What Makes an Electric Guitar Sound Like an Electric Guitar.
posted to MetaFilter by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 4:13 PM on March 23, 2015 (58 comments)

I want your recipes for rice and beans, using combinations of beans, rice, and spices that are tasty!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by WeekendJen at 7:03 AM on April 8, 2015 (27 comments)

Got a recipe with an ingredient you can't find? Never fear, the Cook's Thesaurus is here. The Cook's Thesaurus contains information on thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools, including recommended substitutions and commentary on flavors, and is especially useful for people learning to improvise in the kitchen. Entries range from callaloo to huauzontle to Velveeta. There's even sometimes a bit of colorful commentary, as in the entry for chipped beef.
posted to MetaFilter by sciatrix at 6:42 AM on March 26, 2015 (19 comments)

Have you ever looked at a recipe in a mid-century cookbook and thought, “Ew. That is so nasty.” But you couldn’t stop looking at the recipe. Or thinking about it. As time went on, you kept going back to the book, thinking, “I wonder what it tastes like?” Then the Mid-Century Menu is for you. And so is: Barbecue Bean Jello Mold. Spaghetti Subs. Candied Crackers. Oh, and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
posted to MetaFilter by julen at 5:39 AM on March 17, 2015 (60 comments)

Kramer first became fascinated by sharpening when he was in his early twenties, hopping from restaurant to restaurant as a prep cook. In each kitchen, he found chefs who knew almost nothing about knives. (At many restaurants, in fact, the chefs got their knives sharpened by an old-timer who would drop by once a month to tune up knives in his van. For the next week, a lot of band-aids got used.) "These are our main tools," Kramer recalls thinking. "Why don't we know how to take care of them?"
posted to MetaFilter by smcg at 8:38 AM on March 11, 2015 (69 comments)

Mr. Pterodactyl and I have realized we enjoy trying and learning new things together. We especially like it if we can take a short lesson or a few short lessons first. What are some (not outrageously expensive) things we could try?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:15 AM on March 11, 2015 (47 comments)

The secret life of a public library security guard.
posted to MetaFilter by Chrysostom at 10:10 AM on February 24, 2015 (21 comments)

The Science of Cast Iron Cooking. The Truth About Cast Iron. How To Season A Cast Iron Skillet:

The skillet you want is at least fifty years old, and right now it is probably sitting on a thrift store shelf or a yard sale table. Your first task is to locate it. Until the 1960s, the final stage in manufacturing cast iron was to machine-polish each pan until the cooking surface was as smooth as glass. New cast iron is sold unpolished, that is, fresh out of the mold, with a texture like pitted Formica. The cast iron companies claim that the new, unpolished skillets are as easy to season and as non-stick as the old, polished ones—but then they would say that. You can polish new cast iron yourself with an orbital sander and some 80 grit, followed by hand sanding with 220 grit wet-dry, then 320, then 400, then 600 for good measure, but let’s face it, you’d rather have those five hours of your life and the ridges on your fingernails intact. The skillet you want is polished already.

How To Season A Cast Iron Pan. 5 Myths Of Cast Iron Cookware.
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 8:35 PM on February 17, 2015 (177 comments)

Nutshell question: "did YOUR kid act this way? What helped them? What was wrong with them?" Nutshell synopsis: WeeThumbscrew is a bright, sweet, cute nine year-old. He has also exhibited SEVERE social issues in school this year (think "has been kicked off of the school bus", think "at least one phone call from the principal every week"). He is already in therapy (with an excellent pediatric Psy.D). Miserable, gray, hopeless snowflakes inside...
posted to Ask MetaFilter by julthumbscrew at 1:40 PM on January 5, 2015 (51 comments)

Cartoonist Elana Pritchard goes to LA County Jail, draws her experiences
posted to MetaFilter by Ideefixe at 9:21 AM on January 4, 2015 (40 comments)

Target ad features child with Down syndrome (San Francisco Chronicle)
posted to MetaFilter by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:40 PM on January 1, 2015 (19 comments)

I got an amazing calligraphy set for Christmas. I have never done anything of the sort before. Where do I start?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by divabat at 8:36 PM on December 26, 2014 (11 comments)

Do you need to get the lead out? Are you having trouble getting to the point? Maybe this post all about the joys of mechanical pencils will help!

• Dave's Mechanical Pencils is probably the gold lead standard, with reviews and links about everything related to mechanical pencils, leads, erasers, and pencil-related ephemera.
  
• Vittorio Villani's Drafting and Mechanical Pencils takes more of an individual collector's approach, with many beauty shots along with the reviews.
  
• All jammed up: The Old Geezer offers advice on how to clear a lead jam.
  
• Leadhead's Pencil Blog focusses on antique and vintage mechanical pencils. They are works of art themselves, and blogger Jon Veley has even set up an online museum.
  
• Leadholder Drafting Pencil Museum hasn't been updated in a while but is an exhaustive collection of lead-related material, including a section on the mechanics of different types of mechanical pencils.
  
• If you've only seen one mechanical pencil, it was probably a Scripto.
  
• The Pencil Pages is a treasure trove of pencil information and links.
  
• Finally, Pencil Revolution (previously) does not limit itself to mechanical pencils but the entire pencil lifestyle. After all, a great pencil needs great paper. (Warning: the links will take you down a time-sucking, pencil, paper, and office-supply rabbit hole.)

posted to MetaFilter by Room 641-A at 4:50 PM on December 1, 2014 (37 comments)

The Bezier Game aims to help you understand the art and math behind Bezier curves.
posted to MetaFilter by boo_radley at 9:26 AM on September 12, 2014 (66 comments)

The Adobe Illustrator Story. Watch the Illustrator story unfold, from its beginning as Adobe’s first software product, to its role in the digital publishing revolution, to becoming an essential tool for designers worldwide
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 5:57 AM on July 31, 2014 (43 comments)

Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy : What it says on the tin.
posted to MetaFilter by bq at 7:35 PM on July 20, 2014 (43 comments)

The infamous letter denying women creative work at Disney Animation in the 1930s (previously) has an interesting addendum in a 1941 announcement by Walt Disney that the studio would be starting to admit women into the animation training program. Disney ends with a shoutout to "little Rhetta Scott, of whom you will hear more when you see Bambi."Rhetta Scott was to be the first credited female animator at Disney and drew the complex sequence of attacking hounds.Women's progress in the industry since has been slow but is recently accelerating quickly, so here is a random roundup of dazzling hand-drawn animated shorts by women:
posted to MetaFilter by Erasmouse at 12:00 PM on July 14, 2014 (10 comments)

I found my Bernette for Bernina 6800 which has been in storage of some kind since I last used it, over a decade ago. I would love to get it running again and get a lot of use out of it--what should be my next steps?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by chaiminda at 5:10 PM on June 22, 2014 (7 comments)

Eric Meyer is an expert on the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) system used to control the appearance of web documents. He's the author of multiple books on CSS, and the "chaperone" of the css-discuss mailing list. His daughter, Rebecca, passed away, and her family asked that those attending memorial services wear purple, her favorite color. Dominique Hazaël-Massieux requested that a purple be added to the CSS color list be named "Becca Purple" in her memory. Eric suggested that it be named rebeccapurple because his daughter wanted everyone to call her Rebecca after she turned six, and she was six for almost twelve hours. Today, a co-chair of the CSS Working Group announced approval of the change. From now on, rebeccapurple means #663399.
posted to MetaFilter by grouse at 8:23 AM on June 21, 2014 (161 comments)

Portrait of a Young Man with Down Syndrome. A father reflects on his son's search for employment.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 8:15 AM on May 27, 2014 (51 comments)

amp-what is a quick, interactive reference of HTML character entities and common Unicode characters, 8859-1 characters, marks, symbols, and the like 🍻
posted to MetaFilter by exogenous at 8:27 AM on April 25, 2014 (32 comments)

Dreamworks animator Daniel Hashimoto turns his three-year-old into an action movie hero. (via)
posted to MetaFilter by quiet coyote at 7:41 AM on March 27, 2014 (13 comments)

Italian advocacy group Coor Down helped a pregnant woman understand what to expect with her soon-to-be born Down Syndrome child by gathering 15 people with Down Syndrome from various countries to answer her question.
posted to MetaFilter by gman at 9:29 AM on March 17, 2014 (14 comments)

In this episode, we follow an assembly line as it processes bags of Oreo-style cookies into raw materials.
posted to MetaFilter by anazgnos at 9:20 AM on March 12, 2014 (55 comments)

My 22-year-old cousin with Downs syndrome has a Facebook account. I'm worried she's posting inappropriate things.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by quadrilaterals at 5:34 AM on February 26, 2014 (9 comments)

Archive.org is known for archiving a great number of things, broadly classified in terms of the web, written and printed text, studio audio and live music, and video. The most recent addition comes in various realms of software, as outlined by Jason Scott (MeFi's own jscott). But the newest addition is notable because it brings old software back through online emulation - behold, the Historical Software collection, from productivity software like VisiCalc (1979), WordStar (1981 Osborne 1 version), and The Print Shop (1984, NYT review) to vintage games including Eastern Front 1941 (1981), The Hobbit (1982), and Karateka (1984). If you're interested in the way this all works, you can read more on the Archive.org blog.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 8:39 PM on February 13, 2014 (45 comments)

OnlyTheBestRecipes.com : The top 1% of recipes from sites like allrecipes, food.com, epicurious, and foodnetwork. [via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:39 PM on February 3, 2014 (50 comments)

This hockey ref's helmet cam is the future of televised sports
posted to MetaFilter by nevercalm at 4:08 PM on December 31, 2013 (22 comments)

At out wits' end - we have a very smart, very angry, very sad, strong-willed 6 year old who has decided that he is going to sleep until Christmas and that he is not going to school ever. Flurries of special snowflake details inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 6:59 AM on December 5, 2013 (90 comments)

Epic Conway's Game of Life. Sure, there's been lots of Conway's Life stuff on MeFi previously [1 2 3], but this squeezes a lot of awesome stuff into a short video.
posted to MetaFilter by Wolfdog at 6:35 AM on November 5, 2013 (26 comments)

ShapeWright Ship will take your name (or really any string of text) and generate a 3D model of a spaceship based on it.
posted to MetaFilter by brundlefly at 3:50 PM on October 31, 2013 (44 comments)

Ray tracing is a computer graphics technique that produces realistic images of a three-dimensional scene. In 1987, Paul Heckbert (then at Pixar) announced a contest to produce a ray tracer in the minimum amount of code, as he describes in "A Minimal Ray Tracer." In 2009, Andrew Kensler (then at the University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute) created a C++ version that can fit on a business card. Fabien Sanglard explicates this amazing piece of code in "Decyphering the Business Card Raytracer."
posted to MetaFilter by grouse at 12:34 PM on September 22, 2013 (19 comments)

MetaFilter's own Jessamyn West (jessamyn) interviewed in today's NPR feature, For Disaster Preparedness: Pack A Library Card?
posted to MetaFilter by jim in austin at 4:27 AM on August 12, 2013 (60 comments)

We had a need to prank a coworker with the "best prank ever", and we decided the best way to do it was to wait for an occasion when she and her boyfriend were out of the house for the day, and then turn their house into Gnomeland, New Hampshire's Premiere Gnome Destination. This involved installing approximately 500 gnomes in an around her house, including hiding gnomes in all sorts of places across the property. And we put up a giant "Gnomeland" banner. And replaced the photos in her house with pictures of gnomes traveling to tourist landmarks like the Hollywood sign and the Golden Gate Bridge.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by kaszeta at 2:34 PM on July 24, 2013 (8 comments)

Due to a couple of recent MetaFilter user requests to return it to working status, I have updated the popular (6K+ downloads on userscripts, more elsewhere) HowlsOfOutrage Greasemonkey script. The script displays a popup window of all users favoriting a particular MetaFilter post or comment on mouse hover over the favorites text. In addition, I've updated the Chrome extension, and added a new Safari extension. Testing was successful, but not exhaustive. All completely free as always, natch.
posted to MetaTalk by mdevore at 3:17 PM on July 1, 2013 (42 comments)

What's the best platform for developing cross-platform (ie mac, windows, android, desktop, tablet & mobile) games these days?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by missmagenta at 4:36 AM on June 22, 2013 (8 comments)

Fifty years of workplace safety posters courtesy of Geheugenvannederland.nl (Memory of the Netherlands).
posted to MetaFilter by Think_Long at 12:54 PM on May 6, 2013 (8 comments)

Remember when Isaac proposed to Amy? (previously on MeFi.) Here's what they've been up to since.
posted to MetaFilter by estlin at 11:10 PM on April 25, 2013 (20 comments)

I'm failing miserable at rooting my Incredible. I'm very, very new to the whole rooting concept, but the low storage space detailed here is unacceptable, and I can't afford a bigger SD card or new phone. Help?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by csox at 6:29 PM on March 13, 2013 (5 comments)

Last June I wrote a series of six blog posts about my autistic son's experience during the final night of operation for Snow White's Scary Adventures at Walt Disney World (MeFi Projects page, posted on the Blue). I was encouraged to write a novel about my son's entire experience, and as of this morning the novel has launched and is available through my website in signed and standard print editions, as well as through Amazon in both print and Kindle editions.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Lokheed at 7:46 AM on February 15, 2013 (5 comments)

When Bill Met Shelly Bill Ott will always remember the moment he met Shelley Belgard. It was in spring 1988. He was 12 and sometimes shy. Into music, sports and, suddenly, girls.
posted to MetaFilter by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:38 AM on February 8, 2013 (27 comments)

Faux sports team t-shirts for important people, events, and movements in history. What can I say, I like to combine a visual style that's usually associated with being "macho" and interests that are stereotypically considered "geeky". If you have any additional suggestions they'd be most welcome!
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Jezztek at 6:13 AM on November 24, 2012 (15 comments)

Mangajin was created in the early 90's as a monthly English publication for students of the Japanese language. Unlike most text books that focused solely on teaching people Japanese through boring text, Mangajin was different in that it focused on showing readers a page of manga and then a page of English translations. As great of an idea that this sounds today, it didn't catch on in the 90's and Mangajin ended in 1996. Now manga in America is as popular as ever, which is why I have decided to put Mangajin onto this web site. Fans of Japanese manga and who are looking to learn Japanese will undoubtedly find Mangajin very useful!
posted to MetaFilter by KokuRyu at 10:04 PM on July 5, 2012 (32 comments)

Scott Widak, 47, has Down syndrome and is terminally ill with liver disease. To cope with his uncle's challenging situation, Widak’s nephew, Sean O’Connor, turned to the Reddit community to see if anyone would be interested in sending a letter to his uncle. O’Connor then included a link to a news article about Widak and his art, along with two photos of him and his mother, a P.O. box address and a few things he’s interested in, like Johnny Cash. Following the post, Widak received hundreds of letters from all over the world. From Mashable: a story of random acts of kindness.
posted to MetaFilter by Potomac Avenue at 12:38 PM on May 15, 2012 (18 comments)

What if Edward Gorey illustrated Lovecraft? It'd look like John Kenn Mortensen's work, that's what. Except Mortensen makes his art in his spare time, on post-it notes. He has an art book.
posted to MetaFilter by Lou Stuells at 2:35 PM on May 4, 2012 (39 comments)

Help us go gluten free--the kid edition! How do we do this?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by biscuits at 11:43 AM on April 16, 2012 (44 comments)

For those who wonder what possible downsides there could be to having big boobs, there is now an illustrated guide, Busty Girl Problems which highlights some of the everyday problems having a big bust causes. It's not *all* bad though, there are a few perks. 
posted to MetaFilter by HMSSM at 5:47 AM on April 13, 2012 (182 comments)

My four-year-old woke crying in the middle of the night from a bad dream last week. This has never happened before. All he will say is that it was "very scary." Since then, he insists on all the lights being on in his room all night.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by 41swans at 4:46 AM on April 5, 2012 (52 comments)

I am the proud new owner of a soldering iron. What are some good first projects? Must be cheap and at least marginally useful. Blinky lights are a plus!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Scientist at 3:57 PM on March 15, 2012 (17 comments)

Looking for a non-icky sex ed book for a 12-year old boy.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wandering_not_lost at 6:13 PM on January 22, 2012 (15 comments)