While Jimmy DiResta always makes his builds look easy, this is one that we might actually be able to do. This month Jimmy builds a massive, eleven-foot-plus farmhouse dining table, using a very limited amount of tools, reminding us that you don’t need a fully-outfitted shop in order to build something as huge and sturdy as this.
Jimmy shows us how he handles one of the most important parts on a table of this size—the corner bracing, which needs to be both sturdy and in this case knock-down. And as always the video is sprinkled with helpful tips, including the easiest way in the world to make boards look weathered. (Hint: Get an assist from Mother Nature.)
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If you’re going through Game of Thrones withdrawal—and aren’t we all—then you need to watch this video immediately.
It begins as a supercut of the amazing bummers of Jon’s short life (well, lives) but segues into his semi-coronation as the King in the North, all while highlighting the many, many, many times Jon has kicked ass throughout Westeros. It’s astoundingly well done.
I know Jon gets a lot of crap for being emo, but as this video reminds us, he’s put up with some absurdly horrible shit—including being murdered—and still managed to become the most spectacular badass on both sides of the Wall.
There are dozens of beautiful National Parks in the United States, but if you could only see one, this video and graphic guide from Expedia helps you narrow your choices down to 12 great parks you can explore, all of which are known for specific landmarks or exceptional natural beauty.
From the Hidden Lake overlook in Glacier National Park to the Big Tree Loop in Redwood National Park, all the way to bear watching in Katmai National Park, the guide is full of some of the country’s best and most popular parks, along with some suggestions of what to do in them, when to go, and of course, what everyone else there will likely be doing when you arrive. Each park has a suggested activity you can do in one day, a photo spot where you can take some memorable photos, a great walk or activity you can do in the same day, and of course, an interesting animal you’ll likely find along the way. Check out the full graphic below, or the video above.
If you don’t grill very often that probably means you don’t clean your grill regularly either. If your grill grates are covered in burnt food and rust, you can get it ready for a cookout with a few household staples.
In this video from the HouseholdHacker YouTube channel, you’ll find some clever cleaning tricks for around the house, like sprucing up your grill that’s seen better days. First, pull off your grill grates and place them on a flat surface that can get a little messy. Then slice up an old potato that’s going green into thick pieces that are easy to hold onto, spread vegetable over the grill grates, and sprinkle plenty of coarse salt over them. Now scrub the grates with the potato pieces. The abrasive combination of the salt and potato will remove all the burnt gunk and rust. And once it’s clean, your grill grates will have the perk of being non-stick and ready to cook on too.
Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2008. Abedin was grilled about her boss’ email proclivities by a Judicial Watch attorney this week.
We already knew that Hillary Clinton’s e-mail and mobile device issues were likely a pain for State Department employees—and some foreign governments as well. But new testimony recorded on Tuesday by one of Clinton’s top aides illuminates the extent of those headaches.
Huma Abedin is the vice-chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign and the former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to Clinton during her stint as Secretary of State. She was deposed on June 28 by an attorney representing the conservative action group Judicial Watch as part of discovery for a lawsuit being brought against Clinton. Judicial Watch published thetranscript of that deposition yesterday, and Abedin revealed what she knew about Clinton’s use of the mail server and how she was "frustrated" with the technical glitches caused by Clinton’s mobile device and e-mail travails.
Both Clinton and Abedin had accounts on the clintonemail.com server, which was originally set up at the Clinton residence by staffers of former president Bill Clinton prior to the family’s arrival at the State Department. (The server would later be managed by Platte River Networks, a managed IT services firm, with security provided by Datto.) Clinton had been using a BlackBerry mail account through AT&T during the 2008 presidential campaign, and she had been having "technical issues" with the account, according to Abedin. Clinton switched to the private server when she got a new device, and Abedin was given an account on the server after she lost access to her Senate e-mail account. Abedin said she used it primarily for personal business in addition to a personal Yahoo e-mail account (where she would later forward press clippings received from a State Department clipping service, she said).
But Abedin said that once she arrived at the State Department, she primarily used a State.gov e-mail account for business while Clinton continued to use her clintonemail.com account. On occasion when traveling, Abedin would use her clintonmail.com account. Abedin testified that she also used that account when State’s e-mail service was down—which apparently happened with some regularity. As for Clinton, "most of her State Department business was done in person, in meetings at the State Department or when she traveled, or by phone," Abedin testified. "When she used e-mail off-hours and when we were on the road, she did use Clintonemail.com." Clinton never used a State.gov account, according to the deposition.
This situation created some issues while Clinton was traveling. Since she was never issued a device for secure e-mail, Clinton used her personal BlackBerry for communications. And as Ars previously reported, mail filtering problems often prevented her e-mails from getting through.
During the deposition, Abedin discussed an e-mail exchange with Clinton in which Abedin encouraged the Secretary to either get and use a State.gov e-mail address or to have her clintonemail.com address added to the State Department’s e-mail directory. The thread began with Clinton reacting to missing a phone call with another nation’s foreign minister because Abedin and State Department’s operations department had never gotten her e-mail signing off on the call (because, again, the e-mail was blocked by State’s spam filter).
"She missed the call because… I never got her e-mail giving us the sign-off to do it," Abedin recounted. "So she wasn’t able to do her job, do what she needed to do. My response would have been, ‘Here are some suggestions.’ I cannot tell you if I called somebody else. I don’t remember calling anybody else, or if I on my own said, ‘Here are some solutions so that your e-mails get through to us so that we can place calls to foreign officials.’ And, you know, she clearly missed the window in this exchange."
Judicial Watch asked what Abedin meant in her message to Clinton about "releasing your e-mail address to the department." The aide responded with uncertainty, saying, "I’m not sure I would know how to define that then or define that now. It might have also just been my… being frustrated back at the fact that I wasn’t getting her messages. Just reading the exchange, she seems frustrated because she’s not able to do her job. I seem frustrated back."
In the same e-mail thread, Clinton agreed to getting a State department account or mobile device, "but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible." Abedin told Judicial Watch that she understood that as a reference to Clinton’s personal e-mails, not her address. Clinton didn’t want her personal e-mails being stored in the State Department’s servers and becoming public. Shortly after the exchange, Abedin said, Clinton’s e-mails started coming through again. "The matter resolved itself, or was resolved, and we went back to the prior practice," Abedin explained—the practice of Clinton continuing to use her personal e-mail account for State Department business.
When questioned about how things were resolved, Abedin again responded with uncertainty. "I couldn’t define to you exactly what [happened]—I don’t recall any response other than once the system was back up and running, that it was… we just proceeded with business the way it was before."
When I was a kid, my father had guns. I knew this. My older sister knew this. It was never a secret, and we were never scared of guns — because Dad made a point of showing the guns to us, showing us how they worked, and letting us handle and shoot them under his supervision. The one rule above all others was this: We could look at, touch, and handle any gun that we wanted to — as long as we asked Dad to do so. If we ever touched a gun at any other time, hell would ensue.
And you know what? We never messed with guns without Dad’s permission. We didn’t even want to. Why would we? It made no sense. If we could safely handle them while he taught us, and if we respected their power because we’d fired them, what temptation did we have to defy such liberal (in the pure sense of the word) rules?
As I matured, I realized what a wonderful thing my father had done for us. He took the mystery away from guns and made them real to us. For so many, guns are things they see on television, in video games, and in the movies… and perhaps glimpse in a nightstand drawer or safe from time to time. They’re not real… and if guns are treated as taboo by their parents, kids will automatically attach mystique or allure to them.
Teach your kids about guns. Please. They may need to use one someday… and regardless of that, we all want your sons and daughters to make the right decisions when they encounter a gun. And let’s face it — more and more households have guns in them (as well they should). Education is the key to safety.
The short video below shows a wonderful thing: People bringing guns to school in order to teach children about them.
As one student says in the video, “You should never be afraid of a gun. Never, ever. You should have confidence around a gun.”
An overflowing inbox is a common problem for everyone. It almost seems like those emails come in at a faster rate than we can take action on them. As with most things in life, it’s best to automate a few tasks than put the burden on yourself. That’s what Gmail’s filters are for. We’ve shown you how to set up filters in Gmail and other email services, and the process is still more or less the same. Gmail has made it slightly easier now. You see that big search bar at the top? Click the little drop-down arrow, and you’ll…
Mac: You can do just about anything from the command line on a Mac, but with so many utilities, it’s hard to remember what commands do what. Mac CLI is a set of utilities that simplifies that.
Mac CLI is basically a set of developer-friendly utilities in one package with easy-to-remember commands. Mac CLI can handle basic stuff like closing and opening apps alongside a set of network commands, LAMP utilities, SSH utilities, and tons more. Every command has a sensible name, like mac php:info or mac find:biggest-files so once you get used to using Mac CLI, it’s a heck of lot easier to remember how to do everything. You can find the whole list of commands and utilities included here over on GitHub.
At this point, even the most avid defenders of the new Ghostbusters are having to admit that things aren’t looking good. At least that is the case with the recent new theme by Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliott. It is basically terrible. Perhaps to save face and avoid more backlash, Sony is moving in another direction for the film’s Japanese release. They took the original Ghostbusters song, updated it a bit, and translated it into Japanese in this music video.
This is still pretty weird, but kind of cute too. Still, it’s way more pleasant than that Fall Out Boy / Missy Elliott mess. My ears are actually happy with most of this video. Apparently, the women featured in the video are actually popular Japanese comedians, and their video is more entertaining than any of the scenes I’ve seen from the movie so far.