Tag Archives: neat

Sharing

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I ran into an inconvenience with the current way I share socially
online. I have established a new workflow. Short messages still end up
going to Twitter, and if I feel like they are worth sending to Facebook
I use “Selective Tweets” to push that single tweet forward into
Facebook. For longer entires I write them up in Day One no matter if
they are public or private and then save them there and then share them
via email if they are public with my WordPress blog. If they are private
matters, they simply get shared with Facebook with a default stringent
security setting so only the right people can see those posts.

The email routine actually has been hit and miss to start but now it’s
working out quite nicely. First I migrated my blog from WordPress.com to
Wordpress.org. This is just me moving stuff from a companies site (.com)
to the domain that I own with Scott (windchilde.com) and I figure since
I’m paying for it anyways I might as well use it. Plus the switch over
to the windchilde.com domain also allows me unlimited storage and
unlimited bandwidth so I can share photos and videos without having to
worry about running into any storage caps or having to pay for extra
storage when I’m already paying for a pretty good deal with the host
that runs windchilde.com. I originally started with WordPress.org and
figured that Jetpack, which is a feature crosstalk package between
Wordpress.com and WordPress.org, extending some of the things that I
liked about WordPress.com around my installation of WordPress.org for
free. One of those options was “Post by Email” which gave me a
gobbledegook address at post.wordpress.com. That feature never worked
for me. It was supposed to be turn-key but it fell on it’s face. So I
turned to plugins, which are how you can extend WordPress.org sites, but
not WordPress.com sites. The company keeps a tight lid on things like
that where the “DIY” system is far more flexible and accommodating. I
downloaded the plugin called “Postie” and configured it to use a POP
account that I created on the windchilde.com domain and got that all set
up. There were a wee bit of growing pains regarding how to set
Categories and Tags in the email posts that I was making out of Day One.
What I had was a rather clunky Evernote note with the copied text from
my WordPress Category page so I could refer to that to pick and choose
which category I wanted the email post to go into. This was a mess. I
thought about it for a while and when I was done working out at Anytime
Fitness it struck me in a eureka moment; Why not just use TextExpander
to do the heavy lifting? So I started TextExpander on my MBP at home and
it came up, loaded the settings from my Dropbox (neat) and I created a
new snippet, called it “Categories” and set it’s trigger to be “;cat”.
Then I loaded all my categories from WordPress into a bracketed
pull-down list that TextExpander enables you to make on-the-fly so once
I’m done with Day One editing, I can save the entry (also is stored in
my Dropbox, yay!) and then click Share, Email, and then with the open
email I can just type in the trigger for each category I want to add and
I don’t need to remember to go to Evernote to get the list, or risk a
typo screwing everything up. Using Categories this way is really
convenient and tags are a snap to add as well.

Every once in a while I like to plug software that really works for me.
I plug the tarnations out of Mac, of course, as it’s the platform that I
can actually get my work done on. The apps that run on the Mac make the
rest of it work oh-so-well. Day One is a magnificent personal journaling
app. It’s private and password protected on all my devices and stored on
my Dropbox so I don’t have to screw around with backups or restores or
worrying that my entire Journal may just flit off into nothingness if my
MBP or a flash drive decides to play dumb on me. Plus Day One has
in-built sharing features, so I can share via Email, Twitter, or
Facebook if I want to. WordPress.org is not really software that runs on
my Mac, but instead runs on a host. The host I use is iPage.com and they
do a competent job. Setting up a WordPress.org site is embarrassingly
easy, mostly just a handful of clicks and you get a starter email with
the address you should use and your username and a temporary password. I
started to use WordPress because I left LiveJournal when the Russians
bought SixApart, the company that runs LiveJournal. Not that I have
anything against russians, but I’m not a huge fan of my words in that
place, it’s a personal thing. WordPress.org also enables commenting and
stats collection and automatically publicizes on it’s own to Twitter and
Facebook and Tumblr so I don’t have to futz around and create links to
my blog posts after the fact – WordPress does it for me.

Day One stores everything, WordPress stores my public lengthy stories,
Facebook stores my private lengthy stories and Twitter and Facebook
handle the rest – the tiny stuff. It’s all held together by Dropbox,
TextExpander, Day One app, my host, WordPress.org, Twitter, Facebook,
and Tumblr. It seems complicated and it is rather too-involved, but this
way I can write freely without having to concern myself with
self-censorship or exposing the wrong people to the wrong kind of
information. This way it’s all compact and interrelated and convenient.
So far, this is great for me and it’s how I am able to “have my cake and
eat it too”, which I’m a huge fan of in general.

All these products that I mentioned are either cheap or free. Nothing
cost me an arm or a leg, even the host, when you spread the cost over a
whole year is a pittance. I could even help friends and family set up
their own WordPress.org blogs on my host if they, and Scott, agreed. So,
if you think some of this would suit you and Scott’s good with it, just
let me know.

 

Facebook Notification Autodisplay Trick

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I recently moved over all my old Facebook Notes entries from the past and copied them into my Day One app for posterity. In the wayback machine I found an entry from March 25th, 2009 regarding a neat little thing I found that makes Facebook a little more neat. The entry back then covered how I found a way to make my Firefox browser automatically open up Facebook notifications as new tabs in my browser window all on it’s own. So as people that are connected to me on Facebook do things that fire off notifications, those automatically create new tabs in my browser and I don’t have to worry about playing catch up with the notification system and then overloading my browser with 20+ notifications. As I do other things my browser can tend to Facebook all on it’s own and I can look over the notifications in a more organic and pleasing way. I’ve just found a way to do the same thing on my Chrome browser and for anyone who is interested, here’s how I did it:

1) Start Chrome
2) Find the Chrome Extension RSS Live Links and install it
3) Browse to Facebook and click on your notifications, then find the RSS link and copy that to the clipboard.
4) In the options for RSS Live Links, add the RSS entry to the extensions RSS list and make sure you set the refresh time properly to where you want it and then check “Automatically open new items” checkbox. Click Save.
5) Save the extension options and then you are all set.

The extension will scan the RSS feed from Facebook every five minutes and if it notices changes it will automatically open up those new items as tabs in your Chrome browser. When you are all done, you can minimize your browser and do other things and over the day your browser will automatically fill with all the little notifications that Facebook throws down all on it’s lonesome. Then you go into your browser, see the notifications and then close the tabs (Command-W) when you are done with them. Easy peasy.

Cheap & Excellent Laundry Update

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The homemade laundry detergent that I made from Michael Nolan’s blog post has been working exceptionally well! Here’s my experience so far:

  • General Laundry: The lack of perfumes and fragrances are rather shocking. You lean in to sniff and there isn’t anything there. Not having overdone fragrances nearly brings on a reflexive search, very much in the vein of “I must not have a good grip on this sock…” and to be honest, it feels cleaner now than it did before, no odd someone-else-thought-this-smelled-nice fragrance just malingering after a wash. I appreciate it.
  • Extreme Laundry: Doubling what I normally use and using HOT water, this preparation actually outperformed Liquid Tide and removed not only fresh oil stains but older really set-in oil stains. There are two runners in our kitchen that are for comfort and to hide a oopsy-daisy burn-mark on our kitchen carpeting. Yes, I said it. Kitchen Carpeting. The previous owners were lazy and old. There is hardwood floors underneath but we’re too terrified to actually look for the fear that once we pull up the carpet, we’ll have a $5000 rehab job on the flooring that will need to be done.
  • Big-Batch Laundry: That is coming today, as soon as I get home and strip the slipcovers off of our white Living Room couch. There is a LOT of fabric in that deal and I’m going to take it down to the laundromat where they have the fancy 50 pound front-loading industry-sized washing machines and use half-a-cup of the cleaning solution on it with HOT water. That should fix it’s wagon. I’ll write an update to see if the fancy-powder-of-happiness can power out some of the odd stains and marks on the slipcover.

Between Michael Nolan and Lifehacker’s Blog I find so many neat ideas and clever tips that it makes me dizzy! It’s so wonderful when things like this go so very well, to say nothing about the frugality of it all! Bravo!

My Clever Laundrette

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This weeks theme is “Clean or Die” and as a wonderful spot of serendipity I ran over this blog post by a fellow I’ve been following for quite some time. I went to my local Meijers market and while there to stock up on some needful food items I thought I would walk down to the laundry aisle and see if Meijers carried any of the items listed in the post. The items specifically are:

  • Borax (sodium tetraborate)
  • Washing Soda (sodium carbonate)
  • Ivory Soap

As it turns out, I only have a very faint and foggy understanding of what Borax is and not a single clue as to what Washing Soda might be, at least I know what Ivory Soap is, oddly enough, that was the most common and most annoying item to buy. The Borax and the Washing Soda were the first big surprises, they were nestled up against each other at the end of the laundry aisle, far away from the big expensive detergents, hanging out in the “laundry additives ghetto”. At the other end of the ghetto were the bar soaps. Meijers doesn’t sell Ivory in single or even double-packs, instead, you have to buy a 10-pack. The price, $4, of course is insanely cheap, but the fact that I couldn’t acquire just a few bars at once irked me. My snark would have been fully realized if Meijers had put all three next to each other, but alas, that was not to be.

I had the earlier referenced blog page printed out and after I had whipped together dinner I got out some non-food-use implements and started to assemble the recipe for the laundry soap. With three ingredients, it was embarrassingly easy to assemble. Pour this, pour that, but when it came to the Ivory soap, I was blown away. The instructions say to microwave the ivory soap in a container. Huh? You don’t cook soap! Well, yes, that’s actually the entire point! I got a plastic tub, put the Ivory in it, and closed the door and turned on my Microwave. At first I was full-o-doubt, but then the damn thing started to foam and extrude big white fluffy cloud-shapes out of the side. I realized that I needed at least 2 minutes, not 90 seconds, but that may be due to a difference in microwave wattage. Once I was done decimating the Ivory soap, I grabbed the giant puffy white mass and knocked it down and then mixed everything together with my handy-dandy potato masher. I suppose I could have used my KitchenAid Mixer, but on something this exploratory, I didn’t want to make a mess of my entire kitchen.

The end product is quite plain. It’s a white powder with very teeny puffy bits interspersed throughout. It has a very feeble scent of Ivory soap and it made me sneeze a few times. Once I was done and ready to process a extra-large load of laundry I went downstairs with my powder in hand and utterly geeked at the novelty of it all. As I stood stooping over my plain-jane Whirlpool washing machine (not HE, of course) it struck me. I have no idea what an appropriate load measurement might be for this powder. The blog post goes on about two tablespoons of powder in an HE machine, which does me no good with my old-skool standard washing machine. I thought about the powder, what each one does and pulled a 1/4 cup per XL load out of thin air. I started my machine, waited for a inch-deep puddle in the bottom of the basin to collect and tossed in my powder. Once it was in, I added the clothes.

When the cycle was done I pulled out a shirt and gave it a sniff. Absolutely nothing. No fragrance, no scent at all. It was honestly clean, nothing left behind. I sampled other items and they all were the same way, no scent at all. Everything being equal, I still have a 64-load jug of Tide Liquid Detergent to use up but this powder is really quite good.

How about the economics? By my calculations, buying everything either in a market or off of Amazon (I used Amazon because they display prices) the per-ounce price of this laundry cleanser is 43 cents. I guess a quarter cup per XL load, so that’s two ounces so my per-load cost is 87 cents! If I had a HE machine, it’d be half that price!

So if this home-crafted laundry detergent costs 87 cents for a XL load, leaves no perfumes behind, cleans soiled clothing adequately and is non-toxic to the environment how can you go wrong?

ScotteVest Review

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Just accepted the delivery of my new Scott-e-Vest Ultimate Cotton Hoodie. From the shipping bag, through the opening and the exploration I am absolutely bowled over. The bag was damaged, it took some rough treatment and a little tear from the brutes at UPS, but the Scott-e-Vest catalog took all the abuse, saving the actual hoodie itself.

The hooded sweatshirt is a full-zip and it’s gray-green, a little duller than Army Green in color. The primary pockets are secured with magnetic closures which is a surprise when you reach in and pull out things, when your hand comes up and away, you hear this very gentle click. The weight of it is acceptable, a little more hand in the fabric wouldn’t hurt. I layer when it gets really cold, so this particular hooded sweatshirt is just fine.

The pockets, man, the pockets! It’s going to take me at least a week to decide what to put in all the many many pockets, there are 13 of them! Definitely going to have to come up with ideas on what goes where – the hint cards do help. When I stock it up with stuff, I’ll have to see how it fits then. The XL fit perfectly, everyone was right, the size is slightly large for the label but that is a great thing in and of itself. I’m going to have to figure out what I want to do about the PAN features, that’ll take some time.

After I have a chance to put it through it’s paces, then I’ll have a more concrete opinion.