221–230 of 1001 posts
The Cyrillic script is fairly easy to learn and will let you phonetically read a bunch of languages (Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Mongolian, and Serbian to name a few.) Each language has a few unique letters and pronunciation can vary slightly, but for the most part they are the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script
Beware of Ы though :) It tends to be hard-to-impossible to pronounce correctly for native English speakers.
How to do various knots comes to mind. Square knot, A sheet bend, clove and trucker's hitch, prusik, the alpine butterfly knot, and bowlines can all be learned rather quickly, then practiced so they can be remembered easily. http://paracord550milspec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How...
My favorite knots to add to your list are adjustable grip hitch (AGH), siberian hitch, and zeppelin bend. The AGH is super easy to tie and very versatile. The Siberian is useful for tying a rope around a static object such as a pole or a tree. Bends are rarely useful for me since I rarely need to join two ropes together, but if you are going to learn a bend, you might as well learn the most beautiful one.
I'm sure I've used a sheet bend at least three times in the last year in random situations. I haven't used the zeppelin bend, but I would say having an easy-to-learn-and-tie-but-effective knot "in your kit" is quite useful; you never quite know when it will come in handy.
How to cook for yourself, really, really good food. I no longer crave restaurant food, and all of the really important things I learned about cooking take just the time to read it, hear about it and then try it. All without any special hardware. A few examples: 1. Cooking jasmine rice: rinse it first, 1 c. water to 1 c. rice ratio. Bring to boil, turn down heat to lowest setting. Leave lid /the entire time/. Fluff th…
For example, given the random contents of a refrigerator, make some sort of meal out of what is available. For example, I recently had a cabbage and an onion and some chicken left over. With a little ginger paste and some soy sauce I was able to make a pretty decent stirfry.
Another example is tortilla chips. I bought some tortillas from 7-eleven and tried frying them up in oil to make tortilla chips. This is fun because there are a lot of parameters to play with to try to get the perfect chip (oil type, quantity, time).
Making more involved recipies are fun too, but there is a good amount of pleasure to be found in the mundane. I also eat a lot of Jack in the Box, so I've got no high horse in this fight.
Memorize important phone numbers (eg, close friends and family). Memorize at least one of your credit card numbers. It's not uncommon to find yourself in a situation without a phone or wallet. Can't tell you how many times a would-be tricky situation was easily resolved by having a particular number in memory.
I always dial my husband's mobile number by hand, and usually my close friends and family's numbers, too.
Credit card: I try entering the number, expiration and check digits from memory, then check it against the card before submitting the order. When the card number changes (bank decision or mine), I learn the new one by learning the differences - the first four digits are almost always the same, as that's a bank identifier. With AmEx, the variance was only in the last five digits, and was slight.
Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself from them can have a dramatic effect on your life. And 10 minutes a day for a week can get you far enough to see some real benefits, like reduced stress and increased awareness of unhelpful thought patterns.
I find Sam Harris' Waking Up guided meditation lessons the most useful (can find it on mobile app stores, the 30+ lessons are free and start off short and simple). Until those, I thought meditation was inherently coupled with eastern mystic bullshit with zero benefits for anyone who didn't want to buy into a bunch of other baggage. He has a book by the same name as the mobile app. The first chapter (read out loud her…
https://tobireif.com/posts/layout_fun_with_css_grid/
The spec is great for learning Grid:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if you thinking about re-learning how to type anyway, try doing it on an optimised but common layout like Colemak or Dvorak. Basically no extra cost, but even greater savings!
Ugh. I continue to be skeptical that there's any substantial performance improvement. The published research is obviously ambivalent-at-best. And my anecdotal life experience also make the Dvorak typists look pretty mediocre (including the ones who've been doing it for a decade). On the other hand, a very real cost is that if you want to pair, or receive coaching from a mentor, or coach someone, or just let a signifi…
Switching between Qwerty and Colemak for any of the reasons you mention has never been a problem for me either. Obviously, going from Colemak to Qwerty is going to be inconvenient for the sole reason that Qwerty is inconvenient, but that's only because you become aware of how much you contort your fingers unnecessarily once you've been typing for a while not doing that.
I agree keybindings can be an issue, though. For me, personally, it's minor compared to everything else, though.