Work

We remap our keyboards, hack our A/C timers, teach our iPhones to listen, kill many useless processes with one batch file, and look good after a late-night outing.

Shift the Function of the Insert Key

Photo by orangeacid

atomicrabbit gives us a neat keyboard hack to eliminate those “Insert” key mishaps:

Install KeyTweak and remap your Insert button to a Shift key, so if you ever accidentally hit the Insert key when aiming for delete or home, it won’t activate Insert. And besides, who actually uses the Insert function anyway?

Kill Several Unnecessary Processes with One Batch File

We’ve talked about creating shortcuts to kill applications, but Jon goes one step further and uses batch files to kill multiple processes at once:

Here’s a tip that might be good. I’ve found .bat files to be pretty handy. They can be used to quickly kill and start any combination of processes you choose. For example, when I want the best performance out of my (slightly old) computer, I will run a batch file which kills all the unnecessary processes, launched by a utility very similar to Launchy. It looks like this:

tskill InetCntrl
tskill iTunesHelper
tskill AutoHotkey
tskill Everything
tskill dcolor
tskill chrome
tskill ctfmon
tskill GoogleUpdate

It’s made by picking the processes you want to kill out of task manager, omitting the “.exe”, listing them in notepad in this format, and saving it with “.bat” in the name. Double-clicking it will run it (or you can use Launchy).
When I want my computer to go back to normal functioning I run another batch file that looks like this

start “” “C:WINDOWSsystem32InetCntrlInetCntrl.exe”
start “” “C:Program FilesiTunesiTunesHelper.exe”
start “” “C:AutoHotKeyAutoHotKey.ahk”

This is made by listing the full path of the process you want to start in the shown format, and saving it as a “.bat”. You can kill some processes and start others in the same batch file.

Look Awake the Morning After

Photo by Editor B

nolabar10der has some pointers on preventing and getting rid of one of the biggest oh-God-is-my-alarm-going-off-already-I-just-went-to-sleep-ten-minutes-ago give away.

Veteran late-nighter, here. I’ve tried everything with varying degrees of success. The most noticeable improvement comes from the most obvious source: ice cubes. Keep them placed on your eyes even as it starts to ‘burn’ your skin. It’s not magic; it mitigates puffiness in the same way that it treats any other swelling. Seems to lessen the coloration as well. Failing this, just have a bloody mary. It won’t help, but you won’t care anymore.

I can definitely vouch for the salt bit — a margarita or bloody mary binge will most definitely cause your body to stockpile salts (whatever you do, never look at the nutritional info for cocktails). Depending on how your body reacts, you will most definitely have nastier bags than, say, I will have after a night of straight scotch and ice water. Rather, you have the greater *odds* of looking like sh!t. Everyone is different.

Don’t forget to use a good, abrasive scrub to help get that hangover off your face. Doesn’t do anything about the actual bags, but it lets some of that vibrant flesh through, which is presently under a splotchy film of last night’s toxins.