Reality Upgrade

A Great Flight Search

Jonas Blake — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:15:35 +0000

Hipmunk, a great flight search website.

Get Free Education

Jonas Blake — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:14:32 +0000

This is a great list of sites that offer free university level classes.

Lifehacker’s Texter

Jonas Blake — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 14:09:58 +0000

Texter is a great little utility program from Lifehacker that lets you define a set of replacement text strings. For example, rather than writing “Please contact me if you have any questions” every time you end an email, you could put a script in Texter where all you have to do is type “ques”, hit the tab key, and Texter writes it for you.

This is especially helpful if you write using html a lot, because you can use Texter to write html tags that you use over and over again.

Get Texter here.

Lifehacker Pack for Linux

Jonas Blake — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:58:07 +0000

For those of you who use Linux (and soon I will be one of you) Lifehacker has a great package of useful programs. They are customized for Ubuntu, but they probably work for other Linux distributions.

http://lifehacker.com/5590624/lifehacker-pack-for-linux-our-list-of-the-best-linux-downloads

Organize Your Life by Starting with a Clean Slate

Jonas Blake — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:03:58 +0000

I have been trying to get my life organized for quite some time now, and some how I have never quite seemed to make it happen. The ultimate goal, of course, is to make my life a little more mobile. The last time I moved I filled an entire Uhaul, but when my roommate Lili moved to Kurdistan, she did it with only a few suitcases.

Jealous? Me? Noooo….

In any case, I have recently been inspired by this post over at Zenhabits.com, and I am going to be using the technique mentioned there of organizing by starting from a clean slate. I am putting (almost) everything I own into cardboard boxes, and taking things out of them as I use them. Sometime in December (to make sure I make it through a change of seasons) I will give away or throw out anything that is left in the box.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to come as close as I can to only having 100 things. 100 is a somewhat arbitrary number, but it seems like a good starting place.

In other news, here is some great advice on how to keep an organized office in a very, very small space, which is another goal of mine.

I’ll keep you posted here on the progress of my organizational quest, and feel free to share your comments!

5 Best Book Recommendation Services

Jonas Blake — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:07:33 +0000

If your summer reading list is starting to get a little short, and your favorite author’s next book wont be out for months, you might be looking for recommendations for great books to read.

If so, Lifehacker has made a neat list the top five book recommendation websites. I can personally recommend Good Reads, but feel free to check them all out and share which ones are your favorites.

Super Reading

Jonas Blake — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:53:31 +0000

I have not tried this yet, but only because I have not had to study for anything in a while. However, with school starting around the country, this may be very useful to some of you.

This is a great article on how your brain works, and how to take advantage of it in order to study more effectively, especially when it comes to studying information gathered from the internet.

Thanks to Lifehacker for turning me on to this article!

If any of you end up using these techniques, please comment and share how they worked for you!

Better Creativity Through Exercise

Jonas Blake — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:48:43 +0000

If you have ever felt like you get all your best ideas while going for a run or a swim, it turns out you may be right. According to Newsweek magazine, small bursts of exercise can boost your creativity for hours afterward.

In fact, Newsweek says “Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward.”

Of course, this only works if you are in good shape. Otherwise the exhaustion from unaccustomed exercise outweighs the benefits.

For more on this, and a bunch of other ideas for boosting creativity, check out the full article here.

Its a Bird, Its a Plane, Its a Superphone!

Jonas Blake — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:54:07 +0000

Maybe we haven’t quite made it to the technology of “Beam me up Scotty,” but we do carry around little computers in our pockets. Little computers with GPS pinpointing, wireless internet connectivity, and a computing capacity that would have filled a small warehouse twenty years ago.

But somehow, the software does not quite seem to keep up. I want my phone to sing and dance, dammit!

Well, I should say that the software has not kept up, until now. This great program for Android phones lets you really and truly automate your phone. It lets you customize your phone the way a phone should be freakin’ customized.

Check out a great article on the program here, from Lifehacker, or download the program here:

Keep in mind this is a pay program, but there is a 14 day trial, and it is totally worth the $6.

Universal Packing List

Jonas Blake — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:03:02 +0000

This may come a little late to help my housemate who just moved to Kurdistan, with a trip through Tanzania, but I wish I had found this before she left.

In case you happen to be planning a trip in the future, take a look at this great universal packing list. You enter your destination, and some details about the trip, and it generates a great packing list for you to check off. It even has a map feature, so you can click on the countries you are visiting.

Speaking of my former housemate, and her trip to Kurdistan, she has a new blog that will be chronicling her journey. She is a great writer, and has a host of interesting adventures, so check it out here, at ALilJourney.com.