Saturday, January 31, 2015
Ask For a Resident Discount at Local Museums
If your state has a popular museum, they may charge admission. If you're a local, though, some museums have a policy of giving state residents a free or reduced admission.
Over at The Points Guy, they have a list of ways to save on museum admissions. Living within the state could score you some cheap or free tickets:
Being a state resident has its perks, as some museums give its locals a price break (with required proof of residency). Once a month, the San Francisco Zoo offers free admission to residents of the City by the Bay; check their calendar for confirmed dates. Chicago's Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Museum of Science and Industry offer free or discounted admission on certain days to Illinois residents.
Some museums don't advertise these discounts. Call ahead and ask about the policy and proof of residency rules. Hit the link for other ways to save on museum admissions.
7 Ways to Save Money on Museum Admissions | The Points Guy
Photo by zoetnet.
Find Your “10 Minute Tasks” Each Day to Stay Productive
Lots of us have problems organizing our day productively. We never seem to have the time. Keeping a list of "10-Minute Tasks" lets you get stuff done without feeling overwhelmed.
As we've mentioned before, if a task is shorter than 2 minutes, you should just do it now. For those tasks longer than two minutes that keep interrupting your day, bank them into a 10 minute slot. Inc explains:
You can consolidate these micro-tasks into one daily 10-minute session. Doing so will not only help you remember to execute these tasks on a regular basis, it could also save you time. Instead of suddenly remembering one of these tasks in the middle of a larger project and derailing your momentum, you'll already have the time set aside to deal with them. You can do this with almost any regularly executed task, though some may require sessions longer than 10 minutes.
Check out the link for other things to get done during that 10 minute slot in your day.
How 10 Minutes of Work a Day Can Maximize Your Productivity | Inc.
Photo by Rob and Stephanie Levy.
Reflector Mirrors your iOS Screen to a Mac, PC or Android device
Windows/Mac/Android: If you want to show off your iPhone or iPad screen, typically you need an Apple TV. Reflector puts your iOS screen on a Mac, PC or Android device by acting as an AirPlay receiver.
AirPlay is already built into iOS, but you'll need to buy a version for the device you want to mirror to. The Windows and Mac versions cost $12.99 each (no bundle), and the Android version is $6.99.
After you install it, mirror your iPhone or iPad with the AirPlay icon in the control center. Reflector lets you record the broadcast from your iOS device, so it's great for training.
Reflector | Airsquirrels
Timex's Popular "Weekender" Watches Are In Impulse Buy Range Today
Timex's Weekender Watches are the most popular we've ever listed in our Commerce segments. They're extremely versatile and come in a variety of colors, and today they're marked down to the $30 range, plus an additional 30% off with code WEEKEND30. [Amazon]
If you want to class your new watch up a bit, our Promotions Team (separate from Commerce) recently ran a deal featuring FormFunctionFrom, a company that makes beautiful leather watchbands that are compatible with the Weekender.
We work together with you to find the best products and the best deals on them, click here to learn more. We operate independently of Editorial and Advertising, and if you take advantage of an item we cover, we may get a small share of the sale. We want your feedback.
Follow us for the best deals on the Internet, and check out http://t.co/w8ke7mw7nT
— Kinja Deals (@KinjaDeals) June 9, 2014
Check Your Child's Car Seat for an Expiration Date
Child safety seats are important, but you may not realize that they have expiration dates—so check yours now.
No, the seats don't turn into pumpkins after the expiration. After the "Do Not Use" date, though, they manufacturer estimates that the plastic might break down or the seat longer meets federal safety standards.
The average "best by" date on these child safety seats is six years. That's fine if you only have one child, but if you reuse it for a second child or have a second-hand seat, check for the date. If you can't find the date on the seat, contact the manufacturer. They'll know where to look.
How to Find Out When Your Car Seat Will Expire | The Stir
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski.
Try a Writing Meditation If Sitting Still Isn’t Working For You
Meditation has a ton of benefits, and you can do it lots of ways. Many practices focus on sitting still, but you can also meditate while writing.
Buster Benson, the founder of 750words, explains how writing is a form of meditation we can all do. Instead of setting a word limit, set a time limit and write whatever comes to mind. Don't judge or censor what you're writing—just observe your thoughts and write what you see. He explains one reason this type of meditation might work for some people:
The act of typing serves as a hand rail on our thoughts, and occupies a certain part of the brain that generally gets restless and looks for something to do, because it's already doing something: typing. Disabling that restless squirrel in your brain is the reason why activities like walking, showering, doing the dishes, gardening, etc are all such great activities for stirring up creative thoughts. Free writing has the added benefit of providing a tangible trail of thoughts as they rise up. You're essentially hitching your subconscious directly to your typing fingers.
A writing meditation isn't that much different than journaling, and any tool works for a writing meditation. The difference is here you'll observe your thoughts rather than write about your day or to solve a problem.
If a silent or still meditation hasn't worked for you, check out the link for ideas on how to start a writing meditation.
Better Than Meditation - Better Humans | Buster Benson
Photo by Sebastien Wiertz.
Top 10 Lifehacker Posts of All Time
Lifehacker launched exactly ten years ago today (happy birthday to us)! In light of the occasion, let's take a look back at some of the most popular posts we've shared with you this last decade.
This list is, more or less, our top 10 best performing posts by unique visits as determined by Google Analytics (there are many different measurements we could have used, but we went with this one). We took a few editorial liberties when putting it together, since some posts that had the most traffic are no longer relevant, or needed to be replaced with updated versions. In any case, we hope you enjoy this look back and thanks for reading us—whether you've been with us from the first post or just discovered us last week. Let's all go have some cake.
10. How Long to Nap for the Biggest Brain Benefits
This post from 2013 is both a health and a productivity tip: The amount of time you spend napping will have different effects on your energy and brain power. Posts about sleep in general usually do pretty well in these parts, such as the science of the perfect nap and how to reboot your sleep cycle, perhaps for obvious reasons. Sleep is one of the three pillars of health (along with nutrition and exercise) and most of us can't get enough of it.
9. How to Plant Ideas in Someone's Mind
Good ol' Evil Week, where we explore the dark side so we know how to beat it. If you've ever want to manipulate someone so you can get what you want—or detect when someone's subtly manipulating you—this post is a must-read. It covers popular persuasive strategies, cleverly planting "clues" during your conversations for what you want, and more. Of course, there are more ethical ways to go about this as well.
8. Hack Attack: Burn Almost Any Video File to a Playable DVD
Although this post is from eight years ago, the technique still shockingly works. You'll need the open source, free Windows utility DVD Flick and these step-by-step instructions to create playable DVDs.
7. How to Get a Complete Workout with Nothing But Your Body
Who needs a gym when you can get a full-body workout with no equipment at all? These exercises—covering cardio, upper body, core, and lower body—can be done practically anywhere. (So they're great when you want to keep in shape while traveling or you don't have the room or budget for an expensive home gym.) We've also posted our own well-rounded Lifehacker Workout if you want more workout ideas or want to get over inevitable fitness plateaus.
6. Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
Google search is packed with so many shortcuts and tools that few people probably know all of them. We took a look at the top 10 hidden search tricks back in 2008, then followed up more recently with 20 Google shortcuts and 10 more after that. That's a lot of shortcuts! And they're pretty handy.
5. Geek to Live: How to Format Your Hard Drive and Install Windows XP from Scratch
Sometimes it's best to just start all over again from a blank slate. Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani wrote this XP guide back in 2006, and judging from its popularity, it's classic how-to guides like this one that help geeks and non-geeks alike the most. Although we're long past Windows XP, the basic steps are actually still pretty similar. But if you want something a bit more up-to-date, check out this guide to formatting your hard drive and this one for learning how to do a clean install of Windows (while keeping your files, settings, and tweaks intact).
4. The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Building a Hackintosh
Ah, the hackintosh. For some, just mention of the word sparks joy. Over the years, we've posted countless guides to installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, and most of them made it into our top posts of all time. Of course, almost all of them are out of date now, so bookmark this one for the most relevant, continuously updated instructions. Building a hackintosh is still as great a project as it ever was.
3. Five Best DVD Ripping Tools
Lifehacker readers' five favorite DVD ripping utilities from 2012 are still awesome at what they do: Quickly and easily ripping DVDs and Blu-ray discs to files so you can watch them anywhere. You'll find options for all OSes here, several of them free.
2. How to Supercharge Your Router with DD-WRT
This is the updated version of our second most popular post of all time: Turn Your $60 Router into a $600 Router. DD-WRT makes it possible to do much more with your router than you can with your router's default firmware, like improve your wireless signal, add advanced features, and more. (DD-WRT also tends to be more secure, as was the case with the WPS router vulnerability easily cracked with Reaver.)
1. How to Crack a Wi-Fi Password
Gina's How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WEP Password with BackTrack guide is the site's top post of all time. But by now, you probably know you shouldn't be using WEP for your Wi-Fi network, and instead should be using the much more secure WPA2 (with AES encryption, if possible). WPA is still crackable, though, so it's an important subject to learn about. Check out both our guides on WEP and WPA password cracking for info on how to protect yourself.
That's it—our top 10 posts from our first 10 years. Thanks for taking this slightly navel-gazing journey with us, and more importantly, for sticking with us so long. We'd be nowhere without all of you guys, and our site would not be nearly as awesome without all your tips and contributions. So if you have a favorite post that didn't make the list, share it below!
Lifehacker's Weekend Roundup gathers our best guides, explainers, and other posts on a certain subject so you can tackle big projects with ease. For more, check out our Weekend Roundup and Top 10 tags.
Friday, January 30, 2015
How to Make XBMC Easier to Use (Especially for Non-Geeks)
So you've created a kickass, play-anything media center with XBMC, but it's a too hard for your less tech-savvy friends and family members to use. Here are a few ways to make your home theater PC so easy that your four year old could use it.
Blast from the past is a weekly feature at Lifehacker in which we revive old, but still relevant, posts for your reading and hacking pleasure. This week, we're making your home theater a little more friendly.
Get a New Skin
The default Confluence skin is pretty good-looking, and there are some even prettier ones out there if you look around. However, not all of them are exactly easy to navigate, especially for those unfamiliar with XBMC. For example, Confluence's horizontal menu is hard to see, and its Movie and TV show menus are in a cluttered submenu. Experiment with some other skins and see which ones are easier to navigate.
I personally really like "Transparency" for its easy-to-read vertical menu. You can see every menu item on the menu page (that is, you don't have to scroll to see any of them), and nothing is buried in a submenu. From the main menu, you can see the Movies, TV Shows, Play Disc, and other options and go straight there with a few taps. It's much easier for an XBMC newbie to navigate than something like Confluence, Aeon, or Alaska, and it's still pretty darn attractive. Of course, there may be others out there, so search around and see what else you can find.
Program Your Remote for Easy Navigation
Certain remotes work out of the box with XBMC, but sometimes getting a simpler remote and programming it yourself can be more user-friendly (either with LIRC or using something like a customizable Logitech Harmony remote). Take care to program buttons in a way that makes sense—I spent years with an unintuitive button layout because I just matched XBMC's functions to the buttons they sounded like, which wasn't ideal. Play around with your remote and see what layout makes the most sense. Watch out for the "back" and "menu" buttons, which I found the trickiest to assign to something intuitive. If you really want to see if you've done it correctly, hand it off to someone else that hasn't used XBMC and see if they can find their way around without help. If they can, you've found the ideal layout, and you should stick with it.
You might also try going with a remote designed specifically for XBMC, like one that works on iOSor Android. Not only will they have buttons assigned to specific XBMC features, but you can even browse your library right from your mobile device and get it to play on the TV. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Clean Up Your Main Menu
Head on over to Settings > Skin Settings and search for the menu editing section. Take some time to remove all the things you don't use, like "Pictures", "Music", and "Weather". Make sure to clean up the submenus too, if your skin has them—things like "Recently Added", "Random", and "Browse by Genre" aren't exactly confusing, but they can create a lot of clutter, which makes the menu harder to navigate. Some skins will even let you remove the submenus altogether. Remove the "Videos" option and replace it with separate "Movies" and "TV Shows" menu items. And, if "Play Disc" isn't enabled, make sure you turn it on for those occasional DVDs you rent or borrow from friends.
Put Streaming Add-Ons on the Main Menu
There are some great add-ons in XBMC that allow you to stream video from the web, but digging through the Add-On section isn't exactly fun. So, put some of your most used add-ons on the main page, so you don't have to go digging through other menus to find them.
This takes a few steps, but is really quite easy:
- Navigate to one of the add-ons you want on the main menu (say, USTV VoD—the add-on that streams from tons of cable channels). Bring up the context menu and choose "Add to Favorites". This step isn't necessary for all skins, but it is necessary for many, including Transparency.
- Head to Settings > Skin and find the option for customizing the main menu (in Transparency, it's called "Menu"). You should see some "Custom" or "Favorites" slots, where you can add custom menu items. Enable these and choose the add-on you want from the favorites menu.
- Repeat this process for all the add-ons you want on the front page. They should all show up on your main menu for quick, easy, pain-free access.
If you've cleaned up your main menu as we described in the previous section, you should now have a menu that's incredibly easy to navigate and has movies, TV, streaming video, and everything else you could ever want.
Enable Kiosk Mode
One of the most confusing parts about XBMC can be when you accidentally enter the "View" menu while scrolling through your movies or TV shows (the one that's hidden behind the right edge of the screen). Once you've got everything set up the way you want, you can turn on "kiosk mode" to lock your chosen views and get rid of this hidden menu. That way, when someone's browsing through your videos, they don't accidentally stumble on this menu or change your view mode by accident. In Transparency, you'll find kiosk mode under Settings > Skin Settings > General > Enable Kiosk mode. Check your skin's documentation for more info on whether it has kiosk mode and where to find it.
XBMC has come a long way, but it's still not the most user-friendly program on the planet. Hopefully, with these simple tweaks, you can get just about anyone using your XBMC box in no time. Got any of your own suggestions for making XBMC easier to use? Be sure to share them in the comments below.
Images remixed from Tanberin and Julien GONG Min.
Learn About Every Pasta Type There Is with This Massive Encyclopedia
There a a lot of different types of pasta, and for good reason. With this comprehensive visual encyclopedia, you can learn about every different pasta type, size, best preparation methods, and the best types of sauces to go along with it.
If you thought you knew everything there is to know about pasta varieties, think again. This visual encyclopedia from Russell van Kraayenburg at Chasing Delicious is about as big as they come. Along with the enormous graphic, Kraayenburg also explains the different textures and suffixes too. For a healthy helping of pasta knowledge with a side of more knowledge, check out the graphic and link below. The graphic truly is a noodle behemoth, so if you want a full size view, you can do that here.
Kitchen 101: Pasta | Chasing Delicious
Twine Lets You Create "Choose Your Own Adventure" Stories with Ease
If you ever thought writing your own choose your own adventure or text-based game would be too difficult, the free storytelling tool, Twine, makes it a piece of cake.
You can create massive, non-linear stories with Twine's story web interface, and it can all be done in the browser if you like. The tool was originally created by Chris Klimas back in 2009, but it has expanded so you can also add variables, images, conditional logic, and CSS or JavaScript if you want to take your storytelling to the next level. It all gets published in HTML, so you can post or link it anywhere, and you're free to do whatever you like with what you create. The only downside is that it doesn't give you much of a tutorial, so you'll need to do a little research in their wiki to learn how to do the really cool stuff. If you've got a story that needs to be told, you can download Twine for free on Windows and OS X, or run it in your browser all at the link below.
Twine | Twinery
Mental Models: Solve Problems by Approaching Them from New Perspectives
As the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem will look like a nail. The same logic applies when you're approaching more abstract problems. A "mental model" is a way of looking at the world, and sometimes you need to expand your perspective beyond your usual mental toolbox by learning things outside your norm.
This post originally appeared on James Clear's blog.
Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest physicists of all-time. (He was a pretty solid bongo player as well).
Feynman received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Princeton. During those years, he became known for waltzing into the math department at each school and solving problems that the brilliant math Ph.D. students couldn't solve.
Feynman describes why he was able to do this in his fantastic book, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! (one of my favorite books that I read last year). How did he do it? He just had a different perspective after a high school teacher had given him a unique calculus book, years earlier:
That book also showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign–it's a certain operation. It turns out that's not taught very much in the universities; they don't emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. So because I was self-taught using that book, I had peculiar methods of doing integrals.
The result was, when the guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn't do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. [...] So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else's, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.
Mental Models and How You Look at the World
A mental model is a way of looking at the world. Put simply, mental models are the set of tools that you use to think. Each mental model offers a different framework that you can use to look at life (or at an individual problem). Feynman's strategy of differentiating under the integral sign was a unique mental model that he could pull out of his intellectual toolbox and use to solve difficult problems that eluded his peers. Feynman wasn't necessarily smarter than the math Ph.D. students, he just saw the problem from a different perspective.
Where mental models really shine, however, is when you develop multiple ways of looking at the same problem. For example, let's say that you'd like to avoid procrastination and have a productive day. If you understand the 2-Minute Rule, the Eisenhower Box and his other methods, and Warren Buffett's 25-5 Rule, then you have a range of options for determining your priorities and getting something important done.
There is no one best way to manage your schedule and get something done. When you have a variety of mental models at your disposal, you can pick the one that works best for your current situation.
The Law of the Instrument
In Abraham Kaplan's book, The Conduct of Inquiry, he explains a concept called The Law of the Instrument.
Kaplan says, "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."
Kaplan's law is similar to a common proverb you have likely heard before: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." If you only have one framework for thinking about the world, then you'll try to fit every problem you face into that framework. When your set of mental models is limited, so is your potential for finding a solution.
Interestingly, this problem can become more pronounced as your expertise in a particular area grows. If you're quite smart and talented in one area, you have a tendency to believe that your skill set is the answer to most problems you face. The more you master a single mental model, the more likely it becomes that this mental model will be your downfall because you'll start applying it indiscriminately to every problem. Smart people can easily develop a confirmation bias that leaves them stumped in difficult situations.
However, if you develop a bigger toolbox of mental models, you'll improve your ability to solve problems because you'll have more options for getting to the right answer. This is one of the primary ways that truly brilliant people separate themselves from the masses of smart individuals out there. Brilliant people like Richard Feynman have more mental models at their disposal.
This is why having a wide range of mental models is important. You can only choose the best tool for the situation if you have a full toolbox.
How to Develop New Mental Models
In my experience, there are two good ways to build new mental models.
1. Read books outside the norm. If you read the same material as everyone else, then you'll think in the same way as everyone else. You can't expect to see problems in a new way if you're reading all the same things as your classmates, co-workers, or peers. So, either read books that are seldom read by the rest of your group (like Feynman did with his Calculus book) or read books that are outside your area of interest, but can overlap with it in some way. In other words, look for answers in unexpected places.
2. Create a web of ideas that shows how seemingly unrelated ideas connect. Whenever you are reading a new book or listening to someone lecture, write down the various ways that this new information connects to information you already understand. We tend to view knowledge as separated into different silos. We think that a certain set of ideas have to do with economics and another set have to do with medicine and a third set have to do with art history. This is mostly a product of how schools teach subjects, but in the real world information is not separated like this.
For example, I was watching a documentary the other day that connected the design of the Great Pyramids in Egypt with the fighting rituals of animals. According to the historians on the show, when animals are battling one another they will often rise up on their back feet to increase their height and show their dominance. Similarly, when a new Pharaoh took power in Egypt, he wanted to assert his dominance over the culture and so he built very tall structures as a symbol of power. This explanation links seemingly unrelated areas (architecture, ancient history, and animal behavior) in a way that results in a deeper understanding of the topic.
In a similar way, mental models from outside areas can reveal a deeper level of understanding about issues in your primary field of interest.
Don't try to tighten a screw with a hammer. The problems of life and work are much easier to solve when you have the right tools.
Mental Models: How Intelligent People Solve Unsolvable Problems | James Clear
James Clear writes about science-based ideas for living a better life and building habits that stick. If you enjoyed this article, then join his free newsletter.
Image adapted from Randall Reed and Jiripravda (Shutterstock). Additional photos by Chase Elliot Clark, Sylvain Moreau (Flickr). Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Andy.
Build Your Own Tiny, Portable Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi's a great little device for portability and when it's combined with a touch screen and a lithium battery, it's even better. Adafruit shows off how to build your own.
You'll need access to a 3D printer for the case, but otherwise building your own little portable Pi is pretty easy and inexpensive. This one uses the Model A+, so the form factor's super tiny and portable. Head over to Adafruit for the full guide.
Touch Pi: Portable Raspberry Pi | Adafruit
iTunes Adds a Notification Center Widget, Here's How to Enable It
Mac: iTunes got an update recently that adds a handy Notification Center widget to control your music. It's not enabled by default though, so here's how to turn it on.
As you'd expect, the widget's pretty simple. Just open up your Notification Center, and you'll see a set of controls for iTunes. You do have to enable it first though:
- Head into System Preferences > Extensions
- Under the "Today" menu, check the box next to iTunes
- Open up iTunes and play a song
From here on out, you can control your music from the Notification Center widget. You can also Option+Click the Reverse button to turn on shuffle.
iTunes 12.1 | Mac App Store
When to Use Positive or Negative Messages to Motivate Yourself
Positive thinking can be a great way to motivate yourself to keep healthy habits...but so can negative messages, like a fear of failing. A new review of the psychology behind motivation gives us four ways to decide when a positive or negative message will work best.
Here's a great example of a negative message that motivated cartoonist Matt Inman, and in turn the thousands of people who are fans of his Blerch-themed races. He described his motivation to Runner's World:
"When I first got into running about 10 years ago, I could barely run a mile," Matt said, as we loped through the park. "I would always find a waypoint–the next tree, or corner–and I said to myself, I am being chased by this unhappy depressed fat man. And if I don't reach that point before he does, he will catch me, and I will become him."
Fear-based messages motivate some people and demotivate others. Here are the four factors that the scientists at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab identified as making the difference:
- Do you feel like you're very involved in this issue, and knowledgeable about it? If so, a negative message may work better, because you understand why the negative outcome is bad, and what you can do about it. On the other hand, if you're trying to convince somebody who only has a casual interest in the subject, a positive message would work better.
- Will you focus on the details, or just the overall message? Similar to the first point, if you're willing to digest all the little details that make up a message (for example, if you go and read up obsessively on your chosen subject), negative messages will work well. But somebody who is more inclined to skim the details and only listen to the overall tone of the message is likely to be put off by negative messages. If you don't want to dig into the details, keep the message positive.
- How certain is the outcome? If something is mostly certain—say you're doing great on your diet but want a reminder not to fall off the wagon—positive messages seem to be best. But if you're not so certain whether something will work out, a reminder about the negative consequences may be more effective.
- How do you feel about risk? If you don't like to take risks, you'll probably respond better to positive messages about the wonderful things you will gain by doing something healthy. But if you're a risk seeker, you'll be more motivated to take action when you're reminded of the negative outcomes.
The Cornell scientists based their tips on public health messages and how large groups of people responded, but it seems likely that the same points apply to self-motivation. Someone who fears the Blerch probably understands how exercise will help them avoid obesity and depression, and fears that becoming the Blerch is likely to happen if they don't act fast. Meanwhile, the best candidate for a positive "Running is good for you!" message would be someone who doesn't know much about exercise, but likes the idea of looking and feeling better and believes that they're likely to succeed if they try. Which messages work for you?
When do gain-framed health messages work better than fear appeals? | Nutrition Reviews
Image by Daniel Miller for the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
Cook Risotto in 3 Minutes and "Ramen-ize" Rice with Baking Soda
The same technique that turns regular pasta into one with the flavor and texture of fresh ramen can upgrade rice dishes as well and even help you cook chewy, perfect risotto in three minutes.
Well, technically, three minutes plus an hour and a half of (hands off) soaking time.
The key is to soak the rice in a bath of baking soda and salt dissolved in water, Lucky Peach explains. After an hour and a half, drain and rinse the rice, stick it in a pot of boiling water, and three minutes later you've got a tender and chewy "Ramen-ized" rice.
Taking it a step further, take that same baking soda-soaked rice but this time cook it as you would risotto—in a broth until the stock evaporated:
We put one part rice and approximately five parts hot, pressure-cooked smoked turkey broth into a pot and brought the mixture to a boil. We cooked it at a rolling boil. The stock evaporated. The rice thickened. The grains of rice retained their shape and structure; they did not break apart. As the rice and stock cooked together, they gained the texture of risotto. We finished the rice with a knob of butter and grated Parmigiano Reggiano. We had a creamy, chewy, perfect risotto in three minutes. And remember, the rice had been soaked in baking soda water the day before and still performed beautifully, perfectly, after resting overnight.
This might be a great way to make risotto without having to stand in front of the stove for hours constantly adding broth.
(Baking soda, by the way, is behind the homemade ramen noodles we've seen previously.) For more ramen reading than you probably have time for, visit Lucky Peach.
How to Ramen-ize Dried Pasta & Rice | Lucky Peach
How to Have a Social Life If You Don’t Work a Nine-to-Five Job
If you work a job that is outside the traditional 9-to-5 schedule, it can be challenging to maintain current relationships and create new ones. Here are some steps to take to keep a thriving social life despite your work.
Find Others with Similar Schedules
Seeking out those with almost the same working hours (and thus often the same off hours) is one of the easiest ways to keep your social circle full. Besides having a similar schedule to you, they'll likely be more understanding of the difficulties associated with your unusual job hours.
There are tons of places you can meet people with similar schedules to you. Try your work, people in the same industry, or in other industries with traditional unusual work hours (service, restaurant, hotels, etc.). You might even find groups in your area on sites like Meetup, LinkedIn, or forums.
Maximize the Time You Do Have
Of course, you probably also have friends who do work 9-to-5 jobs, so you have to find ways to work with that. Manage your schedule better by using apps like Shifts. This will help you find overlapping time between your schedule and theirs. Our own Patrick Allan says that you need to really prioritize that overlapping social time, since you may not easily have another chance to hang out. You can also maximize that time with meaningful activities instead of run of the mill ones, this is especially relevant if you're trying to make your and your partner's schedule work. There are tons of resources to find fun stuff nearby without breaking the bank.
Use some of your time to prepare yourself so that you have more time to socialize when others are available. For example, plan to take care of errands and chores when other aren't free. Really try to work your schedule around your friends, since they're probably the hardest thing to schedule.
Know That Everyone Will Have to Compromise
Hopefully, your friends, family, and partner are understanding of your tough schedule—and are willing to make sacrifices to hang out with you. For example, if you work until 9pm and want to hang out with a friend who ends work at 6pm, they might stay up later and lose out on a few hours of sleep to see you. This can go the other way as well—you might have to wake up earlier or go straight from work to meet them.
As our own Kristin Wong points out, if you're in charge of your own work hours, you'll have to enforce your schedule so that you can get back to work. This is especially true for days that others normally have off (weekends, holidays) since they may not realize you don't have the whole day off. The National Sleep Disorder Foundation suggests that if you have children, create a calendar of your schedule. This helps set their expectations around when you'll be home and able to spend time with them. You can also schedule a special activity each week for your kids to look forward to doing with you.
Remember the Benefits of Your Schedule
When you work an unusual shift there are health effects. Jordan Teicher, writing on The Billfold, lays out how working the night shift decreased in his health to the point that he decided to find a new job:
But I couldn't ignore what was really going on: A war against my body's natural impulses, whose battles I was regularly losing. I bought melatonin pills in hopes of falling asleep at 7 every night. That didn't work. Even after shifts on a near-appropriate amount of sleep, I found myself emerging bleary-eyed into the bright afternoon, unable to fathom staying up long enough to socialize, no less look for other jobs. Turns out that the body doesn't like when you mess with its biological clock. It wants to sleep when it's dark.
If you don't experience these issues, or want to keep your shift work for other reasons, there are pluses to a nontraditional work schedule. Some examples are:
- You have an easier to time running errands or going out because you can do it on weekdays to avoid the crowds.
- You may not have to start your day off early. This is a huge pro if you're a night owl.
- Being able to have a flexible schedule (depending on your job)
- Control of your workspace (sometimes)
- Being your own boss (sometimes)
Take advantage of the flexibility and benefits of your work schedule.
Having a work-life balance is important for your mental, emotional, and physical health. Use the above guidance to find that balance even if you don't work a 9-to-5 job.
Illustration by Tina Mailhot-Roberge. Images from restuaji, herry, ellenkleiman, and trippchicago.