2005 Links of the Year
December 2005
I was reading my copy of the 2005 March/April issue of Cook’s Illustrated and saw that you can distinguish fruit by its little Price Look-Up (PLU) code. Nice if you don’t want to eat genetically modified (GM) foods.
Back when I took a short class at Kennesaw on camera lighting equipment I was introduced to a new term, color temperature. The idea fascinated me and I still want to learn more about it.
Ginetex has some pages on their website that explain those little symbols on your garments. I’ve never quite understood what those mean, so this is nice to know. [Update 2006-05-20: Also see the Laundry Guide to Common Care Symbols and some federal regulations I found]
I’ve always liked the idea of publishing books. Lulu seems to make it easy. They now have hardback covers too! One thing it seems that they do not offer is international paper sizes, only American / Imperial. They do have a square book size. I like square books. Now for an ISBN, getting published, oh yeah, and actuallly writing a book!
As I was going through some old disks, I came across one from our college writing class. We used a system called Norton Connect.net. It is kind of primitive in retrospect and was kind of a pain to use at the time, but it actually had some really neat applications too. You could post your work and the teacher could then post corrections. I think that people could even post comments, but I don’t remember.
November 2005
Occasionally I need to look up people based on a number. It might be because someone called and I don’t recognize who it is. It might be because I have a horrible tendency to right down numbers with no name associated with them. Anyways, I have found AnyWho and the Reverse Phone Directory to be handy. Need to know a location associated with an area code? I’ve been there too.
October 2005
Jessie and I were in Office Depot a month or so ago helping Jeff look for a telephone to fit within an old-timey looking telephone box. Jessie and I ran across an office furniture set we liked because of its knobs, functions, and color. It had a distressed white finish with “scoop” looking knobs. There was a bookshelf that went with it.
The Genetics Home Reference is a very informative site for people who want to know more about genes, heredity, and the like. Seems like a good place to point those will little knowledge of such things. Joe
The U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health & Human Services have a Household Products Database that keeps track of chemical information about all sorts of stuff. Just the kind of cool, possibly useless information that I enjoy. Joe
April 2005
When I was in college I was always trying to find a quicker and better way to take notes. I tried taking notes on my computer and that always seemed more trouble than it was worth. I reached a point where I almost took no notes at all. Each person has to discover what works best for them. I did look into some shorthand methods, including Pitman, Teeline and Gregg Shorthand. Most of these methods, or ones like them, were or are used by journalists or stenographers. All of these seemed a little too complicated for me. I stumbled upon something called Easy Script that seemed very handy. I thought I could possibly use this along with the Cornell Note-taking System, a way to structure your notes.