The Simple Dollar weblog says it’s time to get over the marketing “taboo” of generic and store brand products and save yourself loads of money. It shouldn’t come as news to anyone that generic products can save you cash, but it’s easy to get caught up in the marketing and look at generics with a certain level of disdain. Growing up as I did with the Trix bunny, Lucky Charms leprechaun, and the ultimate cereal monster trifecta—Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry—the very concept of generic and store brand products was always met with knee-jerk repulsion, but today I’m happy to buy almost everything I get from the generic shelf. You’re all smart folks who I’m sure regularly buy generic, but I’m curious what products you always pay the premium for. After all, there are times when knockoffs are just that—knockoffs. Share your must-haves in the comments.
AU – What the yankees call “generic” or “store brand” we have a few different names for – home brand, black and gold, etc. And a lot of supermarkets including Coles are going for their own branded products too. And – do you like that photo? I grew up in the US and their kiddie breakfast cereals really are that scary.
Getting Over The “Taboo” Of Generics And Store Brands [The Simple Dollar]If you’ve had it up to your eyeballs with ineffective FM transmitters and don’t have a tape adapter in your car stereo anymore, student Donn Morrison details how to add an auxiliary input to your car stereo for a direct line from your MP3 player. All you need is a pair of old headphones and a soldering iron and you’re ready to get started. Donn’s instructions are specific to a certain audio processor, but if you don’t have the same part he suggests that all you’d need to do is look up your differing part number and find the analogous circuits to solder.
Adding Auxiliary Input to a Car Stereo [via Make]Know what to do next time there’s an emergency with Real Simple’s printable first-aid instructions. The guide comes in PDF format and provides emergency care instructions for a bloody nose, eye irritation, burns, sprains, blows to the head, choking, poisoning and open wounds. Unfortunately, the guide is missing probably the most important first-aid procedure: CPR. Since most people haven’t thought much about this stuff since high school health class, a brush-up isn’t a bad idea.
Printable Chart of First-Aid Procedures [Real Simple]According to a reader survey at DesktopLinux.com, which included just under 55,000 votes, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution. More »
You can batch resize images in Mac OS X without installing third party software. The Mac OS X Tips weblog shows how you can use Automator and Preview to batch resize any group of images. After you’ve created the Automator script, all you need to do is drag and drop the images onto the icon and they will be instantly resized. The article even introduces a few other image editing tweaks you can perform like cropping, padding, printing, rotating and scaling. Batch resizing images is a snap in Photoshop, but if you don’t need the horsepower of Photoshop, this method will produce the same results.
Access hidden Preview features through Automator [Mac OS X Tips via Of Zen and Computing]Create music online using guitar, drum, bass and piano loops à la GarageBand with JamStudio. Each instrument comes with an impressive collection of loops, and you can build your song—adding instruments and loops—in (almost) any way you want, then save the results. JamStudio isn’t for the professional musician by any means, but if you’ve ever wanted to toy around with music and loops without paying a dime, JamStudio is a good place to start.
JamStudioLooking for a DIY project for this weekend? Build a remote camera trigger with publishing company Wiley’s free instructional PDF. The guide offers detailed instructions (44 pages worth, in fact) for making wired, delay, and interval triggers that so you can take pictures without holding and pressing the shutter button on your camera—allowing you to set up your camera and snap shots without disturbing the subject or position of the camera. If you’ve been looking for ways to improve or extend your photo portfolio, a remote trigger could open up a whole new world.
Building Triggers (PDF Alert) [Wiley via DIY:happy]Create your own secret store of files on a separate hard drive partition that no one can see or access using open source tools. Techie Adam Heckler used the excellent GParted partition manager and TrueCrypt encryption software to hide an entire drive of files on his PC. Cool! See more on partitioning with GParted and How-To: Encrypt and hide a disk partition [Textual Relations] More »
Mac user and GTDer Julian Schrader turns email messages into tasks with a keystroke, using the iGTD software:
I use iGTD to store and organise my tasks — it is an amazing application and provided for free. I recommend it to any Mac user — I just hit F6 in Mail and it copies the active email over into a new task created in iGTDs Inbox, a link back to the original email included.
Julian’s one keystroke task-with-an-email-link-back made me drool for something similar in Gmail. He’s also got 8 other good email processing strategies, too.
9 Tips For Better E-Mail Productivity [JulianSchrader.de]Use nail polish to help kids differentiate between the hot and cold taps in your bathroom and kitchen. Most kids understand that red means stop and green means go; so painting a teensy dot on each faucet can not only prevent injuries, but also encourage independence (“use the green faucet to brush your teeth”, etc.).
Color code hot and cold water taps with nail polish [Parent Hacks]
