambilight technology will give your videos a backlight that changes colors to match the on-screen action.

If you're unfamiliar with the Ambilight technology, it's a backlight system in some Phillips televisions where the color of the screen is transmitted to LEDs behind the television set, so that the background lighting matches the color on the screen. Fans of the technology claim it reduces eyes strain and enhances the theater experience.

DIYer Fun3 wanted to recreate the effect on his television. His solution was to wire an Arduino to a series of LED strips and and control the color by a USB cable hooked up to his HTPC. Check out the video below to see it in action.

Check out his site for schematics, code, and a ton of tips and tricks for calibrating your LEDs to your home theater. If you've experimented with back lighting your home theater—color changing or otherwise—let's hear about it in the comments.