From The Tips Box: Loading Times, Mac And Cheese, iPhone Icons


Readers offer their best tips for making use of long loading times, reheating macaroni and cheese, and laying out your iOS home screen.

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. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or use the contact tab on the right.

Use Long Loading Times as an Opportunity for Quick-Burst Chores


Spencer finds a use for long loading times in his video games:

I don’t store my PC games on an SSD, so the loading times can get a little ridiculous — especially in certain games. I’ve realised that instead of sitting there complaining about it, I can take that opportunity to bust out a really quick chore — like throwing my dishes in the dishwasher, taking out the trash, or cleaning off my desk/keyboard/mouse with some Clorox. This can probably work for non-video game loading times too, like small downloads or any Adobe program.

Use Milk to Reheat Perfect Mac and Cheese

Photo by Tony Alter.

Craiglloyd shares a tip for mac and cheese enthusiasts:

If you’re a fan of mac and cheese, you probably know that leftover mac and cheese isn’t that great, although it’s not terrible. However, to give it a little extra kick, stir in a tad bit of milk after you heat it up in the microwave. It’ll give the cheese a little bit of added creaminess that it once had!

Cipheroid offers another useful suggestion:

If you want to go in a different direction, try this: put a pat or two of butter in a medium-hot frying pan and fry the mac and cheese on each side until crispy-hot — like you’re making hash browns.

The cheese helps give it a nice crust, and the inner cheese stays nice and melty. Best leftover mac and cheese ever.

Change Yahoo Email Accounts to Yahoo Asia for Free Auto-Forwarding

Neil95 discovers a loophole in Yahoo’s email service:

If you want Yahoo to autoforward your emails (say, to Gmail), change your Yahoo to Yahoo Asia. It’s the same account, but once you log out you’ll be taken to Yahoo Asia instead of the US one (or whichever you use). Not sure why autoforward is free in Asia, but who cares?

Instructions (with screenshots):

  1. Go to your profile
  2. Enter your password
  3. Scroll down to “Account Settings” and select “Set language, Site, Time Zone
  4. Change to “Yahoo Asia” and save
  5. Then go to “Mail Options”
  6. Go to “POP and Forwarding”, enter the Gmail address, and save

Magic!

Use Fewer iOS Icons Per Home Screen for More Efficient App Launching

jvanderh makes our iOS home screens a little less cluttered:

Only use half of your iPhone home screen to make yourself more efficient. Most likely you use the same few apps constantly, and the visual clutter from the other ones makes finding those slower. Put the second tier ones on the second page, and just use the search function for all the others.

For some, this may actually be less efficient, depending on how many different apps you use regularly — you’ll just have to try it out and see how it works for you.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


Leave a Reply