January 2008
15 posts
Dreamhost E-mail Retention "Policy"
I use Dreamhost. I’m actually someone who really likes them. I was just wondering, do they have an e-mail retention policy? Not really. But they have an e-mail backup system. Basically, your e-mail is backed up, but only accessible two weeks in the past. If you access your Dreamhost account via UNIX/SSH, in your home directory “cd .snapshot”—”.snapshot” is a...
Using Sugar to Keep Flowers Fresh
Never knew this. If you add some sugar and some vinegar to the water in your flower vase, your flowers should last longer. See 10 Extraordinary Uses for Sugar. Apparently the sugar “nourishes” the stems and the vinegar kills the mold and bacteria that develops around them, the stuff that makes the stems and water gooky. (If you follow the link, the tip about using sugar as a hand...
Mangosteen
Last time I was in Thailand, I couldn’t get enough mangosteen. It’s sweet, slightly citrusy, and melts in your mouth at its ripest. I have never seen it in the US—apparently the US has only recently allowed importation of the fruit. But until I find them domestically, I will satiate my thirst with these memories of this amazing fruit.
Tips to More Effective Underlining/Highlighting...
(An example of a bit of underlining overload.) When studying, it helps to underline while you read. But you *can* make your underlining more productive. (1) Try to limit underlining to once or twice per paragraph. Underlining (1) highlights the important part of a paragraph for later reference and (2) is a visual and physical cue to your brain, as your reading it, of the importance of the...
What is an Entrepreneur?
So in my first business school class—International Entrepreneurship—the professor opened discussion with the question, What is an “Entrepreneur?” The discussion focused on a few theories—most of them in conflict with my own understanding of entrepreneurship. Other students focused on innovation and technology, on increasing profits, and elevating entrepreneurship to...
In Defense of Food: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly...
I recently listened to the NPR Science Friday podcast with Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food. The book can be summed up with the tagline: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. Pretty simple. Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article on organic food and vegetarianism changed my life. In it, he made the argument that although our meat production industry is cruel and...
Squidgy: unpleasantly damp; clammy
I’m reading an article on a recently discovered 1-ton rodent that once existed in South America, oh, about four million years ago. The article comforts the reader not to be fearful of its size, since it was probably a vegetarian: “Its small grinding teeth suggest it had only weak masticatory muscles for chewing food, and probably tucked into soft vegetation, fruit and squidgy aquatic...
Advertising Fuels TV?
I’m watching 30 Rock on-line via NBC. And it just struck me as incredible that, if it weren’t for advertisers, who would pay for TV? This is incredible because I’m not wholly convinced that advertising actually works. Will a 30-second spot on TGIFridays convince me to go there? I suppose it does if I haven’t already vetted TGIFridays off my short-list of placed to ever eat....
Best Simple Word Processors for Mac OS
I was checking out the word processing applications in the NYT via 43Folders and took the time to reflect upon my own word processing use. As of now, I prefer Pages over Microsoft Word (at least until they release Word 2007). I like WriteRoom a lot, but I also like the very simple and clean Bean (not mentioned in the 43Folders review). For straight-up text, I like TextWrangler. Unlike the...
Getting a 5% Discount Off of Rolex Watches
There’s somewhat of a tradition in Asian cultures where, upon an engagement, the wife’s parents by the husband a watch. As the engagement ring is a sign of the husband’s “value,” the watch is the symbol of the wife and her family’s wealth. These days, it seems like the Rolex is the standard. I’m not complaining. But when we went out to buy, I learned a bit...
Script to Display Battery Stats in Terminal →
Click to download a perl script that displays the percent charge left on your battery as well as an estimate of the time remaining. Use something like GeekTool to display this on your desktop if you hide your menu bar. See this post to see how I integrate this onto my desktop: http://thnlnk.com/seven29/Mac.Terminal.Program.to.Access.Battery.Stats/257 Caveat emptor: This *barely* works well. But...
Mac Terminal Program to Access Battery Stats
My Mac desktop setup is kind of unique: I hide absolutely everything, so I get a full screen all the time. The Dock is small and on auto-hide; the menu bar at the top is hidden by Menufela. But by hiding everything, I lose info like the date and time, as well as my battery status. Well, the date and time are easy enough to get to with GeekTool. I have GeekTool run this command every minute: date...
Do Used Coffee Grounds Really Absorb Odors? (Hint:...
I used to love the fact that used coffee grounds could be used to absorb odors. (I’m even working on trying this out outside of the fridge.) My mom used to do this, storing them in a plastic tub and putting them in the back of the fridge. Since then, I’ve done this quite often, but remain skeptical as to its actual effectiveness. My question is *how* or *why* would used coffee...
Pet Peeve: Blind Linking
I hate it when blogs make links to other posts but don’t explain what the next link is about or why it’s important. For example, here’s a post that mentions the hazards of alcohol-based hand sanitizers. But this link doesn’t even mention what those actual hazards are, but it makes a few links to other sites. OK, so they link to themselves, to a previous post about an NBC...