I could use this all the time. I do 3D animation, and before I start with anything digital I usually do a number of sketches and storyboard images first on paper. But the scanning part is a serious time suck. It's so much faster to work on a nice sized sketch pad and have it instantly digitized than scanning, believe…

I read a legal case a few years back where a father and son decided to practice a complicated scene from a martial arts movie involving sharpened samurai swords, in doors no less. Unlike the fighters in the movie, the father was momentarily distracted when the mother in the house objected to all the noise the fight…

Well- one thing that may make a big difference to the importance (or not) of component order is case size and number of actual pieces going in.

Overall, a good overview, but if I was someone who had never done much repair or building I think I'd be totally lost on a number of things you say here (I've repaired and built plenty BTW). Plus, your order is NOT helpful at all! Think about it: install all your big components first, then the power supply, and at the…

Kindle by a long shot. I've owned both Kindle and the Nook. The Nook is fine for books, but if you want newspapers or magazines the formatting is absurdly difficult to navigate and B&N customer service is basically "blame the customer" if anything goes wrong. The Kindle is also easier to read for contrast.

OK- cut myself and not one band-aid in the house, or at a picnic. Options: napkins, tissues, toilet paper, towel, clean but old t-shirt or cloth or... spices?

Cooks Illustrated did a complete testing on this method and the "Sun Tea" was unfortunately voted by their panel hands-down the worst tasting method for making iced tea. Sorry to be a kill-joy, because part of me wants to believe it imbues the tea with some sort of solar magic, but it just makes blah tasting tea.

Not liking the white on white layout though some of the text rendering and buttons have a nice feel. Some contrast for the sections makes for much faster reading and usage though so I'm not buying in I think. Also agree that even the Dense version has a lot of areas that are too padded out. The fact is, some of the…

We recently got an energy saver power strip (and power filtering) double strip. It works by bringing everything down to it's lowest possible mode when the TV is off (including just powering devices off entirely) and keeping the DVR is a sleep mode that can be awoken when needed to record. So far it seems to work…

Since when is saving money and reducing overall energy consumption (which is tied to energy security) a Far Left agenda?

Well, it's a slam dunk if most of your online purchases are from Amazon to use their card, especially coupled with their Prime program (free 2 shipping) and other deals. I used them all the time anyway, but once the card and Prime were in place, it's been great. After Christmas, I usually end up getting at least a…

Pretty much all my listening is either on decent, to very good and up to stellar speakers (depending on the room). The exceptions would be small computer speakers off the laptop in the kitchen or in the car. In the last two places, it's pretty hard to hear quality issues over activity and off of what songs are being…

Uhhhh...am I the only one who realizes that even better than tape is just water (or spit in a real pinch). How about water on a sponge, which will give you more coverage and you won't have anything to peel off.

If you use Chrome, you pretty much have it built in already now, don't you? Not full featured I guess, but good enough for most instances.

But the antivirus thing is not true at all now. Lifehacker and many other tech sites have all come out in favor of the free MS Security Essentials package. It's anti-malware, anti-virus, anti-spyware; you name it.

That was my first thought too! WTF? Those aspects right there make me a little suspicious of even going any further!

I was sort of thinking this myself. A good pair of Grados, often for under a $100 are hard to beat. Still, I'm all for trying out new tweaks or hacks, as long as you're OK if it's more a learning thing and not depending on it being something more than it is.

I use mostly the same password for all sites, but I have believe, with a long-form anagram that also has a seriously random 4-6 digit number on top is secure. For instance, if you make up a descriptive story like:

Giant companies, or small ones, still holding out on XP are saving pennies and wasting dollars. 4GB memory limit, 32 bit, unstable, flimsy, ugly, and easy to hack and crash, and slow. Yeah- it's REALLY worth it to save on the upgrade! Plus, it won't support newer hardware.

Yeah- you'd need to download it, print it and keep it in a fire and water proof box or something.