Some Good Advice Part 1

I was recently on reddit and I saw a post (or whatever they call it on reddit) titled Advice for a 14 year old? It seemed a bit interesting to me and I thought I could contribute a bit. I went to it and found some very useful advice. It was directed at a 14-year-old but much of it is very useful for anyone of any age. In my next few posts, I will put the best pieces of advice that I read in peoples replies. I can't put them all in one post because there are simply too many. It would make you think, "Oh my gosh, this is very annoying reading all of this; I want to go do something else...but what if I miss something important? I better stay and read it all." Therefore, I made it easy for you; I will post them in separate posts for the next few days. All you need to do is just check back tomorrow.  I think I will post ten a day until my list is empty.  Well I guess I will start now.

Each numbered quote is from a reply I found on that topic. If you see an ellipsis (...) I may have added it to take out useless or unnecessary words. Other than that though, I did not edit them in any way.

Enjoy.

1. "if you believe a cute girl is interested in you. ask her out. not much to lose. :-) don't be shy."
2. "Fake confidence is the same as real confidence. Nobody will know the difference except yourself."
3. 
   
• "Make decisions based on what YOU want to do, not on what other people want. Following the crowd is easier, no doubt, but you won't be happy.
• Don't ever close any doors through laziness. Sure, school is a pain, but you don't want to limit your options by screwing around. Be excellent, try your best, and if you choose to go to college or not, know that it's YOUR choice, not one foisted on you by poor decisions.
• Try everything. You're at a point in your life where the world is open to you. Just because you haven't done something doesn't mean you won't like it and it can't provide you with a lifetime of satisfaction.
• Be kind to everyone. It's easy to get approval by picking on those weaker than you. Avoid that temptation. Everyone deserves your regard.
• Forgive your friends when they wrong you. They will. It's part of life.
• Don't do drugs until you're old enough to do it responsibly. The consequences of getting caught aren't worth the momentary pleasure.
• ...
• Be kind to your parents. Odds are they love you and want what's best for you. Alienating them will hurt them and those scars will last for decades (personal experience here).
• If someone asks you out on a date, go. You never know.
• Read. Everything. Get a list of the top 100 books and slog through it. Yeah, everything won't make sense but you'll understand the world so much better. Everywhere in our culture people allude to things that you just won't understand if you haven't forced yourself to become well-read.
• Take every opportunity to travel. Seriously. The world is huge and you want to lose your provincial view as early as possible.
• Get involved in politics. You may as well get disillusioned early.
• ...
• Stay in shape. It's so easy now and it will last your life.
• Don't smoke.
• Learn a foreign language.
• Don't be contemptuous of those who know less than you.
• Take every opportunity to tell your family you love them.
• Learn to cook. ...
• Save your money for things that are important, not things that give you momentary satisfaction."
4. "Oh, and don't give away too much of your personal info on the internet. Never put your phone number or address on Facebook or Myspace or whatever it is you're using. Also try to stop as many incriminating pictures of yourself (drinking, doing drugs, in the nude, whatever) from going on the internet as possible."
5. "Are you a smart person? Do you find schoolwork to be a breeze, no need to study? If you are i have some advice. Learn how to study, even if you don't need to study at this point in your life.
   I breezed through high school. Everything was so easy and intuitive the need to REALLY study was never there. For things i didn't know, i always used deductive reasoning to find the answer (on tests and the like). When i started working, same thing, i picked everything up real quick. If you are intelligent there are no real hurdles at this age. However, no matter how smart you are, this style of living will not get you through college. If you do not have good studying skills, you will not make it. Period. The amount of information covered is a lot, and you will need to know how to absorb that information, and the only way to do so is good study habits. Again, it doesn't matter how intelligent you are at this point, it's all about your ability to retain knowledge. The tests can not be gamed (i.e. i know a, c, and d aren't the answer, therefore its b.). When i got to college this was a huge problem for me. I didn't know how to study, really at all. I quit after two years before they kicked me out."
6. "Don't let anything socially in HS get you too down. You'll find that things you may be beating yourself up over now don't matter later. "
7. "Pay attention when you see someone doing something you'd like to learn. Ask if they'd mind teaching you, even. I learned to cook a few things just by watching other people."
8. "Just RELAX. Seriously. That's what I would've told myself, anyway."
9. "Be skeptical of things. Don't just take things as they are"
10. "As I say in every thread like this, don't make the mistake that I have and get hung up on one person. Makes life miserable. Take it from me and move on."

There was part one.  I have a total of exactly 50 quotes; I just now counted, so there will be four more parts. If you want to view the thread you can find it here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/isezb/advice_for_a_14_year_old/.

Please note: in this post I edited number 3 a total of three times.  You can see those edits where the ellipses (...) are on that number.

Have an excellent day because you are amazing!

How to Work the New Facebook Chat (July 2011)

Recently Facebook changed the way the chat works and very many people are confused and angry that it is not working the way it used to.  In this post I will show you how to get it to work starting at step one.


EDIT: A simple, however, also temporary fix to this is using the popout chat.  You can get to that by copying and pasting this into the address bar: http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php


First thing's first.  When you first log in to Facebook nothing seems too different until you click on the chat at the bottom of the screen.  When you do this you will likely get this message:

Picture 1

When I got that message, that is exactly how it appeared on my screen, I couldn't see anything below that.  However, this does not happen with some people.  If you are using Google Chrome (which I hope you are because I don't know a way to do this with other browsers, you can download Chrome here: http://www.google.com/chrome), you can move that message away from the corner so you can see the entire message.  If you can already see the whole message, skip this part.  What you need to do is right click somewhere on the message and click inspect element.  Something that looks similar to the following picture should appear in either a separate window or at the bottom of the web browser.

Picture 2

The part that is red will be next to where yours will be higlighted.  Scroll up a bit until you find the part that I have highlighted it should include the text:

fbDockChatBuddyListNub

Click on that to highlight it, then right click and select "Edit as HTML," it is usually the third option.  Then all the text will appear black and white.  Go to the very beginning and right after "div" copy and paste the following code:

     style="position: absolute; right: 100px; top: 100; bottom: 100px"

 Make sure that there is a space between div and style and between 100px" and class.  Then click somewhere outside that black and white text box so it looks normal again.  After that, the message should appear somewhere else on the page where you can see the whole message (see picture 3).

Picture 3

Now, click the "Try It Now" button.  Don't worry if nothing happens, just refresh the page or open a new Facebook window/tab.

When you get to the new refreshed page, you will see a list of your most interacted with friends there, however, this will show you friends who are not even online.  If you wish to see only friends who are online, you can click the settings button at the very bottom right and from there, click "Hide Sidebar."

Picture 4

Picture 5

After you do this, the sidebar will minimize like it normally used to and then all of your friends who are online will appear at the bottom of the left sidebar (underneath your name and your groups and everything...at the very bottom of that column).  

Also in the menu shown in Picture 5, you can limit your availability which allows you to choose which friends in your friend lists are allowed to see you online, very similar to the old Facebook chat that had a pill like icon (see Picture 6).

Picture 6

So really, Facebook didn't take away any features from the old friend list to the new one, they just changed the user interface, though that was very quite possibly a bad decision on their part.

In conclusion, you can see all of your online friends by hiding the side bar.  You can still appear offline by making sure that "Available to Chat" is not selected in your settings (See Picture 5, in that, it IS selected).  You can still choose which friend lists are allowed to see you online, you just need to know how to work it and in this post I showed you just that.

I hope this has helped you in knowing how to work the new Facebook chat.  Please leave me your feedback in the comment section below and feel free to ask any questions regarding something I may not have covered.  

Side Notes:

First I want to tell you that I always use Digsby for chatting with my Facebook friends, so if you are still confused about all the changes to Facebook chat and you just want to use a chat that doesn't change, you can download Digsby here: http://www.digsby.com/download.php.  Digsby can also connect to other IM accounts such as Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, MySpace, and can connect to email accounts by most providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and others), and can also hook up to your Twitter and Facebook accounts so you can check those without ever visiting the site.  It also allows you to update your status, make comments, like posts, dislike posts, and much more.  It is currently only available for Windows operating systems, but is coming soon for Mac and Linux.  You can sign up to know when they become available here: http://www.digsby.com/signup/maclinux/.  However, if you run Ubuntu, you can download the windows version and use Wine to run Digsby.  You can download Wine here: http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu.  I am currently running Ubuntu, so I know that that works.

Second, having been using Digsby for so long, I did not know that you can group chat with Facebook, this may or may not be old news, but you can do it by clicking the settings button in a conversation, right next to the X and then click "Add Friends to Chat..."  Type your friends name, select the friend, click done and now you have a group chat.

American Idol Final Two Poll

Today the results from last night's voting were revealed on American Idol.  According to Ryan Seacrest, last night over 95 million votes came in.  From those 95 million votes, America voted to keep Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina. Unfortunately for many, Haley Reinhart was voted off.

Now, the main reason for this post: I want you to vote in this poll for the person you will vote for next Tuesday.

For some reason the poll won't embed properly into this post, so click the following link to vote: http://www.learnmyself.com/poll62456xd4424d7b.

Batch Photo Watermarker

Hello everyone, as you may not be aware, I really love to take pictures and I also love posting them online to websites like Facebook; however when an image is posted online, most sites clear the EXIF data.  There are a few sites that preserve the data though, I think Flickr is one of them, but I am not positive.  Anyway, EXIF data is basically all of the information about the picture—it shows the exposure time, the date and time taken, the camera it was taken with, and all sorts of information you never knew your picture knew.  It also contains copyright, generally you have to manually add that though.  So when you need to upload a picture to a website, chances are that even if you put your copyright info in the EXIF data, the data will be deleted so you need another way to protect your image from being stolen.  One of the easiest ways to do this is by watermarking your image.  Though there are many programs out there that you can use, I think that BatchMarker is one of the best.  I haven't really used it too much yet, but I will once I post this.  You see, on the BatchMarker website, it told me to insert a code into my webpage or blog and I can get the full program free.  That is basically the main reason for me posting this (I like free stuff).

For anyone who wants to try this program and also for the BatchMarker team, the link is right here:
Batch Photo Watermarker. The BatchMarker website said that it will take at the max, 12 hours to get my full program; they have to look at this webpage to confirm that it is legit I guess. So hopefully this blog qualifies as legit. Thank you BatchMarker team, you are awesome!

Twilight Zone 4th of July Marathon 2011

In recent years, Twilight Zone fans like myself have not been too sure about whether or not the Syfy channel would have their biannual Twilight Zone marathons (one during the 4th of July and one during New Years) because a few of them never happened like they normally would.  (Did that all make sense?)  Let me try to rephrase that: because of the fact that Syfy skipped some Twilight Zone marathons, Twilight Zone fans are unclear about which ones Syfy will have.  Well, I checked the Syfy schedule and let me be the first to tell you, I am very happy to let you all know that Syfy will host a Twilight Zone marathon this 4th of July.  According to Syfy's schedule, the Twilight Zone marathon will start at 9:00 AM on July 3rd and will end at 4:00 AM on July 5th.

If you want to check the Syfy schedule yourself to see the episodes and times, you can do so here:
http://www.syfy.com/schedule/index.php?date=2011-7-3.  Just change the last digit between 2, 3, 4, and 5 for July 2, July 3, July 4, and July 5, respectively.

Have a happy 4th of July and Twilight Zone marathon!  "Always remember folks: you heard it first from" Unknown823.  That is in quotes referring to 2012's (the movie) short animation.

The 30 Best April Fool's Day Jokes/Pranks

Here is a list of thirty great April Fool's Day jokes and pranks I found online in various locations and from my family.

1. Get a small alarm clock and set it for 3:00 a.m. Sneak under the victim's bed. Once it goes off, he/she won't be able to find it will drive them nuts. You can also do this for most anytime of day.
2. Tape a piece of paper under your friend's mouse so that the paper covers the mouse ball or laser - the mouse will no longer work! Align so that the tape doesn't touch the ball.
3. Grab a bottle of liquid soap and head toward the "victims" bedroom. Squirt some of the soap onto your hand and rub all over the doorknob of his/her room. Run away before he or she sees you in the process of doing this prank. 
4. Here's a simple prank that is always good for some cheap laughs. Place an object on the floor where you know someone will bend over to pick it up. This object could be a book, an important looking envelope, a purse, etc. Position yourself nearby with some scraps of cloth that tear easily with a noisy rip. You can also use a strip of velcro to create the tearing sound. The prank is simple. Just wait until the mark bends over to pick up the object. As with many pranks, the timing is critical. At the precise moment that the mark bends over, rip the cloth. You'll be surprised at how many people reach around immediately checking for rips.
5. Put confetti on top of the fan blades and wait for someone to turn on the fan.
6. A classic one: glue a coin to the ground and watch people try to pick it up.  You may even want to try with a dollar bill to attract more victims. 
7. Here's an obnoxious little prank known as "the sneeze". It's always good for a cheap laugh and it's harmless. Cup some water in your hand. Now sneak up behind your victim and sneeze loudly. At the same instant splash water on the victim's neck. They will be disgusted to think that you slobbered all over them in such an uncouth manner.
8. Fill a cup with jello (this may work better with cups that have lids) give it to the victim and tell them it is Kool-aid
9. Play with your food; to add effect, act like it's a special performance for the people at the next table. 
10. Call a random number and tell him you are calling from the local video store. Tell him his video rental "Girls Gone Wild" is overdue and needs to be returned ASAP!
11. Gather up a group of friends for this one. One after another you and your friends call the victim and ask him if Franklin is there (or some other creative name). Everytime he says, "No you have the wrong number" another friend calls back asking for the same name. After the victim gets really annoyed, you then call him and tell him that you are Franklin and ask him if anyone has been calling for you.
12. For a great joke, you'll need some butter, a plate, some salt! Tell your poor victim that you saw on the Discovery Channel that butter gets hot when you put salt on it. Put some butter on a plate and put salt on it. Put your hand over the butter and pretend you feel the heat. Tell them to put their hand over it, and ask them if they can feel the heat. Then... SLAM!!! Swiftly, slam your hand on top of their's so their hand gets squished in the butter and salt. The satisfaction is seeing the look of horror on their face as they're looking at their hand!
13. Put a balloon on the tail pipe of an car (make sure the car isn't started), when the person starts the car, they will hear a POP and assume the tire had blown out.
14. Make some cookies with hot chilies. Put the cookies out but put a sign up that says “Do Not Eat - Very Hot”.
15. Call a random number and ask why they called you and insist they tell you who they are.
16. Get the cats involved: Put some regular clear tape on the pads of a cats paws and then place the cat on a smooth surface and enjoy watching the cat dance.
17. Place a pair of pants and shoes inside the only toilet stall in a men's room to make it appear someone was using the stall. Once it sat there for hours until someone called security to check if the person had died.
18. Send a fake love note to a co-worker from another co-worker.
19. Place a sign on a bathroom stall that says, "Out of toilet paper; please use your own resources."
20. Put a 'house for sale' ad in the newspaper regarding a friend's home.

21-30. Computer Pranks:  This website has ten more pranks on it http://lifehacker.com/#!373817/top-10-harmless-geek-pranks.  (I like all of those and couldn't copy and paste them all due to the rules of HubPages—duplication of content.)

Top Ten Funniest Quotes of Demetri Martin

I have been wanting to make some posts with just some quotes because it is a pretty easy thing to do and it gets traffic.  The only thing that has been stopping my is that a hubber, ryankett, often does the same thing and that is where I got the idea to do that.  I don't want to look like a copycat of someone else at all every, but I recently just read a bunch of quotes by Demetri Martin and I thought that some of them were too funny not to share.  I had to replace some of them with still-really-funny, but not-as-funny quotes because in some of them were curse words and I just simply don't like those words.  So here is my top ten funniest quotes of Demetri Martin in no particular order:

1. “A drunk driver is very dangerous. So is a drunk backseat driver if he’s persuasive. ‘Dude make a left.’ ‘Those are trees…’ ‘Trust me.’”
2. “I like the beach. I like to get there really early before everyone else shows up and take like thirty bottles with notes in them and throw them into the water. Then I wait for everyone to come to the beach and when someone goes to pick up one of the bottles, I go up behind them because when they open it there’s a note saying ‘I’m standing right behind you.’”
3. I was on the street. This guy waved to me, and he came up to me and said, “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.” And I said, “I am.”
4. “The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.”
5. “I wanna make a jigsaw puzzle that’s 40,000 pieces. And when you finish it, it says ‘go outside.’”
6. “The easiest time to add insult to injury is when you’re signing somebody’s cast.”
7. “I like when good things happen to me, but I wait two weeks to tell anyone because I like to use the word ‘fortnight.’”
8. “I used to play sports. Then I realized you can buy trophies. Now I’m good at everything.”
9. A quick way to start a conversation is to say something like “What’s your favorite color?” A quick way to end a conversation is to say something like “What’s your favorite color…person?”
10. “An easy way to sound like a creep is to add the word ‘ladies’ to the end of things you say. It can be harmless too, but it just makes you a creep. ‘Yeah after college I spent two years in the peace corps, ladies?’ The more harmless it is, the more of a creep you become. ‘I broke my arm. I need help, ladies?’”

The last one was mostly funny to me just because a year or two ago, some of my friends would say ladies kind of like that, but they would use it in the same way Michael Scott uses "that's what she said" on The Office.  The best part is, I don't think they have ever heard this quote, so I am going to show it to them next time I see them.