Friday, November 30, 2007
Create a Calmer Household
9:40AM Tamar Weinberg | Are the holidays causing an uncontrollable noisy ruckus in your house? Maybe it’s time to calm everyone down. WikiHow explains ways to achieve the much-needed peace that should overcome your humble abode. What’s causing the havoc? Is it late-night phone calls or unannounced visitors at inopportune times? It may be time to start limiting your calls and visits to specific hours. Enforcing rules (such as bedtimes) could also minimise the sense of disarray at home. Envision a calmer household and set goals on how to achieve each element of calm you’re aiming for. Beyond the noise, you should clean and declutter as much as possible to create a sense of openness and relaxation in your household. Slowly but surely, you can regain control and make your household a much more restful and enjoyable place to be. Create a Calmer Household [wikiHow] More »
Find Out if Your Flight is Delayed with Flight Wait
9:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Webapp Flight Wait takes the guesswork out of flight tracking by providing you with a map of FAA flight delays in real time. Simply input the city or airport code and let Flight Wait determine whether there are any traffic delays that you may need to be aware of. If all lines are green, the wait is a maximum of 15 minutes. If the lines are yellow, your airport or area is reporting delays between approximately 16-59 minutes. A red line indicates a wait of an additional one to two hours, and if the line is black, you’re stuck for at least two hours. You can already track your flight with Google and view delays with previously mentioned FlightStats, but this application gives you an overall picture of whether an entire airport or city is affected by weather conditions or other delays. Flight Wait More »
Wake Up Early with Ease
8:30AM Tamar Weinberg | If you seem to have trouble waking up in the morning, you’re not alone. The How to Wake Up Early website is dedicated to tips and tricks to prevent you from oversleeping and to get the most out of your day. When your alarm clock goes off, for instance, avoid telling yourself that you need more sleep. Promise people that you’ll wake up early so that you’ll motivate yourself to do so. After all, if you don’t fulfill that promise, you’ll be held accountable. Move your alarm clock far away from your bed so that you’ll have to make a conscious effort to turn it off in the morning. Smile like you mean it and get excited for a day to be grateful for. Monitor your early wake-up progress, or utilise wake-up call services to get out of bed in the morning. You can also avoid food before going to bed and get a mentor to help you make early-morning rising a habit. What other suggestions do you have for rising early? Let’s hear them in the comments. How to Wake Up Early More »
Remedy Aches and Pains on the Cheap
8:00AM Tamar Weinberg | Got a pressing headache? How about an aching sunburn? Prevention magazine asked seven experts for their home remedies to cure common health concerns. For example, if your teeth aren’t as pearly white as you want them to be, combine 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda with 1 or 2 drops peroxide. Brush the solution onto your teeth and then rinse. Headaches can be relieved with do-it-yourself acupressure or by massaging a few drops of peppermint oil on your lower neck. For a charley horse, apply pressure to the middle of the calf for 30 seconds. The article lists an additional 14 home remedies that are cheap, fast, and will hopefully cure your aches. Surely, these are better options than going to the drugstore and taking over the counter medications—again. Photo by powerbooktrance. 17 Home Remedies for Bites, Aches, and Burns [MSNBC] More »Snailmail
11:30PM Tamar Weinberg | Is your Internet slowing to a crawl? Two years ago, we provided survival tips and tweaks for conquering that slow connection. More »Stats
11:24AM Sarah Stokely | So according to Meg who puts together the Top 100 Australian Blogs Index, Lifehacker Australia is coming in at #121. w00t! That’s not as impressive as Gizmodo AU’s #11 but hey it’s a start. :) More » 
Upgrade Your Hackintosh to OS X 10.5.1
10:00AM Adam Pash | A couple of weeks ago, I detailed how I built a Hackintosh Mac on the cheap from start to finish. The build benchmarked incredibly well, and I’ve been using it as my main PC every day since. A few days ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my Hackintosh to Mac OS X 10.5.1, the first update for Leopard. Here’s how it works. More »
Decrypt Your DVD’s Copy Protection with DVD43
9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Freeware application DVD43 decrypts DVDs and CDs, removing most copy protections schemes so you can interact with the media using whatever ripping or copying application you please (similar to the shareware alternative AnyDVD). DVD43 runs in your system tray, detects when you’ve inserted a new DVD, and automatically removes the encryption (the smiley face turns green when it succeeds). I’ve always had a lot of luck using DVD Shrink to rip and copy DVDs, but if you’ve ever run into problems working with encrypted DVDs on your PC, DVD43 is worth a try. DVD43 is freeware, Windows only. DVD43 [via FreewareGenius] More »
Give the Gift of Free Software
8:00AM Adam Pash | Still looking for the perfect gift for your office gift exchange? Web site LinuxInsider suggests giving the gift of free software this Christmas. Just grab a cheap USB thumb drive (you can find a 1GB drive for as little as 10 bucks these days), head somewhere like PortableApps, and grab some free portable software. Alternately, if you really wanted to go above and beyond, you could build a full PC on a stick. Not only might it make the perfect gift for a friend in need of some portable storage, but it could also be the perfect opportunity to introduce your loved ones to great open source apps like Firefox. Nothing Says Holiday Cheer Like Free Software [LinuxInsider] More »
