From The Tips Box: Bitter Drinks, IE9 Ad Blocking, Whiteboard Erasers

Readers offer their best tips for swallowing a bitter liquid, and blocking ads in Internet Explorer 9.

About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Email it to tips at lifehacker.com.au.

Use Your Breath to Swallow Bitter Drinks

Photo by TheCulinaryGeek.

Huh989 shares a tip for choking down less-than-tasty liquids:

Taking shots: Do you like drinking with friends but you aren’t a fan of straight spirits? Much of your taste is actually what you smell. Use this knowledge to your advantage by breathing in before you take a shot and exhale deeply after it’s down the hatch. You avoid the worst of the bite by blowing out the smell from you mouth and nose area. Far from perfect, but it does help. I was very thankful to the kind soul that taught me this in college.

Want to test it out? Try a Four Horsemen: equal parts Jim, Jack, Johnny, and the kicker…Jose.

While we don’t recommend going overboard on the alcohol, I imagine this tip works well for just about anything — cough syrup, espresso, or yes, if it suits your fancy, the four horsemen.

Block Ads in Internet Explorer 9 with Tracking Protection Lists

We’ve mentioned IE9’s Tracking Protection and its similarities with Adblock Plus before, and wunch lets us know that you can use it in quite the same way:

You can use Internet Explorer 9 Tracking Protection Lists as an ad blocker by installing the Quero TPL, which is based off of EasyList:

Clean Whiteboard Erasers with Compressed Air

Photo by Steve Jurvetson.

Teknophilia helps whiteboard users keep their tools a bit cleaner:

If you use a whiteboard, the eraser will (obviously) get dirty. Since you can’t bang them together like chalkboard erasers, use compressed air. Spray the eraser (outside) and the ink particles will come right off.