There’s a good chance Twitter might never lose all the messages, replies, following lists, and other data its users have racked up over its short, expansive life—then again, it’s not exactly the paradigm of reliable service, either. Even if you don’t need (or care) to secure your messages, free service Tweetake does a hack-happy job of grabbing selected parts of your Twitter profile or the whole thing and dumps it into an easily-opened Comma Separated Value file. So you’re free to run statistics on your Twitter use, search out that useful link sent so long ago, or pull whatever other data hacks you want on your profile. Users of auto-updating Twitter apps like TweetDeckmight have to disable them for a bit before pulling down their files, but it otherwise seems to work as promised.
Tweetake [via Download Squad]Got a sudden urge for a slice of cake, but don’t want to head out to the local bakery or risk dietary ruin by cooking an entire cake which you know you’ll end up gorging on? Blogger Dizzy Dee offers up a handy recipe for a single-serve cake which you can make in a mug in your microwave. (Don’t stress about the reference to cake flour; as the Australian Women’s Weekly Test Kitchen points out, you can use plain flour as a substitute, just reduce the quantity by a teaspoon or so.) [Dizzy Dee]
Got a DIY project you found on, well, some site or another, or got a small area you want to try out a paint colour on? The Wise Bread blog says that a stash of powdered milk—which they list more than a dozen other clever uses for—can be used to mix up a reasonable simulation of the stuff you pay a good amount for at the hardware store: Mix 1 part water to 3 parts powdered milk until you get something around the consistency of paint. Blend in a water-based colour if you don’t want neutral white, and paint your heart out. As with normal paint, let it dry thoroughly between coats (ie: 24 hours).
One of the few guarantees the computer world offers is that, at some point, your printer will report that it’s out of ink when it isn’t, mangle pages because of a small break in a plastic part, or otherwise make even the geekiest of users pull their hair out. FixYourOwnPrinter.com hosts an active forum of users who share their tips on managing the money-grubbing machines, with tips like placing black electrical tape over the ink sensor to make a Brother printer finish out its toner (as one Slate writer found) and button combinations that can reset a unit’s wayward sensors. A little smart Googling, of course, can net you some DIY fix-it schemes, but FixYourOwnPrinter.com’s search is a good place to start and explore, and the site itself might just have the part you’re looking for.
FixYourOwnPrinter.com [via Slate]If you have a bunch of older Office documents to convert to the Office 2007 format and you want to do it quickly, tech blog Digital Inspiration offers an excellent tutorial on getting it done. No need to open and convert each individual file—instead, you can convert entire directories in bulk.
Web site Usniff is BitTorrent search aggregator that scours popular BitTorrent search engines like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, and IsoHunt, and aggregates the results into a powerful, attractive interface. Similar to other previously mentioned BitTorrent aggregators like PizzaTorrent and Speckly, Usniff can filter through search results to refine your search. The coolest thing Usniff has going for it is advanced search operators, like exclusion with the ‘-’ (minus) operator. It also allows you to disable results from certain engines if you don’t like what you get there (I’ve always had bad results from Monova, for example). PizzaTorrent still seems like the most powerful aggregator, but Usniff is still worth a look.
Weblog Apartment Therapy Re-Nest shows how to repurpose a pile of old magazines or vintage books into a small table in just about 10 minutes. Pulling it off is a simple matter of tucking every 10 pages or so back into the spine of the magazine—you don’t even need glue or any additional supplies. As the post points out, the concept is very similar to cardboard furniture, like previously mentioned Blox, counting on folds and layers for strength. The folks at Apartment Therapy used the magazine tables as a plant holder, but you can put it to use for whatever you need (at the very least they’re a cool decoration).
How To: Craft a Table Using Old Magazines [Apartment Therapy Re-Nest]Cut down on the amount of time and effort you spend cleaning by doing mini-sessions throughout your day. Heloise, the domestic diva of Good Housekeeping fame, shares tons of helpful mini-tasks sorted by each room of your home. For example: After your family finishes brushing their teeth or shaving, use a dry terrycloth hand towel on the mirror and bathroom faucets to wipe away spots of lather so they won’t build up.
