Yak Shaving -- [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.#540 Kids Hack -- Now that the kids are home for the summer its time to put them to work. DLTK's Custom Chore Chart lets you create and print a themed chart that you can hang on the fridge or wall to help remind your children of the chores they need to take care of. You add your own title to the chart and then customize the row and column headings. Choose a picture for the top of your chore chart from a variety of themes (i.e., Blue's Clues, Spongebob Squarepants). You can also create your chart in color or black and white so that you child has something to color before hanging it on the fridge. (HT: LifeHacker)
#541 Firefox Extension -- If you have ever had an image that was too large to fit on your screen or too small to see the finer detail in your browser or email, then Image Zoom can help. Image zoom gives you complete control of the size of most images displayed in Mozilla based software. Both individual images or whole pages of images can be zoomed.
#542 Language Hack -- NewsForge has some intriguing suggestions for learning a foreign languages with open source software.
#543 Know Your Fallacies -- Overwhelming exception -- a generalization which is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications which eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to assume. (Example: "Our foreign policy has always helped other countries, except of course when it is against our National Interest..." (The false implication is that our foreign policy always helps other countries))
#544 Google School -- Looking for a used car? Type "used cars" into Google and it pull up a menu that lets you select your location and condition and make of the vehicle you want.
#545 HowTo -- How to build the best paper airplane in the world.
#546 Camera Hack -- Instructables has a great tutorial explaining how to build a wide angle digital camera lens from an $11 wide angle door viewer that can be purchased at a hardware store.
#547 SoYouWanna -- Meet people in your neighborhood.
#548 Bachelor Hack -- Sometime I run across a tip that is so brilliant and yet so obvious that I kick myself for not thinking of it myself. Lifehacker posted a suggestion on how to avoid dirtying up dishes that is sheer genius: "Place plastic wrap over plates or any other hard surface to recreate a clean plate. When you're done eating, throw out or recycle your plastic wrap." I'll be trying this when my wife is out of town.
#549 Writer's Toolkit -- #45: Foreshadow
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.
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ROFL!
re: #542 Language Hack -- "... learning a foreign languages ..."
(let me guess: almost free but you have to give up your grammar checker.)
re: #548 Bachelor Hack "... I'll be trying this when my wife is out of town."
(a much better husband hack: buy her a dishwasher; you can use it when she's away. Plastic wrap probably wouldn't be much good under any food that had to be cut with a knife.)