Friday, November 16, 2007
Take Incredible Self-Portraits
5:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Need to take a self portrait but you’re just not able to get it right? Phototography weblog Photodoto suggests ways to overcome the obstacle and take perfectly focused shots. Place an object where you will be posing and focus using auto-focus. Then put the camera in manual mode with a remote shutter and shoot. If that doesn’t work, measure the distance from the camera and use the markings on the lens to determine the focus in manual mode. You can also experiment with a different aperture to see if your photograph will come out sharply. If all else fails, get someone else to take your picture. 6 Methods for Perfectly Focused Self-Portraits [Photodoto] More »
How Do You De-Stress?
4:00AM Tamar Weinberg | When anxiety and fatigue hits you, how do you wind down? Blogger Jonathan Fields suggests ten ways to rejuvenate your body and mind. Take a midday power nap and refresh yourself. Play games that require intense concentration. Write things down. Listen to good music. Additionally, take a break just to breathe: The way you breath directly reflects your levels of stress. When we’re in high-alert, stressed states we tend to take faster, shallower breaths. In fact, this can become so exaggerated, it can lead to hyperventilation and even leave us unconscious. When we’re calm and relaxed, though, our breathing tends to be slower, deeper and less labored. Jonathan’s advice is pretty sound and can certainly help to boost your brain. What techniques do you use to relax? Share them in the comments. Top 10 Ways to Un-Bake Your Brain [Awake at the Wheel] More »
Find Secret Amazon Discounts with DealLocker
3:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Search for and locate incredible Amazon discounts with DealLocker’s secret Amazon Discount service. Input an optional keyword and then choose the range of desired discount—anywhere from 10% off to 99% off. Unlike previously mentioned JungleCrazy, the secret finder gives much more comprehensive results and allows you to browse through Amazon directly after you perform your search. Still, if you’re looking for some amazing deals through Amazon, both sites complement each other nicely. Secret Amazn Discount [DealLocker] More »
Wrap a Present
2:00AM Tamar Weinberg | If you still have your holiday presents tucked safely in your closet without gift wrap because you simply don’t know how to wrap a gift properly, your worries are over. WikiHow explains that the skill of gift-wrapping is all about patience (and having the right length of wrapping paper). Once your paper is all laid out, mark your cut lines where you will be folding the paper. After placing the gift upside down on the wrapping paper, fold the paper around your gift and pull the ends tightly. Tape the folded corners onto your gift. Dress up your final product with a ribbon and a card, and then deliver the gift to the loved ones. How to Wrap a Present [WikiHow] More »
Faster Shutdowns Using the Run Dialog
12:00AM Kyle Pott | Reader Eric writes in with a tip to eliminate hangs and speed up the shutdown process in Windows without installing any extra software. Whenever I tried to shutdown my work laptop it would take almost five minutes. Five minutes! Since I work in a completely locked-down environment I couldn’t look to any third party applications for help. Entering the following shutdown command in the run dialog speeds up my shutdown time dramatically. shutdown -f -t 0 The command Eric uses immediately forces any open applications to close without warning prior to Windows shutting down. Here’s another way to quickly shutdown your Windows computer. Thanks, Eric! More »
Right-Click from the Trackpad
12:00PM Gina Trapani | Your Mac’s lack of a second mouse button means you have to Ctrl+click to get context menus and other “secondary click” options. Mac laptop users can stop reaching for the Ctrl key and secondary click by touching the trackpad with two fingers instead (then hitting the single mouse button.) In OS X’s Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences pane, under Trackpad, check off “For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button.” For more Mac tips, see weblog Hack the Day’s roundup. 7 geek tricks for a fresh OSX Tiger install [Hack the Day] More »Switch Up Activities to Get Happy
11:00AM Gina Trapani | Research that shows doing something out of your comfort zone—a new project, a more challenging job—triggers happy-making chemicals in your brain. Career adviser Penelope Trunk says you can apply this helpful info at the office, but: What about at home? You watch TV, surf from your sofa, cook dinner but don’t venture past pasta. Instead, use the same standards at home that you have at work: If you are not challenging yourself and learning to do new things at home, Burns’ research suggests that satisfaction with your life will be elusive. No doubt a whole lot of us plop down on the couch after work to watch primetime TV or maybe play a little Halo, and that can get to be a drag after awhile. Variety is the spice of life. How do you spice up your life outside work? Let us know in the comments. Don’t get too comfortable at home after work [Brazen Careerist] More »Leopard
10:35AM Gina Trapani | Today Apple pushed out Leopard’s first update (hit Software Update to get it), and Macworld runs down the improvements. More »Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader expected next week
10:15AM Sarah Stokely | Seems it’s the week for e-reader news. First we told you that Dymocks has started selling ebooks and audio books, and now CNET has reported that Amazon will unveil it’s Kindle e-book reader product next week. If it lives up to its promise, Kindle will be cool – it’s been designed with ‘road warriors’ in mind and is tipped to have a Wi-Fi connection that taps into an Amazon e-book store. Amazon is expected to announce deals with newspaper publishers as well as book publishers, so my dream of a crisp white sheet of “e-newspaper” which refreshes to deliver my news every morning may not be so far away after all. Here’s hoping. :)
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