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.

#695 Dictionary Hack -- What do you call it when you know there's a word for something but you're not sure what it is? What's the word for that? The OneLook Reverse Dictionary can help you figure it out. OneLook lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. (HT: Lifehacker)

#696 Firefox Extension -- Autohide lets you choose what you'd like to be able to see at any given time once you go fullscreen. For example, say you don't want anything but the web site content to show up (because you want to use every single square inch of your monitor for browsing), but you do want to be able to access your toolbar or even your Windows taskbar without going out of fullscreen mode. With Autohide, you can determine which menus you'd like to autohide (i.e., hidden until you move your mouse to them), which you want to always show, and other handy tools. (HT: Lifehacker)

#697 Google School -- Google Book Search has an upgraded AJAX interface that makes book browsing faster and simpler. The new Google Book Search lets you flip pages by pressing arrow keys or clicking a scrollbar, and change text size by zooming in or out. You can quickly jump to other chapters or sections by clicking links in the new table of contents. Google also amped up search speed and added a full-screen mode. (HT: Lifehacker)

#698 HowTo -- Recover lost network passwords

#699 Download of the Week -- Freeware program Undelete Plus lets you recover your deleted files on your Windows box. Undelete Plus scans your hard drive for all those files that have been deleted in Windows but haven't been overwritten on your hard drive. (HT: Lifehacker)

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.