Randomn3ss

Someone told me that the average time spent on a web page is seven seconds, that includes looking at all ads, photos and reading content. To be honest, I probably belive this statement to be true. There are some exceptions though, some articles I want to read later, in detail, but not right now. This is even truer when the evening rolls around and I’m on instant messenger and friends send me links, or when checking silly things friends send me via email.
There are countless social networking solutions to help you tag sites to visit later, the biggest is probably del.icio.us, followed by Digg, but these tools, along with countless others available are designed for you the user to share the content with someone else. What if you don’t want to share the content, you simply want to access a particular website again without the pain of sending yourself an email or book marking a site in your browser to forget about it later.

My solution for the last two weeks has been Instapaper. Instapaper is a bookmark applet; you add their icon to the bookmark toolbar of your browser and when on a site you want to read later, click it. The applet will then save the link and a short description to your Instapaper site to be viewed and clicked on later. One of the best parts of this service, besides being free, you don’t need to give an email address to create a username! I did create a username and password since I use it at work from time to time when browsing websites on my lunch hour, my Macbook and when at friends houses to retrieve sites that I know I saved there.

There are a lot of really neat details about Instapaper as well, including the ability to use this on your iPhone. Read the FAQ to use the service better, faster and be more productive.

Oh yea, did I mention that it’s free? There aren’t even any ads on the site!

I just got home from work and errands, and so I’m sitting here, typing a post and reading the gossip blogs and I have so much shit to do.  Specifically, I need to get my Santa Claus on and wrap some presents.  I mean - Christmas is suddenly fucking TOMORROW and there are just tons of City Sports bags and boxes and, ugh, I am overwhelmed.  Oh, yeah, I said City Sports bags; did you guys really think I would buy gifts anywhere else?  Okay, there and the liquor store.

Anyway - I hate wrapping presents.  Hate it.  And do you know why I hate it?  Because I suck at it.  That is the same reason that I hate math and snowboarding.  I’m simply not good at it and I have to struggle on purpose.  Listen, I am all about challenging myself, but I know my freaking limits.  My wrapping will never look like that of the 96-year-old women at Macy’s who wrap that shit for you.  My corners look like the bed of a retarded Marine, it’s just sloppy.  And I can’t cut the paper straight so my edges are jagged.  At the end, there is tape stuck in my hair, shards of paper on the ground, and I forgot the bows. 

And to label which gift is which.

Fuck.

So I carefully unwrap them (meaning, I summarliy rip the paper as soon as I touch it, thus making it un-recyclable).  I re-wrap them, give myself about 10 papercuts, and label them.  And under the tree they go…

Alright, I need to go get this done.  Merry Xmas or whatever guys!!

Nearly a week into making the switch to my new Macbook, I think I’ve found a decent word processor, one other than Microsoft Word. I’ve previously tried AbiWord and OpenOffice, each have their own characteristics to them that I liked, however the negatives to each were far greater. OpenOffice was pretty much a diaster, not user friendly at all and as much as I wanted to like AbiWord, the spacing of words on anything other than 100% was terrible. Most of the time when I write articles, I prefer to do so at 120-150%, just my preferance. Sure I could just increase the font size but that causes problems when I want to print, since 12pt looks just fine on printed paper.

On the suggestion of Randomn3ss commenter Joe, I downloaded and installed Bean. Bean is one of the first programs I saw on several sites listing open source software for Macs but I overlooked it, I’ve had success with OpenOffice on Windows and figured it would be very similar on Mac so that was my first choice. Upon first launching the processor, I knew that a coder didn’t write this program, it’s aesthetically beautiful to look at, well as nice as a word processor could be.

As a blogger, it has two of the most important things that I need and use,

• Easily zoom in and out
• Word / character counting

The zooming is done live via a left to right slide bar in the bottom left of the application, this is a slick idea, one I’ve never seen done before.

The word / character count is also live and in the middle bottom of the application, as you type, it updates. This is particulary handy for me because when an article that I’m writing starts to get close to the 1,000 word point, I consider splitting it up into two parts. For school students who need to meet a minimum word count, this feature alone is a time saver.

I’ve written the last few articles in Bean and now this one, I’m rather fond of it. Each time I use it there are a few more features and functions that show to be more useable. This definitely isn’t a piece of software that you need to read a book to use, finding answers to what you want to do is really intuitive.

The only down side to Bean and the two other word processors I’ve used is that they don’t do grammar checking, only spelling, which is built into the Mac anyway. If there was a grammar plugin for Bean, it would be everything I need from a word processor. I’m leaving AbiWord and OpenOffice installed for a few more days, just to make sure there isn’t anything from that that I may need from them, but Bean is the clearly the break away word processor from the pack.

Three days into using my new Macbook and one thing not built in to my liking is a word processor. TextEdit is nice, but just seems lacking and not robust enough, not that I’m a super user of word processing, but it just felt lacking. Microsoft Office is an option, but I didn’t want to pig up the hard drive space with bloated software, even though Word is what I am very used to on Windows based systems.

OpenOffice.org is really interesting, I’ve used it on Ubuntu and a few times on Windows, it is a really polished system, but for Mac they only really offer the Alpha software called Aqua, which comes with a nice big warning message

Even with that big warning, I downloaded and installed the program last night and wrote Dig a big hole for a little rock article, works really well even if it is in alpha. I don’t really have any complaints about it, but it just didn’t feel like it was giving me enough.

Today, as I sit here using the WiFi at a local Panera Bread, I installed the open source word processor AbiWord. It is super clean and aesthetically resembles Word a lot. Writing this article is my first time using it, but there are some minor issues that I’m not fond of. Mainly, the spacing. Viewing the page at 100% in 12pt Times New Roman font on this monitor, running at 1280×800 is a bit small. Zooming to page width or 200% (no 150%) is much easier on the eyes, however the spacing is way off for the letters. By this I mean the space between letters and words is off. See the screen capture below.

Outside of that, I really like the program. Common things I use like word count are readily available, however other things like spell check use different shortcut keys. In most programs, F7 will do spell checking, for Mac, FN + F7 usually does it. For AbiWord, Command + Shift + : does it. Not a bad thing, just different. It will take a bit more writing to choose, I may install MS Word just to see what it’s like in OSX, but open source stuff tends to be a bit smaller and faster.

Anyone have suggestions on any other word processors I should be looking into?�

Blogging for me is like a part time job. Between this site and the other blog I run, around one to two hours per day is vested in maintaining them. This time includes:

• Writing the actual articles
• Research for new articles
• Reading several dozen blogs, commenting where I can and getting ideas for new articles
• Answering reader submitted questions
• Promotion of articles
• Working on larger articles, sometimes writing one large article doesn’t happen at one sit down.

The time I invest directly relates to how successful my blogs are, but blogging for me is just a model that can be applied to anyone who does freelance work from graphic design work to computer maintenance. Freelance Switched published 46 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Freelancers, I�ve pulled four of my favorite from the list to share:

• List 3-5 things you will do the next day. My homepage, as mentioned several times before is iGoogle, if you haven�t played around with it, try, it’s worth it. On it, I’ve installed the Web Stickies module, it acts like a post-it note that is somewhat transparent and can be placed on top of any part of iGoogle. If I’m online (which I usually am) and an idea hits me for an article but I don’t have the time to write the full article, I’ll add the idea to the sticky note. Later when I do have time, I reference that for what articles to write next. At any given time there are 3-10 items listed.
• Get your inbox to zero. This is a big one for me. Something about having 200 unread messages and 40 read messages in my inbox annoys me. Spend an evening or a lazy Sunday afternoon to go through and reply to those you need to, delete what you don’t need and archive important emails. Make sure your spam filter is working properly and check the spam (or junk) folder often just in case something slips though that isn’t supposed to. Having an empty inbox is like having a clean house, it just feels right
• Learn to check email just twice a day. I can’t do this, personal or for my daytime job. Email is one of the biggest time wasters though. Just because an email comes doesn’t mean you need to reply to it right away. This rule for me is bendable though, as I’m often awaiting a response from someone about an article or a subscribed website email comes through that may have a link to a new article idea for me in it. When I’m writing, as I am now, I won�t check my email. I’ve also ignored my phone and text messages, it is too distracting.
• Learn to say no. There is an old saying that goes something like, Would you rather make 50 cents from one job per day or have 2 jobs that pays 75 cents each� If you can only handle one job per day, perhaps you should just look at raising your rates and not taking on the extra headache of the second job. Learn to budget your time and find the proper value of it. It is a very fine line between selling yourself short and overbooking time so you become run down and worn out.

For me, one of the biggest problems I have with doing freelance work is self motivation. In my situation, I am writing for my own site, no one else. This means there is no set deadline for any given project. I do have a rubber goal right now to get at least 5 unique articles on Randomn3ss per week, in addition to what the other staff adds. Over the next 6 months I want to triple that. My tip for staying productive is to get off on the right foot. I’ve already given you 10 tips to starting your day right, here is another geared more towards freelancers, in my case this is what I do on weekends.

Get up and get showered right away. For me, rolling out of bed sucks, I hate to do it. Nothing about the whole waking up process is enjoyable for me, but after taking the dog for a walk I’ll hop in the shower. Something about a shower not only wakes me up, it makes me feel like the day has started and it’s time to be productive. This may be partly due to the fact that my week-days start in this manor, but doing it on a weekend and then writing for the first hour or so of the day makes it a lot easier for me then dragging my tired ass to the computer and rubbing the sleep from my eyes while squinting at the monitor for a half an hour as my body wakes up.

After well over a decade of navigating asphalt and concrete from sea to polluted sea, I think I have enough experience to give advice on how to properly enjoy the roadways. For the record, in that time span, I have zero accidents and 1 speeding ticket. So here, fair reader, are 3 simple rules to increase your driving aptitude, as well as make other drivers more appreciative of your skills.

Rule Number 1: Proper Lane Usage
OK, everyone raise your left hand…wave it around for a few moments…bask in the glory of the often misunderstood left hand. Now, pretend you are driving on a road with more than one lane of traffic in each direction. The left lane (which is easy to spot, since it’s the lane that matches up with your left hand) is called the PASSING LANE. Say it with me, PAH-SING LANE. And what do we use the PASSING LANE for? Driving? No, you’re smarter than that…the PASSING LANE is for PASSING. So please, unless you’re passing a slower car, stay in the right lane. Trust me, there really isn’t much you’re going to miss out on by not driving in the PASSING LANE. The only thing you’ll miss out on is being on the business end of my frustrations…

Rule Number 2: Cellular Telephones
Now that we know about lefts and rights, please take out your cellular (or mobile of you’re in the UK) telephone…yes, it’s the same thing as your cell phone. Hold it aloft and smile at it…it will appreciate this since it is rarely thanked for all of its hard work. Put it next to your ear and pretend you’re talking to someone…if you really want to, call a friend and read him or her this column. This amazing piece of technology is one of the most distracting things you can possibly have in your car…when used improperly.

Wait! There’s a “right” and “wrong” way to use my cell phone whilst driving?
Yes, of course…keep reading and become enlightened like Buddha…

The tireless work of amazing inventors and science-types have created a myriad of stunning products to enable you to use your mobile phone whilst minimizing distraction. Here are the 3 most popular ideas:

1. The “headset”
This amazing invention comes in a variety of styles, colors, and functions. It main idea is that you can have this small “speaker” in your ear (just like your ugly white iPod earphones…except only in one ear) and therefore, keep both hands on the wheel. It even has a built in microphone so that you don’t have to speak into the phone.

2. The “speaker phone”
This comes in 2 types, a speakerphone built into the actual phone, or a speakerphone system that can be installed in your motor vehicle. This lovely idea creates the illusion that the person on the other end of your phone is speaking through a small pubic address system. Yes, it can be a bit spooky (and not the best idea if you’re talking about someone else in the car) but, it once again enables the driver to have both hands on the wheel.

3. The “off” button
Now, most cellular phone users are not aware of this, but one can actually turn OFF the device without causing any damage to the unit. This makes it so the phone does not ring and therefore, you will not be distracted by holding the phone to your ear. This “off” function can also be used in other settings (movies, restaurants, other events where you look like a moron when your phone rings when it REALLY shouldn’t).

Above all else, remember that holding your wonderful cellular phone to your ear when having a conversation in the car is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable.

Rule Number 3: Left Hand Turns At Traffic Signals
Occasionally (or only if you’re a NASCAR driver), you make wish to make a left hand turn (remember your left hand from Rule 1? This is the same “left”). Once in a great while, this “left hand turn” (that’s what the pros call ‘em) may occur at a traffic signal (or traffic light if you’re lazy) Even more rarely, there may be a significant amount of traffic coming towards you from the other direction. This, as I have observed, can cause quite a bit of nervousness and turn decent drivers into horrible drivers. So, here’s a quick 5 step guide as to how to properly execute this maneuver.

1. Wait until the car in front of you has made their successful left hand turn.
2. Be sure to check that “your” traffic signal is not red.
3. Move forward to the middle of the intersection.
This seems to be, by far, the most difficult part of this process. You need not go all the way to the other side, but you should be about even with the street onto which you are turning. Don’t worry about getting hit by oncoming traffic…as long as you have not moved too far left, they will not mind. Also, being in his position lessens the amount of time it will take you to make said left turn and enable more people to also turn left during the allotted time.
4. Once there is a space in the oncoming traffic that is wide enough to get your car through without hitting any of the oncoming vehicles, turn left.
5. Smile, knowing that you have made a wonderful left hand turn.

So, there you have it. Three simple rules to maximize your driving experience. Feel free to print this out and keep it in your car for quick reference. However, I suggest NOT reading it while you are in the process of driving…this can lead to a myriad of other problems.

Happy trails!!

skinned out with some crazy looking graphics, but I do have a few shortcuts to make browsing a bit more enjoyable and faster.

• Type in the website you want to without the www. or the .com, then hit CTRL + Enter and it will put in the www. and the .com. Shift + Enter will give you the .net extension while CTRL + Shift + Enter will give you the .org extension.

• Press down on the scroll wheel of your mouse to open a link in a new tab. Who knew the scroll wheel could do more then scroll! This also works for any bookmarks you may have, including the bookmarks toolbar.

• Press down on the scroll wheel of your mouse on an open tab to close it.

• CTRL + T: opens a new tabbed window. Nothing magical there, but it works faster then going to File > New Tab

• When your in your address bar, hit Tab to move the blinky over to the search menu. I use this a lot when writing articles for Randomn3ss.com or posting forum replies that I need to get a little more info for from the web. I’ll CTRL + T to get a new window then Tab to get to the search box, this is much faster then taking my hands off the keyboard to move the mouse.
• With multiple tabs open, CTRL + Tab will scroll through them one by one.

• If you use auto complete in Firefox for forms, you have more then likely typed in a username or street address or something wrong and now see a big list in there, which can be annoying. In any form, double click in it while empty and you should see everything show in a drop down menu, use the down arrow on your keyboard to highlight the word you do not want there and hit Shift + Delete. This will remove that term from the form. This trick alone saved me one hell of a headache.

The full list of Firefox shortcuts can be found here.

If you have OCD about tracking your items when ordering online like I do, or want to see where the hold-up is for a late shipment, isnoop.net’s handy little tool is here to help. It is built upon the Google Maps open source technology and shows the route and time of your packages.

Mapping addition builds on the original features of being able to track UPS, FedEx, USPS, and Airborne/DHL packages all in one place and having that tracking information published into a personalized RSS feed. The system automatically detects which company your tracking number belongs to and loads the package data for you.

In other words, rather then visit the site daily, it generates and RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your favorite feed reader for easy updates! Sweet! Since I use the Google Homepage for my feeds, I created a new tab just for packages and can put multiple RSS feeds in there to keep everything organized and handy, since I’ve been ordering a lot of stuff lately.

Don’t know about RSS feeds or what to do with them? Check this article out.

Isnoopt.net package tracker

Power couples such as Donald and Melania Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, what makes them successful? More importantly, what makes them possible? Money. They all know it; they’re just okay with the idea. There is an erotic essence to money that has evolved, perhaps, a bit out of control. Money has been responsible for a large quantity of creativity, ingenuity and achievement through our sociological evolution. In fact we have allowed money to become such an integral part of our lives that we now experience the same emotive properties from money that we receive from sex and chocolate. How has it come to be that such value, far beyond that of dollars and cents has come to be placed on little pieces of paper? Freud’s pleasure principle explains that,

We have to sublimate most of our desires for sexual pleasure, and turn that sexual energy into something else–into writing a paper, for example, or into playing sports. Without the sublimation of our sexual desires into more productive realms, there would be no civilization.

That would help explain why in this MSN article,

Grove and Prince surveyed people with an average net worth of $89 million, and who make more than $9 million per year. They found that money is an enabler in a number of ways to enhance sexual experiences. More money equals better sex.

Erotic is defined as “Tending to arouse sexual desire or dominated by sexual love or desire.” Now consider the erotic nature of money. A man, who would ordinarily be considered unattractive, is suddenly capable of having any woman he wants because he has money. This would not be possible if we did not attach such values to money as powerful, secure, competent, accomplished, cultured, glamorous, sexy. It has been nurtured into us through society that money is attractive, to the benefit of society. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “money makes the world go round.” Well so does sex and in American culture they’ve teamed up. How else would you explain Brittany Spears?

This is the first of four articles exploring the erotic nature of money. Check back for discussions on Dominance & Submission, Reward & Sacrifice and Fulfillment & Emptiness. Pay attention to how your money makes you feel, kind of scary when you remind yourself its just paper.

Women prefer men who have something tender about them - especially the legal kind. ~Kay Ingram

For the last few months I have felt very unproductive in my home office. Over the last few months I have installed a nice home stereo receiver between my computer and a decent set of speakers, have my iPod hooked up to it, moved away from a TV, have my monitor and keyboard and a nice working height and have a comfortable chair to sit in. Even after all that I still get bored, get a headache and don�t feel like doing real work for more then a half an hour.

It finally dawned on my sometime over the last few days. During the day, I work in a windowless office; however the lights are daylight balanced. That is to say, they closely resemble the color of normal sunlight. Day light savings means that when I get home in the early evening, it is pitch black outside, so I am once again in what is essentially a windowless environment, void of natural sunlight.

Without getting technical and boring, light has a temperature associated with it and is referred to as Kelvin. Kelvin uses the symbol K and usually follows a number indicating said Kelvin; an example would be 6500K. The easiest example I can provide is that of a newer BMW or Lexus car with the very blue-white headlights, while street lamps tend to be greener in color. Both are light sources however they are at different ends of the light spectrum. If you can grasp that, you can understand how light works a little better. A scale and more technical information can be seen here.

Normal daylight is about 6500K, while your average home light bulb is closer to 3200K; the later tend to be more greenish in color and can drastically change how items in your home look. My home, like most American homes, had your cheap light bulbs in every socket, emitting this horrible green cast. This was the key problem in my productivity.

After a chat with a co-worker, I was off to Wal-Mart after work to buy some bulbs on his recommendation, GE Reveal. They are full spectrum bulbs, but don’t be confused by the wording, some brands use the term wide spectrum, either is acceptable. They cost a few pennies more then the store brand but are worth every penny. Snagged a 4 pack of 75w bulbs for about $2.50 and went home to see how big of a difference could be made.

Installing them and flipping the switch was like seeing my home in a whole new light, no pun intended. The colors on my walls, art I have hung, even the fabric of my furniture looks slightly different, better even. Working tonight on my computer is great, well working is never a lot of fun but this makes it more bearable.

GE also offers some low wattage swirly bulbs that save energy and last up to five times longer then a standard bulb in what they are calling cool light. The package states on it 6500K, which is a great sign, but at nearly $7.00 for a two pack, I held off to see what the reveals could do for me. Since I leave my kitchen light on for my dog all day, that will most likely be where I test the new bulbs out, but I’m in no hurry.