To do next time the Canada-US exchange rate is favourable

I just thought of this now, but I wish I'd thought of it a year ago.

If there are US retailers you like to shop at, buy yourself a bunch of gift cards from them when the exchange rate is favourable. Then when the exchange rate worsens, you can use your gift cards and it will be just like spending money at the better exchange rate.

In other worse, if I had bought myself some gift cards when the dollars were at par, the $114 US purchase I just put in my cart would cost me $114 CAD instead of $138 CAD.

To find out before carrying this out: do US gift cards expire?

Helpful hint to ebay sellers

If you somehow indicate in or on the packaging what your ebay name is, it's easier for me to give you your well-deserved five-star rating.

Quick and easy volumization tip for long hair

After you get out of the shower, pin your wet hair up on top your head in an exaggerated form of that quiff thingy Kids Today are wearing. You can leave it there until it air dries completely, or just keep it for a little bit while you do your makeup or have your coffee. Then, when you're done the rest of your morning routine, unpin your hair and style it normally. It will be noticeably more voluminous at the scalp, even after violent brushing.

This has been tested only on fine thin straight hair. I have no idea whether it will work for other hair types.

Redirects

Helpful hint: even though opening links in new windows can be helpful for the user, there is no good reason whatsoever to have the link redirecting the user to your new site open in a new window.

Open letter to religious people trying to say nice things to atheists

Telling an atheist that you're sure they'll find god soon is a dis. I know it doesn't sound that way to you. I know you think you're saying "This great and wonderful thing that changed my life will happen to you soon!" But to an atheist whose atheism came from careful thought (and I don't know any whose didn't, although I'd imagine it could also be the result of growing up in a household without religion), it sounds like anything from "Soon you'll see that I'm right and you're wrong!" to "Soon you'll come to realize what a wonderful man your abusive ex is and go crawling back to him!" Just...don't say it.

Edited to add the most obvious analogy in human history: religious people, how would you feel if smiling and enthusiastically told you that I'm sure you'll lose your religion soon?

How to test Cuil

Cuil is clearly having teething troubles so I haven't been able to test it, but here are the things to search for when you're testing it.

1. Reproduce the last search where you were actively impressed by Google's results. A while back someone told me about someone they know who lives in Toronto and has two very disparate and very cool jobs. Googling the names of the two jobs with the word Toronto returned the exact person they were telling me about as the first result. Can Cuil compete?

2. Search for something you can't find with Google. I can't find a torrent of the 1973 movie soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar. I can't find certain people from high school I've tried to look up. I can't find the French lyrics to the Log Driver's Waltz. Can Cuil do better?

3. Search for some random article or website you read once. I once read a very good Miss Manners column where she lays a smackdown on a LW for attempting to fix up a friend (whose late husband was blind) with another blind man, despite the fact that the friend had quite specifically asked not to be fixed up. It was the first Google result for the keywords miss manners blind date, which was also the first keyword combination I tried. Can Cuil compete?

4. Search for the sort of thing you mindlessly google as part of everyday web surfing. I find legislation by googling its title, not by navigating justice.gc.ca. I go to the smog alert site by googling ontario air quality. I get to the Jeopardy website forum by googling Jeopardy boards. Would you have to change your navigation habits with Cuil?

The thing about aspiring to be a Google-killer is that you have to be not only as good as Google, but consistently and remarkably better. Remember when Google first came out in 98/99, how much startlingly better than the alternatives it was? You'd have to be at least that much better than Google to kill it.

Helpful Hint: delete your restore points every once in a while

I found a function in disk cleanup that allows you to delete all but the most recent restore point. So I clicked on it. It hourglassed for quite a while, and when it was finished I had 7 gigs of space freed up. (My computer is just celebrating its third birthday sometimes soon or recently.)

Helpful Hints: choreograph your recipes

I was reading a recipe for roast chicken, which is an unfamiliar process to me because I'm vegetarian. I don't think I could follow the recipe as it stands. For every step, I found myself asking "In what? With what? Until when?"

For example, "Combine butter, lemon rind and lemon juice." In what? A bowl? How big of a bowl? With what? A spoon? A whisk? How do I know when I'm done combining them?

"Rub chicken with the butter." How, exactly? With my hands? Does it have to soak in like moisturizer, or just cover the chicken? Should all the butter end up on the chicken, or do I just coat the chicken with however much butter it takes?

"Roast the chicken with the garlic and shallots for 1 hour, 15 to 30 minutes or until juices run clear." Where, exactly, are these juices? Do I have to take the pan out of the oven to see them? How clear? Transparent but coloured? Clear like water?

"Place pan over high heat and add lemon juice and sugar. Bring to boil and boil for 1 minute or until sugar starts to turn brown. Immediately add the stock, scraping up any bits on base of pan and bring to boil. Add in any chicken juices from carving board and boil until reduced by half. Remove from heat and whisk in butter." So do I mix in the lemon juice and sugar or just put them in the pan? If I do mix them in, with what? What do I use to scrape the bits on the base of the pan? Am I to remove the bits, or just not let them stick to the pan? Apparently I'm supposed to be using a whisk for the butter, so what am I supposed to use for the rest of this step?

Maybe these things are apparent to someone who is familiar with roasting a chicken, but I seriously have no idea. And I'll never be able to learn unless people write their recipes better.

So if you're ever writing a recipe, remember: in what, with what, until when. For each step.

The Bloor line workaround doesn't work today!

I've long been an advocate of taking the subway down to Bloor rather than using a bus to cross between the Yonge and U-S lines. But don't try that today! Subway traffic is SO slow south of Eglinton because they have to keep turning the trains!

However, if you want to cross at Sheppard, take the York University Rocket (not the Sheppard bus).

How to photograph your puppy

If you're photographing a puppy (or anything else that's cute because it's small), pose it with some everyday object so people can get an idea of scale. For example, I thought that this puppy was cute, but didn't realize how small she was because she's shaped basically like a grownup dog. But then I scrolled down and saw the picture with the big yellow dog, and then the picture further down with the blue chair, and went "OOOH!" in a strange squeaky voice because she's so much smaller than I originally thought.

So use props to show just how adorably little your adorably little photography subject is.

Really. It's a rule.

Free cookies!

If you happen to visit a certain website where you have to either buy a membership or watch a commercial to gain access, it may interest you to know that you can expedite the process by cookieing yourself. (Yeah, I think the E looks funny in that word too, but if I left it out it would be cooking.)

Next time you watch the commercial, watch your URL bar. As you are granted access to the site, you will see the cookieing process reflected in the URL bar. Next time you need a cookie, you can simply manipulate the URL manually, and it should let you in.

Hooked on mnemonics

Warren Clements, author of the Globe and Mail's Wordplay column, has compiled a list of the top 10 misused words that readers send to him. He does a good job of explaining the grammatical rules behind each correct usage, but doesn't provide any easier ways to remember them. So I'd like to humbly offer up a few mnemonics I've collected over the years.

1. Its/It's: "It's" means "it is". The apostrophe replaces the "i" in "is". Therefore, if you see the apostrophe, mentally replace it with "is". If the sentence still makes sense, you've used the correct word.

2. Who/whom: Rework the sentence so that the person referred to by who/whom is referred to by "he" or "him". If "he" fits, the correct answer is "who". If "him" fits, the answer is "whom." The mnemonic is that "him" and "whom" both end in M. To use the example given in the column: "This is the man who(m) I believe knows the answer." So let's rework that to accomodate a "he" or a "him": "I believe ______ knows the answer." The word "he" fits in the blank, the word "him" does not. Therefore, the sentence takes a "who".

7. I/me: This item deals with the habit of saying "you and I" every time you have the second person and the first person joined by a conjuction, regardless of whether it's the subject or the object. "Just between you and ___", "...for you and ___", etc. There's a simple test to figure out which one is correct: handle the pronouns one at a time. "This is a good experience for you and ____". So take the "you" out, and you end up with "This is a good experience for me." When you do the pronouns one at a time, it becomes obvious which one is correct.

8. Discreet/discrete: Discrete has two discrete E's.