Saturday Link Roundup
Yeesh, sorry for the lack of updates but I’ve been drawing a blank as to what to write. Well that’s not exactly true, I have a topic or two floating around in my drafts that would be more than suitable to polish and post up, I haven’t felt like it though, the heat makes me lazy. Time was I would’ve just spent the afternoon in my grandparents pool, now I just contemplate suicide while sitting in front of the air conditioner. I’d go to the public pool, but the amount of chlorine they dump in the water to counteract the germs people bring with them scares me. It was bad enough swimming in a family pool with only a little bit of chlorine, that stuff really irritates my eyes and it’s pretty awful when it gets up your nose.
Enjoy this weeks link roundup, I’ve included preview images this time so tread lightly if you’re on a slow connection (disable images if you must).
DIY
Whit’s Knits: Super Easy Baby Blanket – Every day at Purl at least one customer comes in looking for a really easy baby blanket pattern. It’s such a basic request, and, yet, my co-workers and I have a hard time offering a basic solution. The reason is that not many knit designers bother to make patterns for simple rectangles or squares, assuming that, because it would be so easy for them to figure out, it must be easy for everyone else to figure out too!
Father’s Day Rolled Hem Hankies – Every year we struggle with what to make for Father’s Day. We came up with this project after visiting fine men’s clothing shops around New York City who often create this type of beautiful, hand rolled hem handkerchief out of shirting fabric remnants. We love the contrast between the organic feel that the hand rolling creates and the crisp clean fabric.
Not Your Usual Basics – Final wardrobe – This year I really felt that there was a strong idea behind my SWAP. I recently discovered that I don’t have enough basics in my wardrobe and an initial list of things to sew started to form in my head.
Gussets and Heels and Foot Length, Oh My! – I’ve gotten some queries lately (via Ravelry and email) concerning toe-up socks. Specifically, how do you know how long to knit the foot before you start increasing for the gusset?
Food
Sugar Cookies IV – “Crispy sugar cookies. Not too sweet or too plain. Great for holidays or other special occasions or just for any time.”
Chili-beef Skewers – Servings: Makes 4 servings
Chocolate Surprise – “Chocolate cookie with a marshmallow surprise, and a chocolate icing. Each cookie is topped with a pecan half.”
Plastic bags vs. pastry bags for piping – I’m a big fan of tricks that make my life easier in the kitchen and one that I use often is substituting a plastic bag for a pastry bag. A pastry bag is little more than a conical plastic bag that is open at the wide end and sealed at the bottom. To use one, you just need to snip off the closed tip after filling the bag and you can pipe batter into muffin cups or molds, or pipe frosting onto a cake…
Dark Double Chocolate Cookies – I often hear people saying that they want to reduce the sugar in a recipe, or they don’t want something to be “too sweet.” I’ve had cookies that are made with too much sugar and they taste grainy and unpleasant, but I don’t generally want to reduce the sugar in any other recipes. Sugar is a huge contributor to the texture of baked goods, helping to make things light and moist in some cases and densely fudgy in others…
Brownie Peanut Butter Cups – For a while now, I’ve been wanting to use muffin pans to make brownies. I found several recipes, but none I could really get excited about. Then, I found this one that features one of my favorite combinations: chocolate and peanut butter.
Brownie Goody Bars – Everything that’s irresistible about a good candy bar just got rolled into one recipe. What’s your favorite part? The brownies on the bottom? The frosting and peanuts in the middle? Or the crunchy cereal on the top?
Technology
Send Faxes for Free – Sometimes, you may urgently need to send a fax across to someone but you do not have access to a fax machine. If this is the case, don’t worry. File-hosting site drop.io has a way to rescue you.
Drop.io started off as just another file-hosting site. To stand out from the pack though, the site now allows you to both send and receive faxes. The modus operandi is simple: Upload the file you want to fax to the drop.io service. Files must be in ‘doc’ or ‘PDF’ format, not more than 20 pages long and less in 100 MB in size….
How does Plurk work? – Are you as sick of hearing about Twitter as I am?
See the problem is that I never really “got” Twitter… I tried, I really did. I signed up and followed people and Twittered regularly, but it never really did it for me. Eventually I just forgot about it.
Five Best Antivirus Applications – The internet is a glorious and exciting world, but unless you’re properly protected with a good antivirus application, it can also be a dangerous one. We’ve come a long way since the days of Norton, with handfuls of excellent freeware software that can keep your computer safe from malware just as well as their bloated, more expensive counterparts…
Gmail Gets 13 Experimental New Features – Starting at 6PM Pacific Time tonight, Google will start rolling out Gmail Labs, an experimental area of new Gmail features that will be familiar and very welcome to users of the Better Gmail Firefox extension. Once your Gmail account is Labs-enabled, you’ll get a Labs tab in the Settings area of your account where you can enable 13 new experimental Gmail features
Greasemonkey Script for Right Click Menu in Gmail – This greasemonkey script shows a special “right click menu” (also known as a “context menu”) when using Gmail. Currently, the menu lets the user navigate around the site. He or she can jump to “inbox”, “compose new”, “sent messages”, “contacts”, etc.
Top 10 Web Based RSS Readers – From Google Reader to Fwicki RSS Management.
Wire Button – Hold your headphone wires in place with a wire button.
Add Search to the Awesome Bar in Firefox 3 – The new Awesome Bar looks into the history and bookmarks by default when the user begins to type in the first letter of an URL. It even remembers previous selections and sorts them accordingly. One thing that is missing though is direct web search from that bar, and that is what Awesome Search provides.
Electric Umbrella DIY – This “Electric Umbrella” is an umbrella that you can build yourself, thanks to the good people at Instructable. It is a great way to make the best of a rainy night by taking long walks under your very own stars.
Solar Charged Lawnmower – An electric lawnmower that utilizes solar power as an energy source will address a number of issues that standard internal combustion engine mowers do not. An electric lawnmower with a solar charger will be easier to use. There is no messy dangerous gasoline to deal with. It will eliminate those pesky trips to the gas station for fill-ups.
Web/Graphic Design and Coding
How To: Make the Viget Inspire Background – A few of you have been asking, so here it is: An overview of how we put the Viget Inspire background together. The driving philosophy behind real-texture stuff like this is to fake as little as possible. No matter how many brushes you have or how good you are in Illustrator, there’s a quality of unpredictability in real photographs and real, physical elements that adds great subtle qualities to any design.
How To Protect Your WordPress Theme Against Upgrades – Problem: You’ve finally found a theme you like but you want to modify it. The modifications are pretty simple but what happens when you want to upgrade the theme? Do you really want to go through all those files again hunting down the changes? Don’t you wish you could just upgrade and be done with it?
25 of the Best FREE Photoshop Plugins and Filters Resource Sites – 25 of the best Photoshop plugins and filters.
Footer Design Showcase: 75+ Creative Footer Designs – In writing about redesigning the TechCrunch footer I came across many great examples of creative and useful footer design.
So I thought it was about time I created my own showcase of web site footer designs.
10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and how they did it… – Lately I have been very interested in how far we can take Typography only using CSS. Sure you can use images or sIFR to produce some very beautiful typography, but there is something unique and special about using only CSS. It is incredibly useful too, if you know the extent you can take CSS you end up with much more flexible websites— especially ones driven by a CMS.
A Default Print Stylesheet Template – A print style sheet is an extremely useful thing to have around. Most modern websites don’t look all that attractive when printed using the site’s default CSS: overly-large widths, screen-friendly fonts, and creative color choices all work together to make most sites less than useful on the printed page. But with a print CSS file, you can alleviate those problems and present your users with a useable, useful print alternative to your digital masterpiece.
Become a Better Designer by Copying Successful Designs – Sometimes looking for inspiration from designs you think are good can be overwhelming. You get sucked in to how good the design is and then start doubting that you could ever come up with something so creative.
Don’t fall into that trap! Let the good design really be an inspiration to you. Learn from it by copying and put your own spin on it. After all, good designers copy, great designers steal!
Top 10 Free Blogging Platforms & Features For Web Designers – The obvious choice for Number 1 is Wordpress, it is the most versatile and flexible platform that I have come across. But, that is my opinion, Wordpress seems to fit my needs 9 times out of ten. Our needs and that of our clients are different, don’t get me wrong I am not saying that Serendipity, Text Pattern or any of others are not very good, just simply my preference. Thats the key word here preference.
8 Popular Open Source Forums – This week I am working on a project for a client and they requested a forum on their website. Being that I didn’t want my client to have to pay for a forum software. I found quite a few popular Open Source Forum software alternatives. The list below is a collection of 8 popular Open Source Forum software.
Other
Urban Sprawl Dog Bed – For pet owners who love their dogs so much, here is a good dog bed to check out.
When the colours you love don’t work for you – Sometimes we fancy a colour that’s unflattering on us, or we look fantastic in a colour that we don’t like to wear. I run into this challenge with clients from time to time and it’s not easy telling someone that they look drab in sage green when it’s their favourite colour. Or when magenta was made for them, but they loath it.
10 Things you Must Know before Renting an Apartment – If you can’t afford buying an apartment, your solution is probably to lease. Though moving to a new apartment can be very exciting, finding a good one to rent could be a daunting task. There are things you should consider before the big step, so here are our ten picks to make sure you’re prepared before you sign your name.
Make your own watercolors – This is a fun project to do with your kids. It’s inexpensive, non-toxic, and making the watercolor paints can a great learning experience.
Bras For Full-Figured And Full-Busted Women From Evenden – In the last three years I’ve worn a 36B, a 34C, a 32D, and now a 34DD. The mass market lingerie company, who probably over 50% of you all purchase lingerie from, has been my go-to for bras for as long as I can remember – until now.
Your Mother’s Style – Our mothers probably have more impact on our style and dress sense than we would care to admit. Here are some aspects of my late Mother’s style that I was grateful to learn:
More Best of link roundups
- Best of the Week #16
- Great Resources Elsewhere: May 30 to June 05
- Great Resources Elsewhere: May 20 to May 27
- DON’T MISS: The Best Design Articles from May 2008
- Best of the Web – May
- Discover The Best Of The Web In May 2008
- Best of the Web – May
- This Month’s Best: May 2008
Tags: for-you, resources, saturday-link-roundup
Omigosh! Not enough tabs to open all the links together!
#3 Ramsha Jun 10, 20:50 Permalink
I love sugar in my food – I’ve got a real sweet tooth (and thankfully a great metabolism). My motto for that is: “If it doesn’t have sugar, it’s not dessert.” Artificial sweeteners like Splenda so do not taste the same as real sugar. What’s your opinion of artificial sweeteners like those?
I hear ya on the too hot to want to do much. It’s starting to turn my brain to mush. It got up to 101 in our area this past Sunday and I was like NO FREAKING WAY… its just I don’t know… odd for it to get THAT hot this early in the year. I Guess its going to be super hot when July and August rolls around then. Yeah… “lovely”. How’s it going over in your neck of the woods ‘sides the heat? ;)
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Hi I'm Becky, often referred to as The Knitting Hillbilly and Pussybear, owner of this site and general nuisance. I'm a knitter, serial complainer, known whistle blower and I run the ever popular
Thanks for the links Becky! <3
#1 Enzo Jun 7, 22:44 Permalink