8/3 Lifehacker

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Lifehacker The Well-Planned Dorm Room [Featured Workspace] August 2, 2009 at 7:00 pm Just because you're in college doesn't mean that your room has to be a cluttered mess of schoolwork, piled with unwashed clothes, and overseen by John Belushi posters. Check out today's featured workspace to see a well planned room. Not only is Lifehacker reader Aaron Francis' room organized and pleasingly laid out, it could easily double as a testing zone for tips and tricks we've shared here at Lifehacker. He used a screen printing technique we shared to screen print the pictures above his desk and scattered throughout the room. The stand beside his reading chair is made from recycled magazines. His bedroom makes excellent use of space by putting the desk directly under the bed. One of the things that makes the traditional lofted bed stand out is a combination of two neat features. The underside of the bed is strung with 12v LED puck lights to provide a clean and even lighting over his workspace. The Macbook on his desk is linked—as seen in the gallery below— to a secondary monitor mounted to the wall above so he can watch Hulu and movies in bed. He controls the setup by using an Air Mouse while in bed. For a closer look at Aaron's awesome room, check out the gallery below. Visit his Flickr gallery for additional information about each photo. If you have a workspace of your own to show off throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker. The Well-Planned Dorm Room [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool] Make Homemade Dog Treats [Pets] August 2, 2009 at 6:00 pm If homemade dog treats sound appealing because of the questionable nature of pet food manufacturing, or you just want to build a better dog biscuit, then this tutorial is for you. Photo by KM Photography. Even if you don't consider yourself a master-class chef, making your own dog biscuits is a very forgiving undertaking. When your principle consumer is a creature not above eating road kill, you'll be quickly forgiven for burning it a little in the oven. At the crafty-centric blog Craftzine, an easy to follow guide to making your own dog biscuits was posted after a writer adopted a dog and wanted to give him healthy and homemade treats: The biscuit, we've realized, is central to dog and dog owner happiness. Not only is it a way to express thanks to our loyal friends, but it also neutralizes barky and aggressive dogs encountered in the neighborhood, so be sure and carry a few extra for making new friends. First we listed the qualities of a good biscuit: inexpensive, nutritious, enjoyable to our doggie, edible to us (why not share the treats?), can be cooked in a solar oven, and quick and easy to make from natural, simple ingredients. The recipe they provide relies on basic kitchen staples like whole wheat flour, beef broth, and vegetable oil. You can easily adopt the recipe for the dietary needs of your dog. The prep time is 10 minutes and the baking time is 35 minutes. Triple the recipe and load up a few extra baking sheets worth of treats and you'll have quite a supply on hand. Check out the recipe at the link below and if you have your own tasty recipes for homemade treats for your pets, let's hear about it in the comments. Homemade Treats for Pups (and Persons) [via Make] Ask the Commenters Roundup [Hive Mind] August 2, 2009 at 5:30 pm My laptop hard drive died. Commercial recovery is cost prohibitive. What can I do at home to try and save my data? I installed a new stick of RAM in my computer and several applications now cause full system crashes. What gives and what can I do? Does anyone know of a resource I can use to learn about games that are played only with playing cards and common dice? Any suggestions on making web sites more printer-friendly? What Windows-based program do you guy use to rotate your desktop wallpaper? Do any of you use the Dvorak keyboard layout? Have any tips for switching over? Where do you get your business cards from? I'm looking to upgrade and want a unique card. I'm looking for a good pair of earbuds for under $100. Any suggestions? I'm upgrading my phone in three weeks. My new phone has to be available from Verizon and not a smartphone. What would you suggest? What's the best way to book a cruise? We're still experiencing a bit of wonkiness with the comments; we promise to have the bugs ironed out as soon as possible. If you're having trouble with the links above, hop on over to the open thread to read and comment. Our apologies! Project Playlist Helps You Find and Play New Music [Music] August 2, 2009 at 5:00 pm Project Playlist is an all-in-one song search engine, playlist maker, and ring tone generator, giving it one-stop appeal for your daily free tune finding. Project Playlist visitors can search for music by song titles or group names. After that, you can listen to the songs, save them to playlists for future playback and sharing, and even have Project Playlist generate and send you ringtones of any of the songs you find through the service. If you're looking for something new to listen to, there is a constant stream of featured and top playlists to choose from. What's more, every time you search for music you get the chance to browse playlists that feature the artists and songs you're searching for. Project Playlist isn't new by any means, and we've certainly covered similar offerings (like previously mentioned MixTape.me), but if you still haven't found the right fit, it's worth a look. How do your find new music to vary up your soundscape? Sound off in the comments. Project Playlist [via WebWare] Store Leftover Paint Properly for Maximum Shelf Life [Household] August 2, 2009 at 4:00 pm Millions of gallons of paint go to waste every year, often because it wasn't put away properly. Here's how to make sure the leftover cans from your home projects stay fresh and ready for future touch-ups. Photo by Elsie esq.. While storing paint properly might not be the most glamorous trick in the DIYer's toolkit, it saves money and keeps good paint—often the last match for rare colors—from going to waste. The key to proper paint storage is keeping the paint in a properly sealed container and away from excessive temperature swings. For maximum shelf life, according to the National Paint and Coatings Association, you should: 1. Cover the opening of the paint can with plastic wrap. 2. Put the lid on securely and make sure it doesn't leak. 3. Turn the can upside down to allow the paint to create its own seal. 4. Store the can upside down in a place that's safe from freezing and out of reach of children and pets. Another great way to keep minimize wasted paint is to calculate the amount of paint you'll need for a project in advance to buy just the right amount. If you have left over paint and want to store some for touch-ups but you've got barely enough to fill the bottom of the can you can store it in a smaller container with a marble to minimize air exposure. Have a painting or paint storage trick to share? Sound off in the comments. How to Dispose of Paint [HowStuffWorks] DIY Citronella Candles Cheaply Banish Mosquitoes [DIY] August 2, 2009 at 3:00 pm Citronella candles are an effective way to keep mosquitoes away, but the quality makes can be pricey, and don't last as long as most people would like. Make your own for some potent and long-lasting protection. The Design Sponge blog's project is simple and a great way to recycle old candles and get some more life out of them. For the project you'll need candle wax, citronella oil, a wick, and a container. I didn't realize this until recently but citronella candles are just regular old candles scented with citronella oil, which is available at health food stores and even some specialty hardware stores (like ace or osh for example). for much less money, you can make an entire arsenal of citronella candles to keep those evil pests at bay. this is a great recycle project because you can use old tins and jars form your pantry (big tomato tins would make great long-burning mega candles). In addition to the basic supplies, you'll need a pot and a stove to create a makeshift double boiler to liquefy your wax. For a little under an hour of effort, you'll be able to crank out more than enough candles to blanket your deck with mosquito repelling candles. If you've messed around with making your own candles, bug-repelling or otherwise, let's hear about it in the comments below. DIY Project: Kate's Homemade Citronella Candles [DesignSponge] Five Best PDF Readers [Hive Five] August 2, 2009 at 12:00 pm Adobe's free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren't limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let's take a look at five of the most popular PDF readers. Original image by iowa spirit walker. Last week we asked you to share your favorite PDF reader, and now we're back to share the results. A note about pricing: Every basic package offered by the companies included in today's Hive is free. Among those offering paid upgrades, we selected the upgrade directly above the basic package for our price inclusion. Make sure to check out the company sites for additional information and to see which, if any, of the upgrades is necessary for your needs. The test document we used is the D*I*Y Planner 3.0 Handbook, an excellent resource of organization-related printouts. Sumatra PDF (Windows, Free) Sumatra PDF is an ultra-lightweight and open-source portable application. The emphasis with Sumatra PDF is not on the number of features and the wide-ranging abilities of the application, but instead on speed. It loads almost instantly, renders pages extremely quickly, and thanks to a huge number of keyboard shortcuts, you can zip through nearly any document with ease. Sumatra PDF, thanks to a lack of frills and extraneous features, is a great candidate for a portable drive or for in-browser use for someone who wants quick-loading PDF files without the lag caused by features they won't ever use. Preview (Mac, Free) Preview is Apple's free PDF viewer, built into OS X. It's no mystery many Mac users have no need to step beyond the built into tool. Preview has quite a few features often only found in commercial PDF software, like the ability to drag and drop pages between documents, page extraction, encryption, and text annotation. In addition to viewing PDF files, Preview can display over two dozen other file formats making it quite a versatile little viewer. Foxit (Windows/Linux, Basic: Free/Pro Pack: $39.99) Foxit is a polished Acrobat-alternative that, on top of cleanly displaying PDF files with a minimal interface, also has a host of handy features—all packed into a lightweight 6MB package. Foxit loads immediately, without any splash page or lag from plugins loading. Reading PDFs is just as snappy, and in-text pictures and charts render quickly. When filling out PDF forms, you can save your progress in the form and return later to finish filling it out. While both the free and the Pro version allow you to annotate text, insert graphics and drawings, and insert links, the free version adds a Foxit stamp on each page you annotate; the pro version removes the marking. Foxit is available as a portable application. Adobe Acrobat (Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: Free, Pro: $299 ) Adobe Reader is Adobe's default offering for viewing PDFs. Acrobat enjoys widespread popularity as a result of being offered by the company that created the PDF. For light PDF users, it's a more than adequate tool, although frequent users may seek to try a lighter alternative to get rid of the long load times and the lag that can occur when Acrobat loads within a web browser pane. You can attach sticky notes to pages and highlight text for your own review. More advanced features, like PDF creation, saving PDFs in other formats, and the ability to merge PDF files, are only available with an upgrade the Acrobat Standard for $299. PDF-XChange (Windows, Basic: Free, Pro: $34) PDF-XChange is another Adobe-alternative in today's Hive that boasts snappy load times and basic functionality that outpaces the basic functionality of Adobe Reader. With PDF-XChange you can open and browse PDF documents, perform simple page annotations with drawings and text, and type outside of preset form boxes by using the PDF-XChange typewriter tool to place text wherever you want. Advanced features like reorganizing pages and text extraction are only available in with the Pro upgrade. PDF-Xchange is available as a portable application. Now that you've had a chance to look over the candidates—and hopefully get a chance to test them out, since so many are conveniently portable!—it's time to cast your vote in the poll below: Which PDF Viewer is Best?(survey software) Love a PDF application that didn't make the cut? Have a trick for making Adobe Acrobat load faster? Share your PDF tips and tricks in the comments. Eliminate Dandruff with Mouthwash [Health] August 2, 2009 at 11:00 am White flakes on your shoulders are less than flattering. If store bought medications haven't worked, try using mouthwash to beat off the dandruff. Photo by √oхέƒx™. To create this anti-dandruff concoction, you'll need one part witch-hazel, one part mouthwash, and eight parts water. Place the mix in a spray bottle and spritz on your scalp and roots. Make sure your hair is still damp when doing so. Check out this video for other alternative uses for mouthwash, including making flowers last longer. If this mouthwash mix doesn't help keep the flakes away, you could also try using baby shampoo to eliminate the dandruff. How to Use Mouthwash for More than Bad Breath [Howcast]   This email was sent to topblogsofthenet@gmail.com.  Manage Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.