Make a Gingerbread House with Graham Crackers [How To]
From the last-minute holiday treats file: If you've no gingerbread on hand, but plenty of candy, you can still construct a gingerbread house made of graham crackers.
Tutorial site wikiHow runs down how in a step-by-step photo tutorial. Two years ago we took the easy way out and used a pre-fab gingerbread house kit to put together our masterpiece; then a reader schooled us with his from-scratch approach. The wikiHow swap-gingerbread-for-graham method will get you a good bit of street cred, too.
Putting Three Productivity Systems Through Their Paces [Books]
Freelancer (and funny guy) Chris Hardwick read and tried Getting Things Done, The 4-Hour Workweek, and Never Check Email in the Morning and reports back which productivity systems worked best for him.
For two weeks apiece, he applied the principles outlined by David Allen, Julie Morgenstern, and Tim Ferriss, and interviewed each author for tips along the way. Turns out that as a freelancer, he liked Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek over the other two books. Hardwick writes:
Allen, Morgenstern, and Ferriss are a nicely compatible family unit: David Allen is the practical dad who reminds you not to overcomplicate things; just get the job done. Julie Morgenstern is the encouraging mom who, while hugging you, says, "It'll be all right; you just need to focus on what's important here." And Tim Ferriss is the upstart kid who cries, "Think outside the box, man!" So in retrospect, it makes sense that I found it easier to cherry-pick elements from each and stitch together my own wearable cloak of efficiency. Now, I know that David Allen is the head vampire of productivity, but if you only have the fortitude to read a single book, I'm gonna throw my lithe frame behind The 4-Hour Workweek.
Though non-freelancers may not agree with Hardwick's conclusion, his whole article is worth a read if not for the productivity hilarity that ensues during each of his attempts to get his stuff done. What's the best productivity book you've read this year? Post it up in the comments.
How to Make a Beer Bottle Christmas Tree [DIY]
Dedicated drinker Adam Cadamally turned 1,050 bottles of beer into an amazing lighted Christmas tree; hit the play button to see the eye-popping construction video. [via]
Dedicated drinker Adam Cadamally turned 1,050 bottles of beer into an amazing lighted Christmas tree; hit the play button to see the eye-popping construction video. [Knock Out Those Last-Minute Holiday Cards in Word 2007 [How To]
Today and tomorrow are your last chances to get your technically-mailed-before-Christmas cards out the door. If you can't make a store run, Microsoft Word might have you covered.
At the How-To Geek site, blogger MysticGeek details how to use the community cards shared through Word 2007's Greeting Cards template to find something that's not only pretty decent-looking, but definitely not going to duplicate another card someone else bought last-minute at Target.
What apps or sites have you used to print and post your holiday cards this year? Tell us about them in the comments.
How Eating Slowly Will Help You Lose Weight [Food]
There are a lot of factors in losing and maintaining a healthy diet and weight, but the HealthAssist blog points out that eating slowly might play a larger role than you realize.
Along with the general knowledge of your body needing more time to figure out it's full than most rush-rush meals allow for, "insulin resistance" and other factors suggest eating more slowly is something to strive for.
Portion size and eating speed seem to be part of the reason for the famous "French paradox" — the relatively low incidence of heart disease and overweight in France as compared to the United States, despite the generally high intake of calorie-rich foods and saturated fat. It is well documented that the French take longer to eat than Americans, despite the French eating smaller portions. Recently Japanese researchers found strong positive correlation between rate of eating and body mass index (BMI) and obesity
Having recently been kept from lunch until about 2:30 p.m. by travel delays, I was surprised at how one sandwich and a tiny Diet Coke, eaten during a leisurely conversation, managed to tide me over, despite my usual preference for the over-stuffed specials and the like.
How do you manage to fit a slow meal into a busy day? Or do you see calories as calories, regardless of their intake speed? Tell us your take in the comments.Photo by Bombardier.
Automatic Save Folder Remembers Your Download Preferences [Featured Firefox Extension]
Firefox extension Automatic Save Folder allows you to assign filters to your downloads, so that the save as dialogue always points in the right direction.
After installing Automatic Save Folder you can begin assigning rules based on domains and file types. You can set up a rule for instance, so that every time you save a file from www.yourworkplace.com/auditing/docs/ all the documents related to audits for your place of employment will be saved in yourdocuments/workplace/audits. The filter can also be applied to file types, and you can designate a catch-all folder for the files you haven't applied filters to. Automatic Save Folder is free and works where ever Firefox does.
Fennec, a.k.a. Mobile Firefox, Hits Alpha 2 with Speed Improvements [Featured Early Adopter Download]
Mozilla's Firefox-like browser for mobile devices, Fennec (which we toured in screenshots on release) is out with a second alpha release you can try on your desktop.
This alpha mostly improves upon the speed, smoothness, and usability of Fennec's existing features, but the newest thing to try out are two recommended extensions that can be installed. URL Fixer attempts to auto-fix common misspellings entered by fat thumbs into the address bar (like Gogle.com, perhaps?), while AutoAuth simply adds password memory for sites that require authentication.
Hit the link below for free, no-install try-outs of Fennec Alpha 2 on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. If you happen to have a Nokia N815 tablet, you can install the alpha natively.
Boost Your PowerPoint Skills Inside PowerPoint 2007 [Powerpoint]
Are you decent with a bulleted list in PowerPoint 2007, but need to get a bit more creative? You can learn how to pull off a few useful effects right inside the program.
Microsoft's Office Online team provides eight instructional PowerPoint templates that teach you how to pull off the effects demonstrated inside them. They'll show you where to click, what to enter, and you don't have to switch between instructional videos or text and your app. 3D shapes and graphs, backgrounds, process graphics, and more are free for the download.
Ubuntu Distributor Wants to Overhaul Linux Desktop Notifications [Linux]
Canonical, the parent company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux system, wants to implement a new (and vaguely Mac-ish) method of user notification in Ubuntu's next release.
You can check out a demonstration of the new notifications in action at Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth's blog post. As noted by Ars, the goal is to provide a more user-friendly experience for anyone jumping onto Linux, and give the desktop's pings and blips a uniform look and feel, as opposed to the multitude of notification apps and tools that use the free D-Bus protocol in a variety of ways.
That's potentially a really good thing for dedicated Ubuntu users. But, as Ars Technica points out, it also means generally forcing users into using a 3D compositing system like Compiz, which often means (at least for NVIDIA video cards) enabling non-open-source drivers. As always, things can easily change between now and Ubuntu 9.04 (due out April 2004), but it's an intriguing discussion going on.
Internet Explorer Backup Zips Up All Your IE Settings [Featured Windows Download]
Windows only: If you never want to have to tweak Internet Explorer's settings again—and there are many, many settings—Backrex Internet Explorer Backup has you covered.
The small, step-by-step backup program grabs everything from Internet Explorer 6 or 7, including cookies, add-ons, auto-complete entries, connection settings, and, of course, your favorites .You back it all up to a zip file that's compressed and, if you'd like, password-protected, and can restore settings in the same click-by-click fashion. The app doesn't support the Internet Explorer 8 betas from what I can tell, but that may be on the way.
BackRex Internet Explorer is a free download for Windows systems only.
You received this email because you are subscribed to the real_time feed for http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/full. To change your subscription settings, please log into RSSFWD.
No comments:
Post a Comment