With an influx of holiday gifts and trinkets, now is the perfect time of year to ask some tough questions about your things. Erin at the blog Unclutterer has a list to get you started.
In an effort to make more conscious choices about the objects she shared her home with, Erin began aggressively asking questions about them. The questions helped her overcome a dilemma:
Each object exists in my space for a reason, and a chunk of time, planning, and research was dedicated to its acquisition, and there are further evaluations to let it stay. I make an investment of myself in every object, and that is why it's hard for me to say that I'm not attached to these objects.
Even dedicating more thought to her acquisitions than most do, she still found it hard to work around the attachments we all form to things in our physical space. Using a series of questions like: "Does this item make my life easier, save me time, save me money, fulfill an essential need?" helped Erin sort through things more effectively and objectively. The questions are divided into two camp, those for the things you already own and those for the things you are about to acquire. If you're looking to live more consciously with your things this year and make better use of your physical space, Erin's list is a great spring board to taking an engaged look at your possessions. For other decluttering techniques check out how to declutter your home with the suitcase test and how to form an attack plan for a cluttered messy home.Photo by Diego Cupolo.
"Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!" Mike Wilson, a Denver resident and passenger on Continental flight 1404, tweeted (posted updates to his Twitter account) about his experience when the Houston-bound flight crashed this weekend. According to his tweets, this was plane crash number two for Wilson. And, bus travel is becoming a more attractive option.
Presumably due to its popularity—and Vista's low adoption rates—Microsoft has extended Windows XP's life from January till May of 2009. The BBC reports that hardware firms will be able to get XP licenses delivered up until May 30, 2009, instead of January 30, the original cutoff date.
A serious scripting hack that can grab passwords (or, potentially, do worse) from any version of Internet Explorer is leading security and malware experts to suggest switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or any other browser, if only for the time being. Microsoft itself is, of course, asking users to just be cautious while it works on a fix. The BBC article thumbnails security tips, including switching IE's security settings to "High," if you won't be migrating (or can't switch at work). [via]
Having trouble keeping your cat off the kitchen counter or away from your plants? You've really just got two options: You can either accept the fact that your cat's going to get up there because you can't watch her all the time, or you could build a motion-sensing security-camera booby trap that scares the crap out of your cat whenever she jumps up there. Most of us would settle with the former option, but an inventive fellow named Brian decided that option two was the way he'd rather go, and the result is the Blender Defender. When triggered, Blender Defender switches on a blender, flashes a strobe, and terrifies cats. While you may never get around to building your own Blender Defender, it is nice to see someone using previously mentioned tools like ffmpeg, X10 automation, and a dash of Perl to make something interesting. Be sure to click through to see the poor cat suffer the wrath of the Blender Defender.
