Find a good place to curl up and catch some shut-eye at the airport this holiday season with tips from web site Sleeping in Airports. For example: When you’re forced to stay over in an airport due to airline problems, make sure you are granted access to their lounge. This is especially recommended for the airports with uncomfortable chairs out in the main transit/departures lounge with the usual riff-raff.
Designed for budget travelers looking to save a few bucks when traveling, Sleeping in Airports may be just what you need during that red-eye delay now that one of the busiest travel days of the year upon us.
How to Sleep in an Airport 101 [Sleeping in Airports via MakeUseOf]Google Docs lovers should check out the Vertical Spacing Greasemonkey user script for a much improved, more normal paragraph style in their Gdocs.
Windows only: Resize any window on your desktop—including those windows that normally refuse to let you resize them—with freeware application ResizeEnable. Just run the system tray executable and any window—no matter how stubbornly it denied your resizing attempts in the past—should be resizable. Once resized, the contents of the window should automatically adjust to fit the new dimensions. While it’s probably not an everyday application, the freeware, Windows-only RezizeEnable does what it says when you need it.
ResizeEnable [via Web Worker Daily]One year ago, you learned how to control your Mac with the sound of your voice.
If the crown of family turkey-carver is weighing heavy on your head this Thanksgiving, the New York Times gets advice on how to carve the perfect turkey from New York butcher Ray Venezia. His trick: Take it off the table. Instead of slicing the meat from the roast at the table, Mr. Venezia’s carving protocol calls for the biggest pieces, the breasts and the thighs, to be removed whole, then boned and sliced on a cutting board. “Trying to carve from the carcass is like trying to cut it off a beach ball: it’s all curved surfaces and it moves around under the knife,” he said. “Give me a flat cutting board any time.”
US-centric: Compare sales at numerous local grocers with GroceryGuide, a webapp that accesses sales from hundreds of supermarkets and chains around the nation. GroceryGuide shows price trends and fluctuations as well as recipes that can be made with each food item. Additionally, the site lists coupons that can be further applied to discounted items. While GroceryGuide is missing one of my favourite supermarkets on its list, it still has a decent representation of many chains throughout the country and does a good job locating bargains without the need to visit each individual shop’s website to view the circulars.
GroceryGuide.comCreate a cheap and green solar heater for less than $10. All you need is foam board, lots of pennies, black spray paint, and plexiglass. The assembled product should be placed next to a window and can increase the room temperature by a minimum of 10 degrees (according to the video), depending on the amount of sunlight that reaches the heater. If you’re looking for more ways to harness the power of the sun, check out the solar water heater we described in the summer.
Easy Free Home Heat [Metacafe]The Public Speaking Blog never met a tip it couldn’t share—or so it would seem from an extensive roundup of suggestions, dos and don’ts posted there. You might not want to sit down with the entire list before your moment at the mic, but a few of them are worth writing down somewhere, including this bit of speech-prep zen: Present 70% of what you prepared. Keep the rest for emergency purposes, e.g. during Q&A or when you need to show off.
One of the tips, of course, is to never stick too hard to such rules, and to adapt to a crowd’s response. One more great tip? Don’t kill your audience with PowerPoint. Photo by eschipul
250 Things You Wish You Know That Will Guarantee Your Speaking Success [The Public Speaking Blog]Health and Nutrition author Jennifer Ackerman writes in today’s New York Times that planning your big Thanksgiving meal earlier in the day helps you eat less. That’s because the body is better at recognizing it’s full in the morning: Not only does an ample morning meal provide energy for the day’s labors, but it better satisfies our appetites, perhaps because the brain’s satiety systems work best early in the day. People who take in more of their calories at breakfast — whether in the form of proteins, carbohydrates or fat — are likely to consume fewer calories overall than those who indulge in big meals later in the day.
Ackerman also advises against eating any part of the big meal in front of the television. And if your meal does fall later in the day, eating a healthy breakfast also helps prevent ravenous consumption later—unless, of course, you’re dead-set on doing so anyways.
Make It an Early Bird [New York Times]Online productivity suite Zoho has rolled out a mobile version of its Creator webapp , which can make both basic databases and help forge customised interfaces and applications to use them. As the somewhat (intentionally?) cheesy promotional video shows, It could be useful for adding to office or personal projects and websites on the go, or for pulling up and presenting information from a non-sensitive database. Like other Zoho applications, Creator is free to use but requires an account sign-up.
Zoho Creator Mobile [via Office Tweaks]
