Category: GeneralIf you are a woman and have ever wondered how men pee, or you are a guy and always wanted to see your pee adventures documented, then check out this informative and amusing illustration.
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(Via Tybee Guy.)
Sing-a-Ma-Jigs – Meet the latest toy craze. Which also happen to be quite possibly the most annoying toys in the world.
It’s the last day of an unusually long weekend, and there’s absolutely nothing on the schedule. Break out the tools and pull up one of these nifty DIY projects to improve your living space and boost your can-do cred.
Buy a mess of ground-staked, solar or battery-powered yard lights from your local big box store, and people might be impressed at your ability to space the sticks you plunge into the ground. Convert some run-of-the-mill mason jars into hanging votive lanterns, battery-powered backyard lights, or go the way of weekend editor Jason and make your own solar-powered sun jars, and you’ll get some real kudos, and have a nicer looking yard, to boot.
Three different solutions of varying DIY-ness can get your Wi-Fi out to your grassier spaces. A self-powered solar extender is the ultimate in techno/eco-cred. If that kind of cost, soldering, and circuit knowledge is a stretch too far, you can install DD-WRT or boost your household router with Tomato to boost its signal strength and, in the case of DD-WRT, turn an old or spare router into a dedicated repeater. That still involves a bit of installing, though, so for a casual shot at backyard Wi-Fi, try a tinfoil parabola, a wok-style strainer, or a dollar’s worth of extender parts.
If you’ve had wood-fired pizza before, you know it’s notably different and tasty, and almost always pricey. You can have the good stuff whenever you feel like building a fire, however, with two different Lifehacker readers’ brick-by-brick instructions. Kevin Lester showed us his fourth pizza oven build, while Mike Wilkie based his two-level oven on Forno Bravo’s extensive wood-fired guide. You can do the same, and become the grill party invitation nobody turns down.
Your couch can only seat so many people. Your yard or patio, however, can fit as many folks as feel comfortable, and offers a much nicer environment to eat, drink, watch, and enjoy the waning bits of summer air, whether for the kids or with friends. Wired.com has hit upon this project twice, once with a house-mounted sheet and DVD/projector. Then the Geek Dad tackled the idea with a stand-alone outdoor screen, built with PVC pipe, mounted in cement, and ready for easy setup and take-down. You’ll need a decent projector for either setup, but often times, nobody at work minds if the presentation room is a little de-stocked on weekends.
You can’t pull off the total renovation that you can with an XBox Media Center, but your Wii can do a lot more than let you play tennis against the in-laws. You can surf the web with the recently-made-free Opera browser, and once that’s installed, a free Orb software package lets you use your Wii as a media center. These days, opening your Wii to the Homebrew channel doesn’t even require the purchase of an (admittedly great) Twilight Princess game and extensive hacking, and once that’s done, you can back up and load games from a hard drive, play old-school games in an emulator, and much more.
Two or three good, sharp knives are really all you need, but you’ve probably got more than that. If you bought them piece by piece, or don’t want to shell out for a generic hunk of wood, consider making your own wall-mounted magnetic holder for easy access and visual appeal, or cut a holder out of a counter for super-quick access. We’re also partial to Chris DiClerico’s DIY universal knife block, which requires only a few bucks of wood, dollar store bamboo skewers, and access to a table saw.
Go beyond the color spread at your local paint store, and you’ll likely find a good deal of neat paints that can inspire some awesome projects. Dry-erase or ‘whiteboard’ paint lets you jot down your ideas anywhere, and that inspired reader Chris Burke to make this awesome wall-size speech ‘bubble’. He also layered some magnetic paint underneath, the kind that lets you hang posters without nails or tacks. If school-style chalkboards are more your speed, you can grab a bucket of chalkboard paint, or make your own, and then craft an erase-as-you-go wall calendar, kid-friendly table, or wall mural (sorry, original link is apparently dead). If they made tinfoil-based Wi-Fi boosting paint, we’d simply declare the whole house in need of a new look.
You only occasionally need an extra seat or two for groups of guests, or maybe you just need a cheap place to sit when working in the garage. The Evil Mad Scientist blog suggests buying a few sheets of paperboard or plywood and crafting some flat-packing but sturdy stools. If it’s little ones you’re looking to seat, and entertain while you do so, the FoldSchool tutorial site details how to help kids make their own stepladders, creative kids table seats, and much more. (Original post)
Gina’s father-in-law used rope lights (and a nifty reverse circuit switch) to craft an automatic pantry light system. Jason added an eye-pleasing and light-improving touch to his extreme home office makeover with strategic rope lights. Other crafty folks have found rope lighting useful for kitchen looks and ridiculously awesome home theater setups. It’s inspiring, illuminating stuff, and fairly easy to get started with.
Not every notably blank wall in your dwelling requires custom-framed artwork or expensive prints. Gina combined her Flickr account and a few dollars of craft store hardware to craft a sleek wire photo wall, inspired by this wood block example (original link down). Adam found his inspiration in used record stores and great album art, crafting an album art wall on the cheap. If great-looking books are what you want to show off, you can get by with very little by converting a colored wire hanger.
(Via Lifehacker.)
For much of the world, it’s that special time of the year when students head back to school. The good news for students is that even though that means waking up early and doing homework, there are a number of web-based and social tools to help you get through the school year. From staying organized to improving study habits to making sure you reference your research sources properly, the web can help you be a better student.
We’ve assembled a list of 15 of the best applications available for students. What other applications are helping you at school this year? Let us know in the comments!
The first thing you need to do in order to have a successful school year, is develop a plan to stay organized. If you’re constantly missing due dates or losing track of your notes, you’ll find yourself in a deep hole rather quickly. The following web applications can help you get organized and stay organized.
1. Evernote – Evernote is one of the best note taking applications available, allowing you to sync notes between the web, your phone, and any computer. With Evernote you can save text, audio, and images (like screenshots, entire webpages, or photos taken with your camera phone), and everything — even the images — is searchable, so you’ll never lose track of your notes. One of the ways Evernote really excels is in the number of different methods you can use to add notes to the application, which include via the web, mobile apps, email, or even Twitter.
2. Notely – Notely is a complete, end-to-end solution for taking notes and staying organized. With a course and assignment calendar, note-taking tools, and to-do list, Notely can keep you on top of your schoolwork and assure that you never miss a due date.
3. GradeMate – GradeMate is a free online organizer made with students in mind. With it you can create to-do lists, manage due dates, keep track of grades, and even collaborate with fellow students.
4. Backpack – Initially designed for business users, Backpack is also a great way for students to keep research organized. Backpack is sort of like a single page wiki that lets you keep files, images, notes, and to-do lists in a single place and share them with fellow students (which is great for collaborative projects).
When you sit down to study, you want to arm yourself with the best web tools available to make sure you get the most of your study time. By utilizing the tools listed in this section, you can get more done, and do it more quickly, so that you can have more time for fun and still be prepared for that upcoming test or paper.
5. StudyRails – StudyRails is perfect for those who have trouble blocking out distractions when it comes time to study. The site lets users schedule study time and alerts them (by text message) when it is time to drop everything and hit the books. But where StudyRails really becomes important for chronic procrastinators is that it can be set to block out your favorite web sites and computer applications during scheduled study time. That way you won’t be tempted by Twitter or World of Warcraft when you’ve set aside some time specifically to write a paper.
6. Diigo – When you’re reading books for class, you probably use a highlighter and sticky notes to mark off the passages that are of particular note to what you’re studying. But what do you do on the web? Diigo is a web-based highlighter and sticky note system that lets you annotate your web research. You can also share your work with classmates.
7. Delicious – Delicious is the quintessential bookmarking application on the Internet. If all you want to do is collect all the web resources you’re using for a class, project, or paper under a single tag, Delicious is one of the best and easiest to use tools you can utilize.
8. Mindmeister – There is a slight learning curve involved, but once you get use to them, one of the best ways to organize your thoughts and research is through mind maps. And one of the best online mind mapping tools is Mindmeister, which lets you both easily create mind maps, and also collaborate on them with your classmates. They offer special discounted academic pricing for students.
Web-based and social tools can also help you to actually get your work done and collaborate with others in your class on group projects. From word processing to presentations, the apps in this category will help you turn in complete and polished work.
9. Google Docs – Google Docs is one of the best online word processing and spreadsheets applications available, and it offers great collaboration features that allow you to work together on group assignments. In fact, we use it often here at Mashable to keep track of who is working on what and collaborate on posts and projects. The two main advantages of using Google Docs over more feature-rich applications like Microsoft Word (which is also a great application that I use on a daily basis) is that Google’s offering is free and, more importantly, you can access your files from anywhere. Also check out Adobe’s Buzzword.
10. EtherPad – EtherPad takes collaborating on written documents to a completely new level by allowing a group of people to edit a document at the same time and actually see what everyone else is writing as they write it. When used by multiple people meeting in person or combined with a VoIP app like Skype, EtherPad can be an amazing collaboration tool for group studying or hashing out who is doing what on a group project.
11. Sliderocket – It would be hard to get through your school career without having to give a presentation, and one way to make your presentation more memorable is with a great set of slides. SlideRocket is an awesome online presentation building tool that lets you create beautiful, multimedia rich presentations, that are accessible from anywhere. Also check out Empressr.
12. WikiDot – If you’re working in a group project, you’ll want to keep everyone on the same page, and one of the best ways to organize your thoughts as a group is by using a wiki. WikiDot is a great, simple, wiki hosting solution that students can utilize to create an unlimited number of wiki pages to organize their projects and group research.
Now that you’ve got your work in order, you’ll want to make sure you have everything properly cited, because like clichés, accusations of plagiarism are something you should avoid like the plague. The tools below will help you to keep track of your sources and cite them properly when the time comes.
13. CiteMe – This Facebook application from the Online Computer Library Center lets you search the world’s largest library catalog by title, author, subject, or ISBN and get properly formatted citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian style.
14. EasyBib – EasyBib is one of the most popular online bibliographic tools, letting you automatically create citations in APA, Chicago/Turabian, and MLA styles. Over 218 million citations have been generated using the site since 2001. Also check out Ottobib.
15. Zotero – If you need to cite your work in a more obscure style, then check out Zotero. This Firefox extension automatically collects your research sources and then lets you create citations in any of one of over a thousand different styles. Zotero also lets you take notes on your sources and is available in over 30 different languages.
(Via Mashable!.)
Desktop Wallpaper
Summer certainly flew by and while I occasionally wish we had just one more month to squeeze in, I realized that since my fingers are almost frozen, autumn definitely arrived! P.S. Meanwhile it’s Winter!
Resolutions: 2560×1600, 1920×1200, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1400×1050, 1280×1024, 1280×960, 1280×800, 1280×720, 1024×768, 1024×600, 800×480, 480×272, 320×240.
There is no arguing that YouTube is the most popular video sharing site out there, but that isn’t to say that there aren’t things about it that annoy users. With that said, there are a wide array of plugins for Firefox to make the YouTube user experience that much better. Here are over 20 that will let you save your favorite videos before they disappear, stop them from autoplaying when you come to a page, and more.
Kevin Rose’s podcast network powerhouse Revision3 announced their financial returns for 2008, and they paint a rosey picture for online video. It also helps fill in a little bit of the gaps I and the rest of us were left wondering about following the cancellation of several shows on the network earlier in October.
The best way to have people obsessing about your birthday is to never tell anyone the exact date. That’s what Google’s been doing; we pretty much know that big G’s 10th anniversary is in September, but the exact time is unknown.
And, while some have written about it almost a month ago, only now Google is officially ‘celebrating’ its birthday by releasing a special tenth anniversary page, featuring an interactive timeline of the company’s history.
They’ve also launched Project 10100, described as ‘a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.’
The project works as follows: you send Google your idea by October 20th; it’s done by simply filling out a submission form, add a 30-second video if you like. Public voting on ideas begins on January 27th, 20 semi finalists will be chosen, and an advisory board will then select up to five final ideas. Google will commit 10 million dollars to make these ideas work.
Check out the introductory video below.
(Via Mashable!.)
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