Saturday Link Round-Up 12
Don’t you hate it when you have a million and one things to do and you can never seem to do them all? I need either a couple of clones or some kind of manly assignment to get things done around here.
Enjoy this weeks round-up, it’s a bit large! And as always check out my delicious account for the overflow.
Food
Pink Grapefruit, Champagne and Henry Mancini’s ‘Moon River’ – Have you ever been so inspired by a song that random creations come over you unexpectedly? It happened a few days ago when I was diving by myself to an appointment. My iPod was set to shuffle songs and some strange coincidence happened when three songs with the word “moon” played back to back. Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” played first, followed by Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” and Morrissey’s version of “Moon River”.
Pizza Bianca – Pizza bianca, or “white pizza” has long been a favorite of mine and this is what the tagline of the magazine referred to. I’ve seen it two ways: as a pizza with cheese and a minimal number toppings, but no tomato/red sauce, and also as a focaccia-like flatbread topped with olive oil and herbs.
Honey Raspberry Semifreddo And An Open Letter – There are as many semifreddo recipes are there cooks in this world, and the word itself refers more to a class of desserts more than just a particular one. Semi freddos are just that, semi frozen desserts not requiring an ice cream maker. The air comes and fluffly mouth feel comes from the amount of air you incorporate in your recipes, either with whipped cream, a “pate a bombe”, an Italian or Swiss meringue.
Chocolate Chip Cupcakes – I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much of a “pretty dessert” maker. I lack the patience for intricate detail work or even for frosting a cake. When I make cupcakes, they are the ones without all the pretty frosting and such. I’m all about simple.
Layers of Cake: Hazelnut Praline Cake – This is not what I would think of as an ”American-style” layer cake. It’s a flourless chocolate cake, with ground hazelnuts providing the structure and whipped eggs providing the lift. It has the dense but creamy texture I was expecting and hoping for. The frosting is a milk chocolate whipped ganache (oh my gosh, is it ever good!), and it’s sprinkled with as much homemade hazelnut praline as your heart desires.
Bacon Ice Cream- You Know You Want It – This ice cream works because it doesn’t taste overpoweringly of bacon. The base is flavoured with brown sugar and a bit of rum and the candied bacon is only added in at the end for a special sweet and salty finish.
Freebies
TUGZIP is a great file compression manager – TUGZIP is a powerful award-winning freeware archiving utility for Windows® that provides support for a wide range of compressed, encoded and disc-image files, as well as very powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.
Firefox
28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks – You may have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, but if you want to get the most out of Firefox, you really have to hack your way into the about:config.
Firefox Extended Statusbar – Extended Statusbar is a Firefox extension that adds a few useful information to the statusbar. Opera users might feel comfortably right away because the functionality has been taken from that browser and was ported – or shall I say cloned – to Firefox by the developer.
Remove Traces Of Active Websites in Firefox – Removing traces of just one website that you have been visiting is quite some task. It requires knowledge of the storage locations of the information in Firefox. An easier way to remove traces of an active website is to use the Firefox add-on Close and Forget.
Find In Tabs Searches Text Across All Your Firefox Tabs – Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Find In Tabs searches for text across all of your open Firefox tabs. It does so by adding a Find in Tabs button to the find bar that switches from the normal single-page search to a multi-tab search.
Mozilla Crowns Best Firefox 3 Extensions – Mozilla Labs announces the winners of their official Extend Firefox 3 Contest, and they’re an impressive crop of new and updated extensions for your favorite browser.
Web Design
School Is In Session – 100 Design Articles To Keep You Motivated : Part 2 – Following part one of this five part series comes twenty more design articles to keep you motivated as school rolls to a start and the social summer comes to an end. I hope you enjoy this post, and be sure to subscribe to the feed to keep up with the next three parts!
Showcase of Watercolour in Webdesign – This past year I have found that more and more websites have some sort of watercolour effect on them. This effect or style has really come alive in 2008. There are many websites that use this effect to create depth and texture. Though in most cases, watercolour being a very subtle effect, your aesthetics of your site can improve greatly. I personally love the watercolour effect, I think it’s not to distracting but adds something to a design.
Blank Themes, Frameworks and Templates: Resources to Speed Up Your Development Time – As a designer, anything that you can do to make more efficient use of your time will ultimately increase your productivity. When you’re starting a new design you probably do many of the same tasks over and over again to build the foundation of the site. I’d like to point out a number of resources that others have created to streamline the process and give you a starting point that can save you some time.
Don’t Copy a Design — Steal It – Copying someone else’s work will only give yours a chance to become as good as the one you’re copying — and that’s the best case scenario. A copy will usually never be as good as the original because it always remains one step behind. Even worse, at the hands of a novice designer a copy could end up looking like a cheap imitation, lacking the finesse and flair of the original.
Logo Design Inspiration: 54 Creative Logos Hand-picked From Logopond – The better a logo greater the probability that your clients will remember you and get back to you. For that: designers have to be creative and have to work their ass out in designing beautiful, unique logos. And the results they come out with their hard work are stunning and spectacular.
Interior Design
Be Still My Heart. – N/A
Movin’ On Up – In the mood to give your bathroom a shot of luxury and some dramatic height? Here’s another simple and speedy mini-makeover that anyone can do. Just upgrade from the average 72″ shower curtain to a super tall version (we snagged a 95″ curtain from here, and it works perfectly with our 98″ ceilings).
Styrofoam Dome Houses – The most outstanding feature is the low cost which starts at under $30,000. However, the dome house has a long list of other benefits. It is very light – weighing only 80 kg. The 7 inch thick walls provides thermal insulation. The walls are coated with fire retardant making the houses fireproof. Being what it is, the dome house will not rust, rot and is definitely not termite food. It is also earthquake and gale resistant – the latter due to the dome’s low wind resistance profile.
Beach House Love – I’m talking about a lovely beach cottage I spied on blogging friend Villa Anna’s blog recently. Oh, how I love! Click on over to her blog see the rest of the loveliness.
Learning the art of design through observation – It occurred to me that some people really may not understand the value of observation. And that is OK. We are all wired up differently and for some people this is not as fun as it is for me! Plus, I understand that sometimes looking at something beautiful can lead to discontent with what you have or a fixation on perfection, and that is certainly not a desirable effect. It all comes down to perspective, and what it is you are looking at.
Code
7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code – Some of you may remember the days when 30KB was the recommended maximum size of a web page, a value which included HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images. I find with every new project with even the slightest bit of complexity, it’s not long before that 30 KB ideal is well out of my reach. With the popularity of CSS layouts and JavaScript-enriched web page experiences, it’s not uncommon, particularly for large sites, for the CSS files alone to jump well beyond that 30KB ceiling.
Miscellaneous
Don’t Read This If You Do Not Want More Email – Over the past few weeks I have been trialling having contact forms on all the main pages of my site and boy has it increased the amount of emails I have received, not only from potential clients, but also from people just wanting to say thank you or a friendly hello, and let’s face it, who doesn’t like hearing compliments?
Top 5 Reasons You Should Not Use a Shotgun for Zombie Defense – Hollywood, not to the surprise of many, has distorted several facts with regards to zombie outbreaks and more importantly, the survival of such an outbreak. Of most importance is the best weapon for defense, which Hollywood would have you believe, is the shotgun. This my friends is a fallacy and could cost you your life. Keep reading for the top 5 reasons you should not use a shotgun for zombie defense.
Use Tweetake To Back Up Your Twitter – If you’re a heavy Twitter user, you’ve no doubt accumulated a huge collection of tiny text messages. Losing all that information would be a giant pain, but how do you save a copy for yourself? Have a look at Tweetake!
Mygazines Offers Full Magazine Scans Online – Browse any of a number of popular magazines for free—from Macworld and PC World to Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health—at web site Mygazines. The site contains user-uploaded scans of these magazines, and flipping through magazines displayed in Mygazine’s Flash interface is nearly as simple as browsing an actual magazine.
Inside Lightning McQueen – You have these cars, but with actual fleshy eyes, with irises, and mouths of teeth and tongues. Where does the machine end and the flesh begin? So, to make everything piece together a little better in my head I drew up what I think the internal structures of Lightning McQueen might look like:
Sewing
How to repurpose an old towel – Another one that’s not too exciting … but a useful thing anyway! As someone with long hair I can confirm that it’s mightily annoying to have your towel sponaniously unwrap and drop dripping hair everywhere. We all have those towels that have seen better days, lost their “fluffiness” and are, frankly, only good for wiping dogs’ feet.
“(SLRU)Crafters Medley: 21 Neat-O Projects To Make (August)”: – N/A
New Life for an Old (-er) Bra – You can’ t magically resurrect an ancient bra that’s shot. But you can give an older one a boost. (And then hopefully it will return the favor.)
Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and Gimp
Achieve HDR Stle Effects Using Photoshop and the Lucis Art Filter – Hey everybody! In this tutorial, I’ll show you some great techniques to achieve HDR effects. There are a lot of different techniques out there, but I prefer to use this specific filter called LucisArt.
Top 10 Killer Photoshop Combo Moves – Is time kickin’ your ass? Well, learn to defend yourself! Master these killer Photoshop keyboard combos and you’ll find yourself with more time for the important things (e.g. Facebook trivia questions).
30 Tutorials That Will Teach You Illustrator – So with school starting back we here at Arbenting have put together a complete learning experience that won’t take all semester to get through, and won’t be anywhere near as boring. We have compiled thirty Illustrator tutorials that will teach you the nuances and subtleties of the program.
Find The Hidden Magnetic Pen Tool Options – I know what you’re thinking—finding the Magnetic Pen tool options? I didn’t even know there was a Magnetic Pen tool in the first place. Adobe has done a great job of hiding it. For some reason they must hate this tool.
10 Fantastic GIMP Specific Tutorials – How many times have you seen a great looking Photoshop tutorial and wished that the it existed for the GIMP? Luckily, fellow gimpers have made plenty of helpful and great looking tutorials for us to follow. Below, we will take a look at 10 Fantastic GIMP Specific Tutorials…
Illustrators Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide – If you use Adobe Illustrator, then it’s almost certain that you use the Pen tool when creating your paths. This comprehensive guide aims to introduce or remind you of features, shortcuts, and methods for working with what is arguably Adobe’s most essential tool.
Geeky
Create Free Ringtones In iTunes – The Apple blog published a nice article explaining how to create free ringtones using only the Apple iTunes software. The only restriction of that method is that the song needs to reside on the hard drive of the user so that a ringtone can be created from it.
Can’t delete a folder or file because Windows says its being used? then try Unlocker – Unlocker will allow you to delete files or folders that windows says are being used.
Five Best FTP Clients – Whether you do you work on the web, run a home FTP server, or you just prefer a quick download from time to time, a solid, full-featured FTP client can be lifesaver.
Tips/Tricks
Great Resource for Writing Article Headlines – Condomunity has an excellent article about writing good headlines and includes a cautionary tale about the cost of writing a dull headline (hint: lots of lost traffic).
12 ways to save money on eating out – Eating out is never your most cost-effective option. But sometimes it’s so enjoyable it’s better than therapy (compared to which it actually is cost-effective). If you love to eat out, there are a lot of ways to trim your costs. Some of these are really basic, and many of you will already know them. But a few of them are, as far as I know, not already all over the internet.
Room-by-Room House-Cleaning Guide – Rather than save up chores, I live by the philosophy “Clean as you go.” In fact, I often multitask while I minitask! So the next time you’re chatting on the phone or waiting for a TV show to start, look around the room (or check the list on the following pages) and see what quick job you can tackle. That way, the mess won’t build up.
Unclutter your Google Reader – I’m a fan of various blogs and have a habit of subscribing to the feeds of the blogs and sites which I like to read it daily. But over a period of time, my Google Reader got piled up with the lots of RSS feeds. So, now I’ve a difficult time to read each and every RSS items. And most of the news items seems to be duplicated over various blogs and sites.
Beauty/Health
17 Hairstyles That Take Less Than 10 Minutes – With a few (and only a few) key products and styling tools, you can quickly give yourself a salon-worthy ‘do. And hey, if you hate it, try a different one — at least you haven’t blown 60 bucks and a hour of precious time on it.
DIY Eye Makeup Remover Recipes – Here are a few recipes I’ve collected as well as a list of various household items that can be used for removing eye makeup.
Choose a Safe, Reusable Water Bottle – Bisphenol A—a chemical found in most water bottles—has been linked to a host of ailments including increased risk of cancer, obesity, early onset puberty, and diabetes. Companies are slowly phasing out the use of Bispehnol A, but why wait until they discover that another chemical in the plastic is harmful?
Expensive Doesn’t Always Equal Appropriate – I know you readers have my mantra memorized – Quality, not Quantity. Quality can come at any price range, and appropriateness can too. Often times we confuse a high pricetag with formality. Just because a frock is designer (or at a designer price) it does not mean it’s always the best choice for an event.
Crimes of Fashion – Bad things happen to good clothing. Often times it is not the garment that commits the crime, the woman who puts it on her body. The thing is, we women just can’t admit the truth about ourselves.
Closet Clean-out – The Woman in Her ’30s – There are certain points in a woman’s life when it’s time for a major closet clean-out. Just before college, after finishing school, when drastically changing careers…
