Get Toasted

It's a recommended practice

"Let's face facts. The whole low-carb craze is playing itself out. The USDA recommends that every day we eat 6 to 11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, pasta, and other foods containing grains, especially whole grains. Bread is not the enemy of a healthy body, if you select the right bread.

The American Dietetic Association recommends a minimum of three servings of whole grains per day and goes so far as to recommend whole-wheat toast with peanut butter as a quick and healthy breakfast option."

300 Ways To Enjoy Toast
By Mr Breakfast

Also:
Roller Toaster




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Psst-Cheap Gas

Drive to Save

"GasBuddy.com is the portal site to more than 170 web sites that help consumers find cheap gas prices. All web sites are operated by the non-profit organization known as GasBuddy Organization Inc.

Since gasoline prices change frequently and may vary by as much as 20 percent within only a few blocks it is important to be able locate the service station with the lowest priced fuel. GasBuddy Organization web sites allow consumers to both share information about low priced fuel with others as well as target the lowest priced stations to save at the pumps!"

Also:
Gas Price Watch.com

Autos.MSN.com




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History is Something to Play With

Games for kids (and you)

History can be boring when the only reward is a scribbled "Acceptable" on a test paper.

But what if part of the game is to build a trebuchet to fling the teacher?

"Welcome to the SchoolHistory.co.uk downloadable resources centre. This has been updated to allow quick, easy access to our resources kindly contributed by other teachers. There are now over 1,400 pages of resources available."

Interactive History Games



Also see Build a Trebuchet in your Backyard




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Type with One Hand

Does 85 WPM impress you?

The common short cuts are: Ctrl+X for Cut, Ctrl+C for Copy, and Ctrl+V for Paste.

These are optimized for use on the left side of the keyboard.

There's another set of shortcuts that use keys on the right-hand side the keyboard:

Cut: Shift + Delete
Copy: Ctrl + Insert
Paste: Shift + Insert

Also see:
One Hand Typing

"Computer Keyboard Shortcuts for one hand typists. Resources for vocational, occupational, rehabilitation therapists, and their clients, who have lost full, or partial use of one hand, with a special emphasis on learning to type with a standard keyboard."

"This video clip is of me, Lilly Walters. Note how I use my less able hand to do the SHIFT key. I am typing on a normal keyboard. I really do up to 85 words per minute - with enough caffeine and sleep. The keyboard shown here is a NORMAL keyboard you will find in any office, school or home. No alternative keyboard layouts. Just what all of my peers use. By the way, I type faster than most of my peers! All because I learned to type with one hand."

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Office Bling Bling

For your real desktop

C.A.Daniels & Company offers some decadent, fun, office bric-a-brac.


Hippo stapler


Hare Brush and Mirror


Hippo Clock/Paperweight


Trout Razor


BoingBoing.net refers to the El Casco company for more desk bling.

Also:
Too much Bling

"A couple of months ago I bought a 17" LCD monitor (PolyView V17E). However, when I first powered it on, the thing that struck me was just how bright the blue power LED was! This power LED is just next to the power switch, immediately below the screen itself. The LED was bright enough to be very distracting, to the extent where it was just too bright to be able to look at the bottom part of the monitor without needing sunglasses.

Luckily, the LED was shining through a small plastic diffuser, mounted in the case, which had a flat surface on it. A couple of coats with a permanent marker dulled the brightness sufficiently to allow me to use the monitor without being blinded."

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Color News

A multidiscipline subject

Here is a study about how color effects a reader's choice of concentration.

It was intended for newspaper publishers, but the same knowledge can be used in Web design, PowerPoint, or any other reporting application. Word and Excel will also benefit.

Color, Contrast, and Dimension in News Design

ColorProject

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.
Poynter.org




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When Will You Die?

Let the government help you find out

Stadium High school in Tacoma, WA (WWW.CelebrateStadium.com) recently celebrated 100 years.



There have been 38,797 graduates since 1906 and 24,176 could still be alive.

This report presents period life tables for the United States based on age-specific death rates in 2003.

Presented are complete life tables by age, race, and sex. In 2003, the overall expectation of life at birth was 77.5 years, representing an increase of 0.2 years from life expectancy in 2002.

Between 2002 and 2003, life expectancy increased for males and females and for both the white and black populations.

Life expectancy increased by 0.3 years (from 77.7 to 78.0) for the white population and by 0.4 years (from 72.3 to 72.7) for the black population.

The greatest increase was experienced by black females with an increase of 0.5 years (from 75.6 to 76.1). Life expectancy increased by 0.2 years for black males (from 68.8 to 69.0), white males (from 75.1 to 75.3), and for white females (from 80.3 to 80.5).

Life expectancy at birth, selected years 1900-2003

United States Life Tables - PDF




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Blog Wha's a Blog

Is it Samuel Pepys or Robert Scoble?

Samuel Pepys:
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of daily entries from Pepys' 1660 diary at The Diary of Samuel Pepys.
A new entry written by Pepys will be published each day; 1 January 1660 was published on 1 January 2003.

Robert Scoble, former Microsoft Evangelizer:
Scobleizer
How your blog will get discovered

Here are some references to Web Logs

MSDN Magazine:

"Q - What is blogging all about?

A - First, "blog" is short for Web log. It's a medium in which an author writes a journal-style Web site with provisions for readers to respond. These Web logs are becoming quite valuable in the software community for sharing ideas."

All About Blogs and RSS
Wikipedia definition

Weblog as Online Community Management Tool

Blogger.com:
Eats, Blogs & Leaves
Blogger Basics

More on RSS (Really Simple Syndication):
RSS News you choose
About Syndication, RSS, and Other Web-Altering Chemicals
RSS: The Web's Next Big Thing?




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Quote Me All You Want

What the other guy says has weight

There are sites that give you Bartleby Quotations.

Gar Reynold has put together a list of some other sites that can help bolster any argument, no mater how specious.

"In my presentations, I may have several slides which feature a quote from a famous (sometimes not so famous) individual in the field. The quote may be a springboard into the topic or serve as support or reinforcement for the particular point I'm making. A typical Tom Peters presentation at one of his seminars, for example, may include dozens of slides with quotes. "I say that my conclusions are much more credible when I back them up with great sources," Tom says."

PresentationZen.blogs.com:
Where to get quotations

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso"

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Go Back 23 Hours

Really save useful time

"Therefore, let us keep the fall ritual as it is. However, one Sunday each Spring, let us set our clocks not one hour forward, but TWENTY-THREE HOURS BACKWARD.

Think of all the advantages. We will not lose an hour of sleep; we will gain (almost) a day of rest. It will be Saturday all over again. You will never again miss Confession, or an airplane, or the Redskins game.

Naturally, if this were the whole plan, our calendars would fall behind one day in each year. However, the second part of the Revised DST Plan deals with this. Every four years, instead of adding a day, let us SUBTRACT THREE DAYS.

Furthermore, let these be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which according to recent polls are the least popular days.

Stop Daylight Saving Time

---

Daylight Saving Time

About Daylight Saving Time

Wikipedia Daylight Saving Time

Saving Time and Energy

Daylight Savings Google News

As a result of the U.S. passing the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. will change starting in 2007. DST will begin on the second Sunday of March and end the first Sunday of November.




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Pen Trix

Be cool in the office

You've seen people twirl pens in their hands; rolling around their fingers. Here's how to do it.

What is Pentrix? Pentrix is the new and improved version of Pentix - The Art of Pen Spinning web site. Pentix has been around since January, 2000 and has grown in popularity among pen spinners ever since. The mission of Pentrix is to teach people how to spin their pens.

PenTrix.com

There's also Glowsticking:



GlowSticking.com




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Emperer of Scent, The

By Chandler Burr

ISBN 0-375-50797-3
Random House 2002



About the Author
Has contributed to The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and the Washington
Post among others.

Book Description
A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses. Luca Turin proposes a new theory of smell. Vision is perceived by light vibrations; Sound as well. Turin proposes that the same is true of Smell.
The science gets a little deep, but the human story is compelling.
Whether he is right or not has not been universally decided. The fights between branchs of science are like civet fights.

Quote
One scientist, Richard Doty, says

"You may have noticed that if you breath through your nose, you tend to breathe through only one side of it for a while, then for a while through the other. . . When you smell information on the right side, you send it to the left side of the brain and vice versa, and you find a statistically significant increase in verbal scores when you breathe through the left side of your nose."

October, 2004
"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year goes to two Americans who have puzzled out the sense of smell. Richard Axel and Linda Buck will split $1.4 million for discovering how chemicals in the air trigger thousands of recognizably different odors."

National Public Radio
Also:

Olfaction


"Doty's comment is incorrect. Actually, it might be from Chandler Burr's book, that was unclear.
The olfactory receptor sites do not switch recognition to the opposite brain hemisphere. What is breathed in through the right nostril goes directly to the right side of the brain, the left to the left."

Anonymous




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Paper Art

Fold it all up

Caterpillar on a leaf PDF

Origami.com

Here are a couple of sites that provide templates and instruction about Origami; paper folding:

Animated lesson

OrigamiHeaven.com
David Mitchell is internationally known for his ground-breaking origami designs and publications. He is a particular specialist in the field of modular origami but is also a prolific inventor of one-piece paperfolds, novelties, flexagons, puzzles, visual paradoxes and magical effects.

This site sells paper and provides templates:
Paper and More




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