I'm a pretty keen Twitter user, but I must admit the idea of using the social networking site to automate my house hadn't occurred to me. However, if this video is anything to go by, the results are quite impressive in a geeky way.

Merlin Mann doesn't crank out posts on software, focus, time-savers, and the other realms of "productivity pr0n" anymore, but he's still got a razor-sharp focus on the kinds of thinking that move things forward. He writes at 43 Folders about trying to get better at his personal photographs, and fighting off the mental nags that try to pull him off-path:

... Even if a given shot is sh*t -- and, most certainly, the vast majority of all my photos are varying degrees of sh*t -- you still learn from the bad ones and no damage is done. Truth is, at the level I'm playing, there's no real cost associated with failure. Unless, you count the damage of working with unrealistic expectations or the paralysing joylessness of the conventional wisdom that only some are "Blessed with Creativity..." [insert Tinkerbell glissando]

The full post gives a tight, clear view on what it takes to learn, and learn honestly, from mistakes and making improvement a real goal. Similar in topic to Ira Glass' advice on working past the awful, and pretty funny, to boot. Photo by craigmdennis.

The New York Times reports that in a study of 61 people, those who took a 2-hour afternoon nap did "significantly" better at repeating verbal, perception, and motor-skill tests from that morning than those given caffeine or a placebo. What's more, the caffeine takers didn't do do much better in verbal tasks than the placebos, but claimed to be the most awake. Not brand-new news to long-time Lifehacker readers, perhaps, but a nice reminder that coffee does not always equal productive power. (Here's the full study paper).

Software developer Gustavo Duarte explains exactly what your computer does while you wait, in a thorough, technical answer to the question "Why the hell is my computer taking so long to do something when I have such a fast processor?" This post isn't for anyone who glazes over at measurements of throughput in nanoseconds at the component level of a computer. If you want to speed up your computer by giving it less to do, make sure you're running only the stuff you need clean up your startup.

We've already pointed out a Greasemonkey script that hides Google's new SearchWiki ranking buttons, but there are viable work-arounds for those not using Firefox or its page-styling Greasemonkey extension. The Google Operating System blog points out four other methods. Most clever and convenient among them is heading to your Experimental Feature settings and enabling any other experiment, like keyboard shortcuts, which disables SearchWiki buttons and notes until you clear out your browser's cookies. Also recommended: Signing out from your Google account and a URL-ending trick, detailed at Google Operating System's post.

A life cluttered with possessions is such a common state of affairs that George Carlin once based a well received comedy routine around the absurdity of the accumulation of material goods. Over at the financial blog The Simple Dollar, Trent decided to stare down his pile of goods through the belly of a suitcase. What if he needed to move on with his life with nothing more than a suitcase to haul his loot? What would make the cut? What if the suitcase became a perpetual litmus test?

If you carry it further, why not simply apply the "suitcase test" to every purchase that you make? If it's not something that will fit in your "suitcase" - basic clothing, basic toiletries, cooking supplies, and a small number of splurge items - don't buy it, or at least strongly consider not buying it.

After applying the suitcase test to the contents of his house, he and his wife went on to unload a considerable amount of their belongings with eBay sales and donations to charity. What items would make the cut if you conducted your own suitcase test? Photo by Phineas H.

Bath bombs, for the unfamiliar, are chalky feeling balls about the size of a small orange that you throw into a bath tub. They don't explode but they do react with the water fizzing and spinning, filling the water with fragrance and moisturizers. Bath bombs are a project ripe for DIYing, as they often run $6 or higher at stores. SoapyHollow, a contributor at the DIYer blog Instructables has a top rated guide on how to create your own bath bombs. The ingredients are all cheap and readily available in most locales: corn starch, essential oil, vegetable oil, and so on. If you're looking for a side project to go with your bath bombs, make a matching scented candle or set up a bathroom spa on the cheap.

Windows only: If you're not particularly fond of the official Windows Update system provided through Internet Explorer, whether your reason being a distaste for the Windows Genuine Advantage software or the insistence that the next upgrade of Internet Explorer really is a mission critical system update, there is an alternative way to update your system. WindizUpdater is a Firefox plugin which mimics the official Windows Update application. The key advantage of using WindizUpdater is that you have complete control over what gets installed and what doesn't. The system never forces you to install an update you don't want and will skip updates that aren't necessary for your system.

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Decoder details how you can go about installing classing first-person shooter Quake 3 Arena on your Nokia phone (supported models include the N82, the E80 and 8Gb versions of the N95). The installation process sounds fiddly, and the lack of sufficient input mechanisms on the phones themselves means you need to use a Bluetooth keyboard to actually play, but the post still sums it up pretty well: "Who would have thought that a game that I shelled out hundreds of dollars for a graphics card to run it on back in the day, would be ported to a mobile phone with full multiplayer, keyboard and mouse support?"

Round speaker enclosures look great but often cost a fortune. Hacker Roberto got the same effect for much less money by taking a set of IKEA Blanda Matt bowls and gluing them together to build the enclosure -- a trick you could replicate with any reasonably constructed salad bowl. For another take on DIY speakers, check out how to make speakers from paper cups and earbuds.

A brief addendum to my recent list of things that should be fixed in the next Outlook: the error message above. While this appears to suggest that there's no way of removing a buggy Outlook add-in short of hacking the registry, the actual solution is far simpler: run Outlook as Administrator and the message disappears. How hard would it be to display 'You need Administrator privileges to change this setting' instead? (OK, I know, it would remind everyone that being logged in as administrator is actually meaningless under Vista, but that would still be preferable. And I've now remembered the same message also appears elsewhere in Office, so it's ripe for removal.)

If you've read recent speculation that a Gmail vulnerability may be lurking in the depths of your email account, Google wants to assure you that Gmail is secure as ever. According to the post on the Google Online Security Blog, stories claiming a Gmail vulnerability was at fault in recent domain thefts are inaccurate; instead, Google says a phishing scheme was to blame.

The crafty bloggers at the Geeky Gadgets web site don't want to pay an extra $35 for an iPhone 3G dock, so they fashioned one out of cardboard—and are now offering the cut-out template as a free downloadable PDF. You'll need a printer, some adhesive, a craft knife, and some light cardboard to cut this out and fold on your own. Check out a video clip of the construction.

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If you're tired of hearing about Windows 7's upcoming features while you sit and stare at your aging XP or Vista desktop, take solace in a few free apps and themes that can give you a taste right now. While it's true that Windows 7 isn't much different from Windows Vista (inside and out), a few neat features are worth trying out, and you can do it without installing the Windows 7 Preview. Here are a few free apps and alternatives that simulate Windows 7's built-in features.

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Firefox with Greasemonkey: If you've consolidated multiple email addresses in Gmail, chances are you've accidentally sent email using the wrong From address at one point or another. If this is a persistent problem for you, reader Eric Biven's Gmail Multiple From Address Greasemonkey script helps ensure you're sending email from the right address every time you compose an email. After you install it, just compose an email as you normally would and hit Send. The script will display a pop-up confirming the From address you've chosen, giving you the opportunity to cancel sending the email and switch From addresses in case you've forgotten to do so. To accept it, just hit Enter again or click OK. To cancel, hit Escape or click Cancel. It may not be for everyone, but if you manage multiple email accounts from a single Gmail inbox, it could come in very handy. Thanks Bill!

Everyone's done it: you've got a raging stomachache and you're feeling kind of fatigued, so you search online for the cause of your malady and conclude that you've got cancer. A new study from Microsoft shows that "cyberchondria" is common because when you search for symptoms, the worst case scenario can be the first result—or not representative of the frequency of a serious illness. (For example, searching for a headache will return just as many brain tumor results as caffeine withdrawal, when the chances of a tumor are "infinitesimally small.") Have you decided you're dying after searching for illness symptoms online? Tell us about it in the comments.

YouTube has adjusted the video clip player's size from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 (generally used for HD TV). As a result, many clips will have black bars on either side to fill in the new space.

Neuroscientist William Fishbein says that deep, "slow-wave" sleep can help us commit information to memory, learn new skills, and extrapolate information. Science news site Physorg reports that Fishbein and a graduate student studied English-speaking students' ability to remember Chinese characters they were taught just before a nap (and some without a nap):

Upon awakening, they took a multiple-choice test of Chinese words they'd never seen before. The nappers did much better at automatically learning that the first of the two-pair characters in the words they'd memorized earlier always meant the same thing—female, for example. So they also were more likely than non-nappers to choose that a new word containing that character meant "princess" and not "ape."

Add this latest study fuel to the fire of our unabashed pro-nap agenda; and while you're here see our top 10 ways to sleep smarter and better. Photo by Tina Keller.

iPhone/iPod touch only: If you've been waiting to upgrade your iPhone or touch to the recently released iPhone 2.2 software until you could jailbreak the update and run your must-have jailbreak apps, you're in luck: The iPhone Dev team has already released QuickPwn for both Windows and Mac and the PwnageTool for Mac. Not only will jailbreaking your phone with one of these simple-to-use apps add both Cydia and Installer to your home screen, but it'll also give you access to a few other very cool iPhone 2.2-only hacks.

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Windows only: Turn off Windows clinks and clanks while you click around your computer in one shot using the simple SoundOff utility. When you want to listen to music without hearing the sounds of your operating system, click the SoundOff system tray icon to switch Windows' sound scheme or turn Windows sounds on or off. Of course SoundOff's only useful if this is something you do often; otherwise you can hit up Control Panel, go to the Sounds and Multimedia applet, select the Sounds tab, then change to No Sounds. SoundOff is a free download for Windows.

Napsounds is a repository of relaxing audio files designed for power napping. Every day a unique 20-minute track is generated in the electronic, classic, and nature sounds category. You can listen directly from the web site, download the track as an MP3, subscribe via RSS, or set iTunes to grab the track as a podcast. The tracks use a combination of neural linguistic programming, binaural beats, and white noise generation layered into the ambient sounds.

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If you're finding Google's new SearchWiki ranking buttons are more annoying than useful, you can hide them using this Greasemonkey user script (a definite candidate for a Better Google extension). Are you customising your results with SearchWiki, or just wishing those buttons weren't cluttering up your results? Let us know in the comments.

IKEA Hacker details how hacker Tim bolted together two IKEA Vika Amon table tops and a handful of other components to build a custom computer desk that made it easy to conceal the cables connecting the various parts. It's an impressive job, though I can't help thinking he should have splurged on a cordless mouse to finish the task.

Sure you could probably pick up a pleather case for nearly any electronic device you own, courtesy of eBay and healthy international trade routes, but it would lack the charm of a hand crafted leather case. There is an excellent tutorial over at the DIY blog Instructables on how to make a molded leather case. The tutorial details how to make the case for an iPod, but the molding technique is valid for anything you'd like to mold a case for. The required tools are minimal and inexpensive, for their sample they bought leather scraps off eBay and made their mold out of dense chipboard and tape. For another interesting DIY case idea, check out how to make a laptop case out of floppies.

If you find the hot sauce spread at your local food emporium a bit lacking, it's time to do it yourself and create a batch of palate-scalding sauce that's just right. Over in the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times, there is a straight forward method for making your own hot sauce. If you have chili peppers, vinegar, a blender and a stove to boil the mixture on, you're in business. Even if you have no intention of cooking up a batch of hot sauce right now the comments from home-brewing hot sauce aficionados are a wealth of information about hot sauce brewing and a fascinating read. Photo by jslander.