#200 DVD Hack -- Have a stack of DVDs that you'll never watch again? Peerflix lets you trade DVD's you own with other members for a pay-as-you-go rate of $1 a trade. After you sign up for an account, make a list of DVD's you want to get rid of and of those you want. Peerflix provides the mailers - send out a DVD, receive a DVD. Keep the movies you get for as long as you want, until you trade again. (HT: Lifehacker)
#201 Library Hack -- For years I've wanted to catalog all the books in my personal library (over 1000 volumes) but was too lazy to make the effort. Fortunately, my procrastination has paid off. LibraryThing is a web application that lets you add book titles by entering a title and viewing search results from the Library of Congress or Amazon. The program then adds the book’s card to your catalog with ISBN, publisher, year and an image of the book cover. You have space to add a book summary, tags, comments, and a review -- and can even see what other users also have each book in their library. You can enter 200 books for free or buy a lifetime membership for $10 (beta special).
#202 Mac Hack -- For the Apple groupies: Magical Macintosh Key Sequences - All the magic key sequences to make your Mac do various things. (HT: Lifehacker)
#203 Know Your Fallacies -- Coincidental Correlation (post hoc ergo propter hoc) -- The name in Latin means "after this therefore because of this". This describes the fallacy. An author commits the fallacy when it is assumed that because one thing follows another that the one thing was caused by the other. (Ex. Immigration to Alberta from Ontario increased. Soon after, the welfare rolls increased. Therefore, the increased immigration caused the increased welfare rolls.)
#204 Blog Hack -- If you have a philosophy blog you'd probably prefer to write (∀x)(∃y)(y causes x) instead of "for all x there exists a y such that y causes x". Or perhaps you have a blog for your fraternity and want to type ΨΩΛ instead of Psi Omega Lambda. You can find all these and more on the XHTML Character Entity Reference, a useful cheat sheet for those hard to find symbols. (Update: Tgirsh also points out this page which explains how to use the ALT key and numbers to type these symbols.)
#205 HowTo -- Rip a DVD
#206 Gmail Hack -- Although Gmail doesn't provide a built-in feature to create group lists, Lifehacker provides a workaround: Click on Contacts (left-side menu) and choose Add Contact (top right corner). Enter a name for the group in the Name field. Then in the Primary Email field start inputting the addresses of group members. Here is the trick: leave out the first and last brackets. This is how you should do it (substituting the appropriate email addresses):
Then Save the address. Once you save it, you can see that GMail puts a bracket around the list of addresses. You can try it out by clicking on Compose. Next time you want to send a note to this group, just start typing in the group name and the address list will come up as an option.
#207 SoYouWanna -- Learn about Opera
#208 Math Hack -- The Compound Interest Equation:
P = C (1 + r/n)^nt
where
P = future value
C = initial deposit
r = interest rate (expressed as a fraction: eg. 0.06)
n = # of times per year interest is compounded
t = number of years invested
Simplified Compound Interest Equation
When interest is only compounded once per year (n=1), the equation simplifies to:
P = C (1 + r)^t
#209 Writer's Toolkit -- #13: Show and Tell
See also: The Yak Shaving Razor Archives
Have a useful recommendation for making life more pleasant? Send them to me at jpcarter[at]evangelicaloutpost.com.
2
Regarding #204 Blog Hack for character entity representation in XHTML: This links to a nice chart, similar to the one here.
Be forewarned that not all combinations of browsers and fonts support all the character entitites listed in the charts, although anyone with a more recent recent browser and a good set of fonts should see all the chartacters.
posted on 09.21.2005 1:35 AM3
Regarding #209 Writer's Toolkit: I always wish I was a better writer. I'm happy to see you link to the Poynter series of now 51 great tips from people who make their living writing.
posted on 09.21.2005 1:40 AM4
Andy: Wasn't it the Poynter Sisters who wrote Jane Eyre? ;->
posted on 09.21.2005 6:06 AM5
I think LibraryThing might just be the coolest thing I've ever seen on the internet. Sounds like an overstatement, but it just might be an understatement.
posted on 09.21.2005 10:34 AM6
#204 - Blog Hack:
I get crap about this one all the time. Trust me, it annoys people when you use non-english characters.
posted on 09.21.2005 11:06 AM7
I use this list to find various symbols and foreign language characters.
posted on 09.21.2005 2:30 PM8
"(∀x)(∃y)(y causes x)"
Oddly enough, I was just denying this last week. From my own experience of Xs it just isn't so.
But you are more about the technique of making the chars at this juncture. I use W3c.org most often myself. But sometimes I'll also go to Unicode and just browse for fun chars to interject into a post.
As for those readers who complain about non english characters (έχω ζωη!) tell them to come into the new millenium, already.
∞
9
Joe,
Where is a complete list of the fallacies that you refer to?
Aloha
posted on 09.26.2005 2:39 PM10
Thank you very much for the Library Hack. I am finally able to get a handle on all my books without sitting for hours typing publication info. Now I just spend hours playing with the features.
posted on 09.26.2005 4:45 PM