Tagged as: Idea, Useful
Jun
02
I’m not sure how many people actually recycle their goods. Aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles, and more can all be recycled. I know that this is not true everywhere, but here in California you actually have to put a cash deposit down on every single item when you pay for it. So when you recycle the item (whether it be plastic or aluminum or whatever) you are actually only getting back your deposit. Somehow I think that if everyone knew this, then there would be more recycling going on.
In any case, I’d like to share a tip for recycling on your own. As you very well know, you don’t have to actually return cans in order to be recycling. You could also be recycling by using things for multiple purposes. A sample case would be the following tip:
Next time you go grocery shopping (after using the grocery pricer to check that you’re going to buy things at a good price, of course) you should choose to ask for plastic one time and paper the next. At home, take the paper bag and place it inside of the plastic one. Unfold the paper bag so that it is now simply its original size with the plastic bag on the outside of it. Place your trash in this bag and when full throw the entire thing away. This is useful because the paper will be able to hold the majority of the weight while the plastic ensures that no leaking will happen. By using this method, you are going to save yourself some cost for “trash bags” while also recycling the bags that you’ve gotten from the grocery store!
I don’t actually know if this is a well-known thing to do. Maybe it is, and I’m just unaware. In any case I’d like those that don’t know to be able to do this as well.
Oh I just thought of another tip that I heard from someone. After you’re done with your toothbrush (if you still use the traditional manual one) then you can use that in your cleaning around the house! If toothbrushes are designed to get rid of the nasty plaque on your teeth, then don’t you think that they’ll be good at cleaning any kind of gunk that you can throw at it?
Alright and coincidentally I just read about some tips for different uses for everyday household things. I like the different uses for dryer sheets, but you can check out the tips for all 10 items featured.
In any case, recycling is not hard, it’s good for both the environment and society, and it’s good for you! So take the opportunity and happy recycling!
Tagged as: Learn, Read-It, Useful
May
28
I don’t like when people use English words or phrases without knowing how to use them. I started compiling a list after reading some blogs and noticing errors in their English. And these were not blogs started in foreign countries. These were supposedly English language based blogs! In any case, peruse the list and see if you’re guilty of any of these mistakes:
- maybe/may be - “Maybe” means perhaps while “may be” means could be. Okay okay I know that using “be” in the definition is not good. Nevertheless, there is a definite difference between the phrases. Examples: “Maybe I’ll go tonight” vs “She may be going tonight”
- they’re/their/there - This difference between words is pretty well-known, and yet it is still often misused. The first is a contraction of “they are” so you have to be able to substitute “they are everywhere you use “they’re.” “Their” is possessive. “There” indicates location. Examples: “They’re going to eat food” vs “I’m going to eat their food” vs “We are going to eat food there”
- its/it’s - This happens so often it’s sickening. Haha I just used “it’s.” Anyways “its” is a possessive of a previously mentioned inanimate object while “it’s” is a contraction of “it is.” Examples: “Don’t judge a book by its cover” vs “Look around the city in the fall and see how it’s all changing”
- site/sight - The difference between these words is that “site” means location and “sight” means something that is seen. Examples: “Why don’t we go to the construction site to see how things are going” vs “Boy those fireworks over the water sure are a sight to see.”
- buy/by/bye - “Buy” means “to purchase”, “by” is a preposition that has a number of meanings including “of or near to” or “through a particular medium”, “bye” is either a shortening of the common greeting “goodbye” or the opportunity for a team to not have to play another team in a sports tournament.
In any case that list is not, by an means, exhaustive. I think that I actually don’t mind it when people know that they are not experts at English. However, I think that I have the most problem with people when they make it seem as if they have a complete idea of what they’re saying. Such is life, huh? So try to learn what you can. Oh and stop by the Word of the Week to learn some good vocabulary.
Tagged as: Life, Tip-For-Life, Useful
May
25
So in addition to my thoughts on jury duty, I wanted to inform anyone out there of a scam that I heard about at jury duty.
It involves getting told that there is a fine for missing jury duty. The scammers will call and ask for you social security number to verify who you are as well as your credit card number in order to process your fine. Now a word to the wise: be very careful whenever you are asked for either of these pieces of information no matter what the situation is. That is a reasonable thing to remember whenever you are confronted with things like this.
So obviously after that you get taken for much more than your supposed fine. You get taken for your identity. And that is just no good.
Tagged as: Emacs, Learn, Mac, Useful
May
18
As a relatively new user of Macs, I was amazed to find that I could use some Emacs key bindings by default in Mac OS X. I’m sure that many people out there already know about this, but I thought it significant enough to write about it. Key bindings are basically combinations of keys that will perform some action because it is associated with it. For example, Ctrl+S is generally regarded as being used to save something, Ctrl+P is used to print, etc.
Anyways, for those of you using Mac OS X and who don’t know much about Emacs I wanted to give a short run down. Emacs is basically an extensible text editor with the ability to have user-defined functions. There are key bindings that have a specified meaning when you’re using Emacs. Some useful ones that you might consider trying out are:
Ctrl+f - Move 1 character forward
Ctrl+b - Move 1 character backward
Ctrl+d - Delete character in front of the curser
Ctrl+a - Move to beginning of line
Ctrl+e - Move to end of line
There are many more key bindings available to Emacs that seem like they will usually get overridden by the program. Remember, this hint is for Mac OS X users. The most useful place that I could use these key bindings was in text fields in Firefox.
Try it out and let me know. Don’t blame me, though, if you hit the wrong button or if the key binding is overridden to be something else in the program that you try it with!
Tagged as: Bug-fix, Geek, Learn, Linux, Mac, Programming, Useful, Windows, Work
May
16
Files on computers are made up of different characters that are interpreted by whatever it is that you are using. That means that no matter what file it is, it is essentially a string of bytes that are interpreted by the program opening it. This means that your music program tries to interpret whatever file you open with it to be conformed to some audio standards (mp3, wma, etc.). Try to open the same file in a text editor, and you’ll find yourself looking at (apparently) junk characters. But then you’ll realize that the file is still just a bunch of characters.
I bring this up because
- It seems as if people don’t realize this.
- I encountered this while writing a Perl script today.
Something else that you should read even if you don’t know what Perl is: Windows and Unix-variants (including Mac OS X and up) do not handle files the same. I’m not talking about Fanaticism (because I’ve already posted about that). Windows uses characters that are referred to as the Carriage Return and Line Feed in order to represent a newline. These names originate because of their original use in the typewriter which actually had a physical mechanism to move. In any case, Unix-variants utilize the line feed character to distinguish its newlines. This can obviously lead to some problems if you use the same files on both systems.
If you don’t know what Perl is then you can fairly safely stop reading this article now because the rest won’t help you much. I know that it was hard for me to find and I’d like to make it available if anyone else so happens to run into the same problem.
While writing a script in Perl today, I had a seemingly strange problem where I would do some processing on my Windows machine and then transfer the file via FTP to a Unix-based server. However I noticed that I had a string that when printed to the screen on my Windows computer would display correctly but would display incorrectly in the file put onto the server. I could not figure this out for quite sometime because it seemed as if some of the lines were printing correctly and some were not. Alright enough explanation. Essentially I thought that the last character was getting chopped off in some way that I did not understand in Perl. However it had to do with Perl assuming that the lines has both a carriage return and a line feed on the lines and then chopping them off when the file was being sent via FTP. The fix that I ended up using was simply a one line regular expression like so (a suggestion from a co-worker):
$output=`some action`;
$output=~ s/\n/\r\n/g;
print $output;
print FOUT $output;
Hope that this helps someone searching for an answer. I know that I would have liked to have happened upon the answer while searching for it.