How Rope Was Made the Old Fashioned Way
This is a clip from the BBC series Edwardian Farm that shows how rope was made in the olden days.
The entire series is available to watch online.
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How to find your stolen car
Tyler Cowen gets the best email. Case in point is this advice from a former cab driver on the best way to get your stolen car back:
If your car is ever stolen, your first calls should be to every cab company in the city. You offer a $50 reward to the driver who finds it AND a $50 reward to the dispatcher on duty when the car is found. The latter is to encourage dispatchers on shift to continually remind drivers of your stolen car. Of course you should call the police too but first things first. There are a lot more cabs than cops so cabbies will find it first — and they’re more frequently going in places cops typically don’t go, like apartment and motel complex parking lots, back alleys etc. Lastly, once the car is found, a swarm of cabs will descend and surround it because cabbies, like anyone else, love excitement and want to catch bad guys.
How to efficiently sort socks
From Stack Overflow, a question about how to efficient sort a pile of socks.
Yesterday I was pairing the socks from the clean laundry, and figured out the way I was doing it is not very efficient. I was doing a naive search — picking one sock and “iterating” the pile in order to find its pair. This requires iterating over n/2 * n/4 = n^2/8 socks on average.
As a computer scientist I was thinking what I could do? sorting (according to size/color/…) of course came into mind to achieve O(NlogN) solution.
And everyone gets it wrong. The correct answer is actually:
1) Throw all your socks out.
2) Go to Uniqlo and buy 15 identical pairs of black socks.
3) When you want to wear socks, pick any two out of the drawer.
4) When you notice your socks are wearing out, goto step 1.
QED
How not to talk to kids about school shootings
There are plenty of resources available to help parents talk to their kids about violence against children, but don’t feel like you have to.
So as a parent, you’re left with the question not just of how to talk to your child about tragedy, but of whether you’re talking to your child for your child — or for yourself. There’s the question of what to say, but also when, and if, you should say it. “If you’re feeling panicked, and like there’s no place safe in the world, then that’s a good time to step back and get those thoughts in order,” Dr. Rappaport suggested. “But if we try to wait until we’ve fully come to terms with something like this, then we’ll never be able to talk. In fact, we’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning.”
How to talk to kids about school massacres
So far, I’ve found advice from Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Any child psychologists reading today? Can you point me towards some other (possibly better) sources? Email me here: [email protected]. I will collect the best resources and post here.
In keeping with the very contemporary-seeming “advice from children’s television” vibe, here’s Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton on talking with our children about the elementary school shootings.
Dr. Brené Brown shared several resources:
- Talking to children about violence from the National Association of School Psychologists
- Resources from the American Academy of Pediatrics
- Talking To Your Children About Violence Against Kids from the University of Minnesota
- Talking To Children About Death from Hospicenet.org
- Explaining the News to Our Kids from Common Sense Media
Helping Children and Adolescents Cope with Violence and Disasters from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Talking to Kids About Tragedy by James Hamblin, MD at the Atlantic.
Tips for Talking to Children About the Shooting from the NY Times.
How to hack Chipotle
This article on getting the most out of your burrito-scarfing experience at Chipotle by William Hudson at Thought Catalog was better than I thought it could be.
1/2 meat + 1/2 meat = 3/2 meat. Forgetting is natural, like Chipotle meat, so let me remind you that when you add fractions you only add the top part, when the bottom part is the same number. Therefore, when you’re asked what type of meat, and you say “half chicken and half steak”, it should equal one serving of meat. But it never does. Because a scoop of meat is kinda just a scoop of meat, and nobody in Chipotle management has yet introduced new “half” scoops with which to more precisely address this perfectly legal request. So use it. IMPORTANT: Unlike with the beans, you should make your position on the half meats clear from the beginning, otherwise they charge you for “extra meat.”
These options should all have names like the In-N-Out secret menu items: the Blinko, the Meat and a Half, the Jimmy Stewart’s Bathtub, etc. (via digg)
How to drink Scotch Whisky
Richard Paterson, Whyte & Mackay’s master whisky blender, shows us the proper way to enjoy Scotch. It gets a little messy.
Here’s another video from the same guy in which he demonstrates what to do when a bartender hands you a Scotch on the rocks. (via the new yorker)
How wine corks are made
My son thinks corks grow on trees…not sure whether to pop his bubble on this or not.
It all starts in the forest. Cork oaks are harvested every nine years, once they reach maturity. It doesn’t harm the tree, and the cork bark regrows. Most cork forests are in Portugal and Spain.
How to read a Victorian novel
The Victorian novel can present a daunting challenge to today’s Twitter-addled brains, so Rohan Maitzen has some advice on how to read them.
Now that you’re properly equipped, your next challenge is time! You’re going to want to read, and read, and read-but modern life sometimes makes that difficult. What’s to be done?
Take the book with you everywhere, that’s what. Bank line-ups, buses, bathrooms, those precious 8 minutes while the pasta boils - you know what to do! A few pages here, a few pages there, and next thing you know, you’re 500 pages in, with only another 200 to go.
Then there’s all the time you’ll save by not watching television. Remember: the most highly-praised shows in recent years are always compared to … Victorian novels! Some of them are straight-up based on them! Just read the originals. They are always better.
How to use a paper towel
In the spirit of conservation, Joe Smith shows us how to use a paper towel properly.
(via df)
How to blog anonymously
From former call girl blogger Belle de Jour, a guide on how to publish online and maintain your anonymity.
You will need an email address to do things like register for blog accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and more. This email will have to be something entirely separate from your “real” email addresses. There are a lot of free options out there, but be aware that sending an email from many of them also sends information in the headers that could help identify you.
When I started blogging, I set up an email address for the blog with Hotmail. Don’t do this. Someone quickly pointed out the headers revealed where I worked (a very large place with lots of people and even more computers, but still more information than I was comfortable with). They suggested I use Hushmail instead, which I still use. Hushmail has a free option (though the inbox allocation is modest), strips out headers, and worked for me.
(thx, fred)
How a Bicycle Is Made
From British Council film, a short film from 1945 that shows how a bicycle is designed and manufactured.
(via stellar)
How to draw Bugs Bunny
Watch as legendary animator Chuck Jones draws Bugs Bunny, one of the many characters he helped create during his long career.
It’s amazing how the drawing looks nothing like a rabbit and then with a few quick strokes, he draws those cheeks and, boom, there’s Bugs. You can also watch Jones draw Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, Pepe le Pew, and Daffy Duck. These are fascinating. (via ★interesting)
Ten commandments for con men
Con man Victor Lustig shared a list of commandments written for aspiring con men. Among them:
1. Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con-man his coups).
8. Never boast. Just let your importance be quietly obvious.
How to make an Old Fashioned
Cocktail enthusiast Martin Doudoroff explains how to make an Old Fashioned without using any of the “various bad ideas” (e.g. “There is no slice of orange in an Old Fashioned”) that have crept in over the years.
Sugar (and the scant water it is dissolved in) mellows the spirit of the drink. Not much is required, just a little, as the quality of today’s spirits is so much higher than it typically was when the Old Fashioned was born. A little splash of simple syrup generally suffices. Gum syrup, rich simple syrup, demerara syrup, brown sugar syrup, sugar cane syrup (the variety filtered of molasses solids) all are great choices. Agave syrup or other neutral diet-sensitive sweeteners may suffice.
Honey, maple syrup, molasses or other strongly-flavored sweeteners do not belong in an Old Fashioned, which is not to say you cannot or should not create nice variations on the Old Fashioned with them.
(via ★kathryn)
How to make your own feral raccoon suit
If not for the photos, I would not have believed this story: a woman duct-taped a bunch of food to her body in order to attract raccoons. No, really:
Just before entering coon HQ, duct-tape your bounty of trash food all over yourself. Raccoons’ propensity to enjoy garbage-can snacks, coupled with their shitty attitude and distinct facial markings, makes them the crust punks of the animal kingdom (without the heroin problem and terrible taste in music). And just like crusties, they’ll approach without warning and snatch a turkey sub right out of your hands, so you can only imagine how appetizing you’re going to look with two-week-old baguettes for arms.
One comestible raccoons seem to find yucky, however, is broccoli. Use their aversion to your aesthetic and protective advantage by surrounding danger zones (i.e., your junk) with appropriate amounts of the leafy green stuff.
Hey Edith, Kreayshawn is nothing…join me in waving your cane at this girl in the food suit. The kids today, really.
How to speed up plane boarding
Physicist Jason Steffen has discovered a possible method for getting passengers onto airplanes twice as fast as the usual method.
The fastest method is one of Steffen’s own design: boarding alternating rows at the same time, starting with the window seats. The secret, he says, is that it leaves passengers elbow room to stow their luggage at the same time.
Even random boarding is faster than the back-to-front boarding the airlines currently use. (via jcn)
How toilet paper is made
I’d been wondering if a video like this existed, but I’d never been able to find it before. “Most of us probably take our rolls of toilet paper for granted.” I like seeing how the cardboard tubes are made.
How to fake a fingerprint
From a NY Times article on how to disappear, a quick tip on how to effectively fake a fingerprint:
Are officials troubling you for fingerprints? “There’s a nongreasy glue, like a mucilage,” he said, that is more or less invisible once applied. “You put it on your thumb. You roll your thumb over your heel. Now, you’ve got a heel print on your thumb for no one who exists.”
Frank Ahearn, one of the people quoted in the article, actually runs a business that helps people disappear…or at least he used to, until he disappeared.
How to beat a chess grandmaster
Watch as magician Derren Brown beats a room full of grandmasters and other top chess players even though he doesn’t really play chess all that well. At the end, he explains how he did it…it’s a dead simple clever method.
How to write books
Before embarking on writing his new book, Steve Silberman asked a bunch of authors (like Cory Doctorow, Jonah Lehrer, and Carl Zimmer) for their best advice about writing books.
A few things became clear as soon as their replies came in. First of all, I’ll have to throttle back my use of Twitter and Facebook to get this writing done (and I may never rev up my idle Quora account after all.) Secondly, scheduling intervals of regular exercise and renewal amid the hours of writing will be essential.
How to open a bag of charcoal
A little late for Memorial Day but useful for the rest of the summer: how to work the little stringie thing at the top of a bag of charcoal.
I’m talking about those rugged paper bags of hardwood charcoal that are bound at the top with a zipper-like string seam that looks as if it was made to cleanly unravel. Sometimes it doesn’t and then you can yank and yank to no avail. And even when it does there seems to be some magic involved, like the gods of charcoal are smiling down on you.
Service journalism at its finest…now I won’t have to tug on the string like an uncomprehending chimp and then just rip the bag. Ok fine, fail to rip the bag because I’m not strong enough and go inside and get the scissors and cut it. Like a fancy gentleman.
How to make a Model T
Footage from a Ford factory of assembly line workers making Model T cars.
(via product by process)
How an hourglass is made
A three-minute film on how an hourglass is made.
Each hand made hourglass comprises highly durable borosilicate glass and millions of stainless steel nanoballs, and is available in a 10 or 60 minute timer.
(via ★robinsloan)
How to steal like an artist
That’s the title of a talk given by Austin Kleon on how to do good creative work. Most of it is of the no-nonsense “don’t worry and just work” variety of which I am a big fan.
9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.
As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
I’m a boring guy with a 9-5 job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog.
That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.
The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
(via ★bryce)
Photography for designers
Designer Jessica Walsh shares the photo setup she uses to document her work.
I cobbled together this set up out of the desire to properly archive my design work. Next thing I knew I started getting paid for it, and it became an integral part of my work. I am simply listing my equipment and a little bit about what I know to get some designers started in figuring out the best way to shoot their own work.
You can see the gorgeous results in her portfolio.
How to make money: practice
Jason Fried reveals how he got good at making money. I am not a full-fledged member of the Church of 37signals, but one of my favorite lessons from them is that a business needs to practice how to make money in order to get good at it…it’s not something that you just turn on when monetizing mode strikes.
So here’s a great way to practice making money: Buy and sell the same thing over and over on Craigslist or eBay. Seriously.
Go buy something on Craigslist or eBay. Find something that’s a bit of a commodity, so you know there’s always plenty of supply and demand. An iPod is a good test. Buy it, and then immediately resell it. Then buy it again. Each time, try selling it for more than you paid for it. See how far you can push it. See how much profit you can make off 10 transactions.
Start tweaking the headline. Then start fiddling with the product description. Vary the photographs. Take some pictures of the thing for sale; use other photos with other items, or people, in them. Shoot really high-quality shots, and also post crappy ones from your cell-phone camera. Try every variation you can think of.
How to write a Twitter bio
Alex Blagg, social media 2.0 ideator, shares 15 top tips for crafting the perfect Twitter bio.
5. If you go out to bars like every night of the week, you’re not alcoholic. You’re a Foursquare Ambassador.
6. You can add “-ista” to the end of literally any word to make yourself sound approximately 47 times more stylish and savvy. (ex. Digitalista or Barista or Unemployista)
How to tie a Hermes scarf
Hermes has a handy PDF file that shows you how to tie their famous scarves into all sorts of configurations, like so:
You can even fold some of the larger scarves into handbags.
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