Halfbakery
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 2:09 PM on July 25, 2008 marked best answer

There are three simple steps that anyone can use to make a good-looking book layout without knowing much at all about design.

1) Choose a book that has whatever qualities you want in yours. (Make sure it is not so distinctive that people will immediately think of the original, however. What you want is a generic book, a good-looking book that is nonetheless not very different from a lot of others. You are trying to produce bookness here, not necessarily a distinctive... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 6:39 AM on July 23, 2008 marked best answer

My suggestion: visit a Toyota or Honda dealer's used car lot and ask to be shown late-model Corollas or Civics that still have some warranty left. I know Honda has a certification program for used cars; I believe Toyota does too. So ask for a "certified" used car if they have one. These will usually be cars that are coming off lease, typically one or two years old, that have been gone over pretty thoroughly.

Then lease one.

I believe... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:41 PM on July 20, 2008

John Sladek is a good recommendation. I also suggest his sequel to Roderick, titled Roderick at Random, and also Tik-Tok, which is about what happens when a robot's Asimov circuits go haywire. ("Paint!

M.E. by Thomas T. Thomas is about an AI becoming sentient, much in the vein of Gerrold's H.A.R.L.I.E.. (Usually listed as Me, but the title is actually... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 6:40 PM on July 19, 2008

Word has a "convert text to table" feature that can convert tab-separated text to an actual table object; I'd be shocked if InDesign didn't also. You shouldn't need to round-trip it through Excel.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:13 PM on July 18, 2008

In fact... just remembered I have a trial of InDesign still installed on my laptop:

1) Select the tab-separated text
2) Choose "Convert Text to Table" from the Table menu

The name will now wrap within its individual cell. You can resize the table columns as desired.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:15 PM on July 18, 2008

The husband in last year's film P. S. I Love You is pretty over-the-top in terms of the lengths he goes to in order to express his love, but you might pick up a few tips. The women I know all went totally nuts for him, even though he's just a fictional character in a movie. So, I think he qualifies as a sort of ideal, though probably not a realistic one.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:16 AM on July 17, 2008

My rule is to never pay interest on a credit card (or other small unsecured credit line).

I currently have $8000-ish in credit card debt, but it is interest-free until next May. I won't put more on that credit card than I can pay off in full then. If you don't have the discipline to do that, you should probably not carry a balance.

Cars and mortgages are separate, but I pay them off as quickly as I can. (Paid my last car off in a little over a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 6:24 PM on July 13, 2008

The conversion to sRGB is the most important thing. Adobe RGB (a common colorspace used for editing) looks very washed-out when displayed in a non-color-managed application. I frankly don't understand why Photoshop's "Save for Web" doesn't have an option to do this, it's so important.

If you want to make Mac users happy, embed the sRGB color profile when you save a JPEG. It isn't worth it for all graphics, since the profile will make it a bit larger, but this... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 7:04 PM on July 12, 2008

If I'm on the first line, the second line rings.

There's the problem. Call the phone company and have them set it up so the caller gets diverted to voice mail if you're on the first line. Then use the second line only for faxes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 1:03 PM on July 12, 2008

Yes, if they're not marked, you can use them again.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 6:52 PM on July 11, 2008

If you have slide-in SATA mounts, where you just push the drive in and it works (without manually connecting any cables), be aware that the Velociraptor doesn't have the connectors in the right locations for this to work.

Otherwise, it's the fastest thing spinning today. A bit out of your price range, but if you can stretch, it'll be worth it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:19 PM on July 10, 2008

ASP.net won't run on Linux, no. You need a Windows-based host (for learning, you can run it on your own machine).
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:41 AM on July 10, 2008

Well, I was going to recommend the Chase Freedom card, which gives you 3% on your top "everyday spending" categories each month and 1% on everything else, but if you don't like Chase, then that's out.

FNBO's ExtraEarnings Visa gives you 2% cash back on everything for the first year, which may come out about the same overall (or do even better if you make mostly purchases that wouldn't qualify for the 3% on the Chase card).

I have both... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:11 AM on July 10, 2008

I learned to be financially responsible by running up $50,000 worth of credit card debt, getting depressed about it, then getting on antidepressants and paying it all off.

I do not recommend this approach. It is rather stressful. That you are aware that you have a problem before it has become a crisis is a very good sign; you have a chance to avoid this fate. I was in denial for at least three years. And I didn't even have school as an excuse.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:15 PM on July 8, 2008

Pretty much any will work except the Fujitsu ones that GTE/Verizon used to use. Speakeasy gave me a Zyxel modem. I would be happy to send it to you if I can find it, or you can check your local Goodwill -- I was at mine yesterday by chance and saw several DSL modems.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:17 AM on July 8, 2008

Have you looked at Microsoft's .NET Micro Framework? If you've got your heart set on actual low-level embedded programming it may not be what you're looking for, but for a new hobby programming, it's pretty much ideal. This is one of the more interesting dev boards that can run the platform, and the price isn't too outrageous for what you get.

(Disclaimer: I contracted at Microsoft in the group that makes this product 2007-2008.)... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:39 PM on July 6, 2008

By "4 ohms nominal" they mean that the speakers' impedance varies by frequency but that for the purpose of hooking 'em up to the amplifier you can call them 4 ohms.

Most modern amplifiers can drive 4 ohm speakers with no problem, since these fairly common. Either they will have a switch for it, or you can just hook 'em up. An amp that can drive 100 watts into 8 ohms can drive 200 watts into 4 ohms, so you should be looking at no more than 100-watt amps (amp... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:27 PM on July 6, 2008

You're interested in AI, you say? Have you considered linguistics?
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:26 PM on July 5, 2008

HSBC's 3.5% is a promo currently slated to end August 31. They may extend it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:11 PM on July 5, 2008

Print film does still have better dynamic range than digital. That is, it can record a wider total range of brightness in a single shot. Digital is more like slide film, and in fact is less forgiving of over- or under-exposure than slide film, although IMHO this is more than offset by the ability of digital to offer instant feedback so you can see if you blew out the sky or whatever.

The resolution of some types of film is also superior to all but the best digital SLRs.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:42 AM on July 4, 2008

FWIW it was about creating a fuss-free file-sharing solution for all platforms that I can recommend to other non-tech friends. SMB is flaky on Ubuntu 8.04

Then SMB it should be, since your non-tech friends are extremely unlikely to be running Ubuntu.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 12:50 PM on July 3, 2008

AT&T's $1 a day connection fee is an excellent deal if and only if you will be calling mostly people who also have AT&T and talking for longer than a few minutes each day you do use the phone, because mobile-to-mobile calls (to other AT&T subscribers) are free aside from the $1 a day.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:38 AM on July 3, 2008

Even if you could do that, you would need two more activations for that XP install, and I am not sure you'll be able to get them. Certainly you'll need to call Microsoft.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:07 AM on July 3, 2008

"how could I NOT buy a toilet named the Viper?"

I would always be thinking of that joke except the Viper would be viping something besides vindows.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:13 AM on July 2, 2008

unless you have a lot of faith in the speed and efficacy of the scrambling-to-hire-new-auditors FDIC.

When NetBank went under, depositors lost access to their money for an entire weekend.

Back to the topic at hand: some of the municipal bond closed-end funds have quite nice yields right now. Yields are free from Federal income tax too, making them even sweeter. Of course, the value of the security itself can go up or down as... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:57 PM on June 30, 2008

Yeah, ignore what I said about muni bond CEFs, I missed that you were looking for cash equivalents. I have a decently sized position that I got into a couple months, ago but I'm planning to hold them for 3-5 years.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:07 PM on July 1, 2008

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is definitely worth a look. Especially in the fall, but it's beautiful all the time.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:54 PM on July 1, 2008

You wanna really be a good bro? Buy her a copy of DiskWarrior for her birthday or Christmas, whichever comes around first, and show her how to boot from the CD and warry* her disk.

* What verb would you use for what a program named "DiskWarrior" does?
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:38 AM on July 1, 2008

A small position in a REIT fund (say 5-10% of the total) would not be a bad idea. However, I recommend small, regular contributions to build that position over the next few years. You can't catch the bottom, but you can cost-average into a decently low price.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:29 AM on June 30, 2008

By the time you get a Windows Mobile phone working right with your Mac, the new iPhone will be out. It hardly seems worth the trouble. I'd just limp along with the way it is for the next couple of weeks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:31 PM on June 29, 2008

Start > Run > MSConfig, turn off anything you don't want starting up on the Startup page.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:23 PM on June 29, 2008

On the "songs about leaving America" front, try "Steven's Last Night in Town" by Ben Folds Five.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 7:56 PM on June 27, 2008

Express Mail has a guarantee.

Priority Mail will probably get there, but there's no guarantee.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:33 PM on June 27, 2008

Emergence by David R. Palmer.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 2:17 PM on June 27, 2008

I did the blank outlet plate in two different apartments. It works great.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:45 PM on June 26, 2008

What is the profitability of a small restaurant?

African or European?

I know a guy who manages a fast-food restaurant. Thankfully, he is not the owner, so he doesn't worry about how he's going to make ends meet -- that's someone else's concern. However, staffing the restaurant is part of his job. From what he says, I get the distinct impression that it is hard to find people who are not going to steal from... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 3:04 PM on June 26, 2008

Yeah, it's in Cable mode rather than the proper Antenna mode, or vice versa. Some sets have two different Cable modes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:26 AM on June 26, 2008

FWB can work -- I've done it -- but the woman really has to have a stereotypically male attitude to sex. That is, she has to be able to separate physical intimacy from emotional intimacy. Not to generalize too much, but it's been my experience that most women can't do this as well as men.

It sounds like there's a possibility that this particular woman might be up to it based on the fact that she's been OK in similar relationships in the past. If you really think she is,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 6:14 PM on June 25, 2008

If you just need to read text groups and occasionally post, check out Aioe. It's free.

If you want the binaries too, check out Power Usenet. They resell Giganews service at a lower price.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 4:52 PM on June 25, 2008

Some flamenco stuff strikes me as metal-ish. In fact there's an album which attempts to combine the two styles, called, obviously, "Flametal." Although it's not all acoustic, the acoustic is featured prominently.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 10:40 PM on June 24, 2008 marked best answer

1. Retrieve the page to a file using curl, which allows you to spoof the user agent, add a <base> tag so the browser knows where to find the graphics and other embedded resources, then tell Safari to open that file. (Scriptable pretty easily in bash, python, perl...)

2. Use AppleScript or a program like Keyboard Maestro to actually choose the desired user agent from Safari's menu.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 2:31 PM on June 22, 2008

Erasure straightened out "Solsbury Hill" when they covered it. (Original mostly 7/4, they go 4/4 except for, apparently, one line in the chorus.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:46 PM on June 21, 2008

For taking care of the smell, try an enzyme cleaner like Nature's Miracle.

The only thing I've ever used that actually worked for the smell is this stuff called Dumb Cat.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 9:59 AM on June 21, 2008

The Warring Bankers
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 11:19 AM on June 20, 2008

If it's still too bright even after you make the aperture as small as possible and set the ISO to its lowest value, you can get a neutral density (ND) filter to further cut the amount of light entering the camera.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 7:08 PM on June 19, 2008

I have Hamachi on my laptop and my Web/mail server at home. The home machine is running an HTTP proxy (squid) and a SOCKS proxy (antinat). All my apps on the laptop are configured to go through that machine over Hamachi.

I do keep one Web browser that's not configured to use the proxy so I can get past the portal screen on certain access points. Currently I use Safari for that. If you use IE, run it using SandboxIE.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 3:39 PM on June 19, 2008

If you are making regular contributions (monthly, quarterly, even annually) cost averaging becomes your friend. When the market has a down year, you are buying more shares of the index on the cheap. Then when the market goes back up, you are golden.

In other words, you don't care if the market goes down, even substantially, in the short term, because it means a good deal for you. On October 19 1987, the stock market lost more than 20% of its value in a single day. If... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:21 AM on June 18, 2008

But if I could think of one major drawback to that strategy, it is ikkyu2's point #2 (that an index fund will invest in companies you may consider socially irresponsible).

If this bothers you, then short the SINdex. (It's just what it sounds like: an index of companies that do bad things.) There's an ETF for it, PUF, which can be shorted. Of course, you will probably be giving up a substantial portion of your gains, since those companies often outperform the market.
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:26 AM on June 18, 2008

A great gift that most people don't think to ask for is an Ulu knife. In fact if you're not a West Coaster you may not even have heard of these, but they are absolutely great if you do any cooking at all; in fact, a lot of people who have tried them have said that it's basically the only knife they use anymore. You can spend anywhere from $50 to $200 for one and, optionally, a matching bowl. There's no need to buy from the site I linked to above; there are lots of sites that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by kindall at 8:53 PM on June 17, 2008