WAYS TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF YOUTUBE

It isn't all about cat videos. YouTube generates billions of views a day across news, music, movies, shows, live streams, and vlogs, covering just about every topic you can think of. What's more, all this content is free, as long as you don't mind sitting through a few ads.
Among the millions of hours of uploaded video, you can find a host of educational guides dishing out advice, tutorials, lessons, and more. Which means you can learn a myriad of skills from the comfort of your couch. Here are 8 abilities you can start learning for free.

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Cook like a pro

Cook up a storm with YouTube's help.

Food Wishes/YouTube

Culinary skills are easy to find on YouTube—the platform is awash with cooking tutorials, and as the Food Network has taught us, video is a particularly good way for chefs to teach their secrets. Just prop up a laptop or iPad up in the kitchen and search for the dish you want to make. You'll find a long list of video hosts waiting to guide you through the process.
Here are a few of our favorites. YouTube has cooking videos for all levels of experience—this example from Brothers Green Eats is one of the most relaxed beginner videos we've ever seen. Food Wishes is a good channel for anything from coconut rice to roast chicken. And Everyday Food takes an engaging and down-to-earth approach to a plethora of different dishes.

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Build a computer

Detailed computer construction guides are available.

Bitwit/YouTube

It's easy enough to find your next computer online. But by building your own, you can learn more about how the machine works and get a custom product fitted to your exact specifications. Plus, you'll save some money along the way by buying the components separately and doing the labor yourself.
You're not alone in your DIY computer quest: Plenty of YouTubers will help you out with tips and advice. Bitwit has a comprehensive step-by-step guide that goes into plenty of detail for beginners, while this NewEgg video is the start of an even more detailed tutorial. You can also look up videos on the individual parts of the process, like installing the processor.

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Play an instrument

Whatever the instrument or musical style, YouTube can help.

GuitarJamz/YouTube

Want to start a band? Whatever type of instrument you're interested in playing, someone somewhere will have uploaded a YouTube video to teach you all about it. Admittedly, the quality of these videos can vary. A lot. Going from complete beginner to full expert on YouTube alone isn't easy, but with time and patience, you can at least pick up some basics and improve your skills.
GuitarJamz has a gentle introduction to playing guitar. If keyboards are more your style, then check out these tutorial videos from Lypur. Once you make progress with your instrument of choice, you can look up instructions for specific songs—a lot of popular tunes have their own tutorials.

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Fix up your home

Watch videos about everything to do with home repairs and DIY.

bandq/YouTube

Any tasks you need to tackle around the house, you can learn how to do them on YouTube. Whether it's repairing your washing machine or putting up wallpaper, just hone your search carefully. To winnow down your options and get relevant results, make your search terms as specific as possible by including the make and model of the device and the technique that you're trying to learn.
Maybe you want to clean your bath or tile part of your kitchen. Perhaps you need to learn the ropes of fitting doors or putting down decking. Spend a few hours browsing the various videos and channels on YouTube, and you can become a cleaning, repairing, fitting, DIY expert.

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Defend yourself

YouTube can also help with self-defense moves.

Wing Chun Tai Chi JKD/YouTube

You never think you're going to need self-defense moves until you actually do. So it's best to be prepared—your wallet, purse, or even your life could depend on it. YouTube offers comprehensive video courses from channels such as Active Self-Protection and Self-Defense Tips and Tricks.
Admittedly, you're not going to become a complete martial arts expert if you just watch YouTube videos and do nothing else. But the platform has plenty of helpful, short tutorials that anyone can fall back on in an emergency, like these moves from Wing Chun Tai Chi JKD, or these techniques from Fight Tips. Just make sure to get off the couch once you're done watching and actually practice these skills.

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Draw and paint

You can find videos for all styles of drawing and painting.

PaintersNest/YouTube

While YouTube isn't (yet) able to magically give you innate natural talent, it is overflowing with brilliant advice for keen drawers and painters. No matter what style of art you're pursuing, from oil painting to charcoal drawings, you can definitely up your creativity game.
Like cooking tutorials, these art videos cover all levels of experience and ability. For example, PaintersNest offers this gentle introduction to painting flower watercolors for beginners. For more advanced artists, Madison Dunaway looks in detail at the more complicated pointillism technique.

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Speak a foreign language

Start speaking a new lingo in no time.

Get Germanized/YouTube

If you want to study a new language for free, your best option is a dedicated smartphone app. But a wealth of YouTube videos give you another path into picking up the lingo of a foreign country. You'll find everything from complete courses to exercises that focus on specific sets of words—so use precise search terms.
Beginners can try Get Germanized, a great resource for mastering German basics from scratch. For students who already have the basics down but want to practice conversational skills, check out Learn French with Vincent. You can also find plenty of linguistics tips for mastering any foreign language, like the ones in Sid Efromovich's short TEDx Talk.

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Snap better photos

Photography is another skill you can brush up on.

Katelyn Adkisson/YouTube

Photography is another creative field that you can master courtesy of YouTube. Whether you want to take better snaps on your smartphone or have just bought your first DSLR, polish up your skills with a few video tutorials. As well as tips on photography, you can also look up advice on buying gear and looking after your cameras.
As for the photo skills themselves, just ask YouTube and you will receive. You've got nighttime photography tips from Serge Ramelli, advice on sports photo shoots from Katelyn Adkisson, photography hacks from Cooph that apply to a variety of different camera makes and models, and much more.

Birds' ability to fly could determine the shape of their eggs

There's more to these eggs than meets the eye.

We all know what an egg looks like, right? Well, we might know less than we think—bird eggs can be spheres, teardrops, oblong, and anything in between. An interdisciplinary group of scientists may have made progress in cracking the mystery behind how these different shapes emerged.

A new study in Science shows that differences in flight ability might actually start as early as the egg: birds that take to the skies have more elliptical, asymmetrical eggs, while land-bound birds (like ostriches) have more spherical eggs.
“My colleagues and I were really struck by the diversity in egg shape,” says Mary Stoddard, first author of the paper and an assistant professor at Princeton. “Bird eggs all serve a similar function: to nourish and protect the growing chick. But despite their shared function, they evolved different shapes.”

Not all eggs are like the ones at the grocery store; the vast landscape of bird eggs actually spans a much wider range of shapes. The brown hawk-owl’s egg, for example, is practically a perfect sphere, while the sandpiper has a teardrop-shaped egg.
The researchers’ first step was to characterize this diversity with two measurements. First, ellipticity: start with a sphere, and as you stretch it out, it becomes more elliptical. Second, asymmetry: sometimes, one end of an egg is pointier than the other. Each of these measurements is a continuum—values can fall anywhere in the middle—and by combining them, you can describe nearly any egg. Asymmetrical and elliptical? Like a teardrop. Symmetrical and spherical? That's a sphere, duh.

The researchers plotted 50,000 different egg shapes from 1,400 species along these two axes and were surprised to incredible variety—more than in other egg-laying vertebrates. They found that most eggs fell somewhere in the middle, like a chicken egg: a little more elliptical than a sphere, and somewhat asymmetrical. But how do these shapes arise?

Previous research has shown that shape is determined by the egg’s flexible membrane, a protective layer below the hard shell. This study goes one step further to propose how the membrane’s shape is determined in the first place. It suggests that properties of the membrane in different parts of the egg—thickness and elasticity, for example—determine how the shape of the membrane changes in response to the changes in pressure. The researchers created a computational model to show how tweaking membrane properties in certain parts of the egg can affect the overall shape.

These teardrop-shaped sandpiper eggs are asymmetrical and elliptical, like many of the eggs in this study.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

To determine the biological significance of these unique shapes, Stoddard and her colleagues compared egg shape with other traits, such as body mass, nest size, and hand-wing index (an approximation of flying ability based on the size of different parts of the wing).

Some of their findings were expected; for example, longer eggs tend to hatch into larger birds. But their most surprising finding was that flight ability was the best predictor of egg shape; adept flyers laid more elliptical and asymmetrical eggs. Stoddard and her colleagues think that, in order to be aerodynamic, flying birds must have streamlined bodies, which limits the possible width of the egg. The birds still need to produce eggs with enough yolk and egg white inside, though. More elliptical and asymmetrical eggs would maximize the volume contained within an egg of a given radius, making them advantageous for birds of flight.
The team carrying out the study spanned many different fields—biology, computer science, physics, math—and Stoddard credits this interdisciplinary team for the breadth of the study.
“Having diverse perspectives allowed us to understand the diversity of egg shapes in a different way, looking at both mechanics and function,” Stoddard says. “We were able to ask both the 'how' and 'why' questions.”

Stoddard doesn’t think this study negates previous work on the question of egg shape. The conventional wisdom has been that egg shape is determined by nest location and the number of eggs in the nest, and that might still be true on a smaller scale, she says. “What we find at the global level may not always be identical to what we see in smaller groups."
In their future work, the researchers hope to take a closer look at egg membranes and the body plans of different birds to see if they support the model in this study. They also want to look back in time to see how dinosaur egg shapes differed from birds, Stoddard says, because preliminary results suggest that asymmetrical eggs evolved around the time that birds began to diverge from the rest of the bunch.

10 incredible modern master of fantasy illistrations

These 5 artists will blow your mind with their impeccable talent for capturing the fantastical.

Tran Nguyen says: "I'd like my visuals to serve as a buffer in getting through tough times"

These 10 artists have, over time, created portfolios of amazing imagery that never fails to grab attention and inspires us to pick up a Wacom (or that ancient relic - the pencil) and get drawing!
While their processes and styles vary, they all share a common goal: to become better, continue experimenting and progress their art.
While artists never stop learning and improving, and there are certainly plenty more masters under our rader - we think these talented individuals deserve a mention so they can continue to be inspired and inspire you on your own journey.

01. Ruan Jia

 

Ruan Jia's "Bloodgaze" shows how the artist uses colour and light to define his whimsical style

There is a romantic, ethereal feeling to Ruan's work in which every part of the image feels like it's glowing. "This is because I love to add saturated colour to places where it is not supposed to glow," explains the artist.
"After deciding the key colour for the overall mood, I continue adding colour changes to my painting," he admits. "I love dramatic lighting, and I often make the light fall on the focus point, to make the main object stand out."

02. Tran Nguyen

 

Tran likes to find a message and purpose for her art

Tran's paintings are figurative, surreal and contain a hefty splash of fantasy. "Fantasy encompasses a perspective that's perpendicular to reality," she says.
"I think depicting imagery that captures space which could never exist in our daily lives expands out imaginative capacity.
Tran loves to paint 'therapeutic imagery', where she aims to tap into a specific yet universal emotion that everyone can relate to.
"It's my hope that the viewer can relate, recollect and thus foster well-being from what they interpret."

03. Donglu Yu

 

Donglu Yu's "Medieval Lord" shows her rich appreciation of colour and form - expressing detail without having to spend hours creating it

Donglu began her career traditionally, first with private drawing and oil painting classes and then pursuing art at college and university where she studied illustration and animation.
"My grandfather is a Chinese traditional calligrapher. So I've been exposed to Chinese watercolour from a very early age," she says.
After her day job as a concept artist for Ubisoft, Montreal, Donglu teaches a digital art painting class at a local art school. "It's always a pleasure to witness the progress of young students," she admits.

04. Wylie Beckert

 

Wylie Beckert fell in love with the fantasy community and found her style grew naturally

Describing her work as "dark and whimsical", with an emphasis on characters and storytelling.
"For me," she says, " developing an identifiable style been less a conscious choice, and more a by-product of the tools and processes I work with, combined with an eye towards continuous improvement."

05. Miles Johnston

 

Miles prefers to work in his moleskin with pencil - the traditional way - to drive his fervent creativity

English artist, Miles Johnston, was still a teenager when he caught the eye of ImagineFX's rising stars campaign. Four years later, he's still inspiring and creating, finding his feet in the online community.
"The whole online art scene feels like a cool, extended friendship group, and it's been exciting meeting so many people that I've known from online," he says.

over-zealous HR department gets the wrong idea about an email discussing clams in this anonymous account of client woes.

"I was working with a large company to help them design a new series of mascots aimed at children. We settled on an ocean theme, and we started to create mockups for family members based on sea life. For reasons unknown to me, human resources (HR) had to be CC'd throughout any and all interactions we had. This, however, turned out to be unnecessary as HR wasn't reading the emails. And that was fine, until we had a misunderstanding ..."

Client: I love the initial mockups you've given us, but I worry about consistency. I

Graham: Trump winning because GOP voters think Obama is Kenyan-born Muslim

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Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says GOP front-runner Donald Trump is doing so well in the