I'm going to..

Take a few days off from the blog. Yesterday I was donating platelets at my local blood donation center and because I have funny veins the needle punctured my vein. What that means is that the needle went through my vein and blood started to go into the muscle tissue. The response time of the woman watching me was on the slow side and as a result I had a really painful experience and right now I have the equivalent of a dead arm with a goose egg on it. I'm going to take a few days off and try and get my arm back to normal, then i'll go back to posting information for you all to enjoy. Sorry for the absence. I hope i'm missed.

#43 How To Make Your Music 8-Bit

Now i'm sure most of you at some point or another have heard 8-Bit renditions of your favorite songs. My personal favorite is a an all 8-Bit redoing of Dark Side of The Moon. If you've ever wanted to do it yourself, here's a quick down 'n' dirty way to do it. Not quite as professional sounding as some of them out there, but this will do the job quickly and efficiently.

#42 Know Your Elements

A really cool take on The Periodic Table of Elements. In this version, they pair the normal table with a picture of each element, so you can see what they look like. It helps to learn the names of things if you can attach a picture to it in your head. Also it makes you seem smarter if you can point out the name of an element from just a picture. 

#41 How To Peel A Banana

A short video, i'll be making a more informative post later today but for now, learn how to peel a banana like monkeys do. I did this yesterday and by god it works.

#40 Know Your Computer Hardware

This is an informational picture I found most handy when constructing my own computer piece by piece. I've never really known all the parts that go into a computer, or what they look like, but these are essential to know. If you want to learn what all is involved in your computer, or need to figure out what's not working, or even what you will need to build your own computer, this is something you should see. 

#39 How To: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

From my fellow blog-mate Turk It UP, a good, easy recipe for Spaghetti.

Turk it UP: How To: Spaghetti with Meat Sauce: "Om nom nom.Mats:Spaghetti (or other noodles, I used linguini)Meat (I used hamburger)Sauce (I used Prego, yum!)

#38 Know Your Bankruptcies

In this day and age we are seeing reports of companies filing for this bankruptcy and that bankruptcy all the time.  If you ever wondered what that all meant, here is a handy picture that will help clarify that for you.

#37 Know Which Dietary Supplements Are Beneficial Or Just A Scam

This is a part of my on-going living healthy series of posts. A handy little chart that tells you how effective or beneficial certain dietary supplements are, ranging from None (for no evidence of health benefits) to Strong (for strong evidence of health benefits) This is also good at showing which "breakthrough" supplements that are supposed to be miracle workers are mostly just "Snake Oil" which is to say it's all hype and no good reason to believe it does what they say it does. 

#36 How To Fold a T-shirt in 2 seconds

This video shows how to effectively fold t-shirts in a nice and orderly manner, with the help of just a few pinches that with practice take no time at all.

#35 How To Be Pro At Life (part 2)

The second part in a series of informational pictures about how to social engineer and lifehack your way through life. I'm all for making your life easier, so if you do too check it out

#34 How To Fold Money Into Shirts

A great trick is a great trick, whether it gain you money, fame or just a drink at the bar. Use this at parties, as icebreakers, or at the bar to get a free drink. Open up with something like, "I can turn your money into clothing." Get them to bet you a drink if you can do it. Just because it's not grand doesn't mean it's not worth something. 

#33 Know Your Pirate Flags

This one works on two levels. One, you get to learn about the different pirate flags. Two, you now know different flags to create if you are going to make any sort of pirate flag for Halloween. Much like the demon symbols, I'm using these designs to decorate my house for Halloween, and I'm going for ones that aren't as obvious,  like Le Crozat and Vaan Ryhn's. Cool to know, cool to use.

#32 How To Nap Effectively

Some adults think napping is for kids only, but studies show that a power nap or two during the day keeps us motivated and stocked with enough energy to take down our day with vigor. Here is a post on how to get the most out of napping. 

#31 How To Live Healthier

     An on-going project of mine with this blog is to cover a lot of bases on how to get healthy and to live a healthier lifestyle. So far I've covered tips and tricks on fixing your sleep schedule, how to cut down on and avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup, and some ways to get yourself into shape. Today I'm going to talk a little about working exercise into your daily life, and vitamins to take.

  First, some quick tips on how to get more exercise when you feel like there isn't enough time in the day to do it, or for people who just want more exercise to do.

• If going to some sort of store like a Costco or an Albertsons, park in the back of the lot. It makes you walk more to get to your car and back, and only costs you a minute or two more. It's not big, but every little bit helps.
• Two different tricks for motivating yourself to exercise while watching TV. I utilize both, for whichever occasion is on hand.  The first trick is to do light exercise during commercial breaks on tv. Nothing special, just jumping jacks, push-ups, crunches, even walking around. I do this when I'm watching a show on TV live, which isn't often but it happens. The other trick is to set aside 10 minutes for exercise for every hour you watch TV in a day. You take your collected time and use it to work out for a certain amount of time on a day you have set for exercising. For example, if I watch 4 hours of TV, I spend my next exercise day walking for 40 minutes. I use this trick when Im watching shows without commercials, or can skip through commercials. With these tricks you either start getting into shape, or you watch less TV, and neither are such a bad thing.
• Try to reduce how many individual breaks you take, and combine them into a time where you can exercise. For instance, if you take 5 coffee breaks a day at your office, take 3 instead, and combine the time you would have spent on the other two into climbing stairs or just walking around. 
• Clean your house. Most house-hold cleaning activities involve some form of physical labor, from weeding your front lawn to mowing to vacuuming the house or sweeping the floor. It keeps you active and keeps your house looking nice too.

     And now for some vitamin tips

• A multi-vitamin can cover a lot of bases already on keeping your daily intakes of most things in check. Sometimes though you might want to throw a little bit more on to help
• Vitamin B-12 will do wonders for you. B and C are common in foods you already eat, and B vitamins will help boost your metabolism. They give you such things as;
• Boosted metabolism
• Healthy skin
• Muscle tone
• Stronger immune system
• Promotes cell growth and function 
• Take Chromium Picolinate, mostly just called Chromium when in vitamin form. It helps digest food, so your body will get more out of what you eat, and as a result will decrease your appetite. It also lowers your bad cholesterol levels and increases your good cholesterol levels
• Acai Berries. You can take pill forms of the so called wonder fruit known as Acai berries, but I'm someone who is more a fan of eating the berries themselves. No one has really concluded whether or not these diet supplement products that include Acai are any good for you, but tests have shown that the real Acai berry has wonderful effects on your body, mainly because the berry contains a large collection of the total number of vitamins humans need to live and stay healthy, all in one fruit. Acai berries contain fatty acids (important, that's where the term Omega-3 comes from) Iron, B-vitamins, vitamin C&E, Fiber and Calcium. All of that, in one berry. Hell if you had regular servings of Acai berries, you could probably ditch taking multi-vitamins, because they are one. 

#30 How To Make Brownies In A Cup

When I was in high school I was in a cooking class (it's useful) and we did this recipe in our first unit, proving to kids that cooking and baking doesn't have to be difficult. Make some brownies in an instant, savor the day. 

#29 Understanding And Beating A Hangover

This informational picture explains what is happening in your body while you're hungover, modern cures and why they don't work, and how to overcome the hangover to go back to enjoying life. 

#28 How To Make Vampire Fangs

These guys show off the nerdy way on how to DIY yourself some realistic vampire fangs. It's quick, effective and pretty cheap. I'd do this myself if I wasn't going as a pirate this year.

#27 How To Be A Pro At Life (part 1)

A collection of tips and tricks on how to social engineer your way to a better life. I don't endorse all of these, as I have yet to try all of them, but just use common sense. Social Engineering, for those who don't know the term, is about knowing how to use your surroundings as an advantage. One tip I can highly recommend for this post is doing something nice for free once a month. This works especially well as the person describes it in the info, who is a pizza driver. Once a month he delivers a pizza, and pays for it himself. People will think you're awesome and might even call in to the store and talk about how great of a person you are. Use your surroundings to your advantage. 

#26 How To Make A Garlic Chicken Sandwich

I love to cook, so I've found these how-to cook for beginner's informational posters really cool, and of course I tried it out. The garlic chicken sandwich shown is pretty damn delicious if I do say so myself. Nice for beginners who want to learn how to make food for themselves, and also a pretty fast and easy recipe for people who already know how to cook.

#25 How To Make Shuriken

A fun little project, this how to shows you how to make paper throwing stars. Not so deadly, as the real things, but fun to do. Practice throwing them for your ninja training in your spare time. 

#24 How To Get In Shape

It's taken from 4chan, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be well regarded. I wouldn't follow everything this thing says, just because hardly anyone has the discipline to follow the regimes they specify, but it's still a good set of go-to information if you want to learn a bit on how the body works and how you can improve yours. 

#23 How To Make Lock Picks

A wonderful resource to have on hand in that moment of weakness when you're locked out of something. From a car to a cash register to your own door. I'd prefer a professional kit, just because my own DIY skills aren't the best, but it's good to know at the very least.

#22 How To Make Cocktails

I myself am not a drinker, but I do know the importance of having a knowledge of how to make drinks on hand. This is a huge list of different cocktails and how to make them, as well as grouping them in a sort of drink version of a family tree. Impress girls, friends, business associates, or just try something new.

#21 How To Tie Shoes

If you've ever wanted to learn a way to tie your shoes differently, this is the post for you. Make your shoes look cool, unique, and have a great icebreaker. 

#20 How To Build A Star Wars Lightsaber

I'm a nerd. I like Star Wars. Lightsabers are awesome, and here is how to make your own.

#19 How To Deal With The Police

For the most part, I'm a fan of police. From seeing shows like The Wire, I've learned to respect what they do on a day to day basis, but I also know from seeing those kind of shows that they can sometimes overstep their boundaries, or take advantage of someone who doesn't understand their rights. I'm not posting this to give a big F-You to cops, but this is for people to know how to appropriately respond to police questioning, and your options when responding. 

#18 How To Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

A wikihow guide on how to avoid HFCS. In case you didn't know, this lab produced sugar alternative is in almost any and all pre-packaged goods out on the market. From bread to cereal to yogurt to ice cream and everything in between. The actual page lists out reasons to avoid it, but my general stance is that I don't want to put something in my system that is in literally anything I can think of. I'm all about eating naturally, as well as healthy. In case you're wondering, I'm also a fan of pure cane sugar sodas :)

How To Avoid HFCS

#17 Different Demon Symbols

Now I'm not a big believer in demons and summonings and all that witchcraft, but I figured these designs look cool and at the very least you can learn how to draw symbols that look dark and ominous without using the standard pentagram. Good for decorating evil without people knowing how evil, or needing to fill up space on a background or something. Anyway, here's to demon summoning. 

#16 A Day In The Life Of The Internet

This doesn't actually teach you anything, but I still find it fascinating that this all goes on, when 10 years ago it barely even existed.

#15 How To Use Alt Codes

#14 How To Detect a Lie

A good beginner's guide to reading people's body language and learning how people work.

#13 How To Defend Yourself

It's not a complete compendium by any means, but knowing whats in this picture can save your life if you ever get into a situation you need to get out of. 

#12 How To Fix Your Sleep Schedule

Over the years I've accumulated quite a few problems with sleep. I never get enough when I want it, and I never seem to be able to sleep in the one place that is specified to do just that, a bed. Recently I looked up some tips on the internet and combined them with trial and error to see if I can fix up my sleep schedule, and it's working. I'm not going to sleep as soon as I hit the hay, but it's certainly easier. Here are some tips.

#1 Your Bed Is A Bed, Not A Living Room.
    This is pretty simple actually. In your brain, when you do an activity, it associates it with a place or a time, it's part of what makes us have routines. The problem being that if you use your bed for things other than sleeping your brain starts to accept that this is a place for you to do other things. For example, if you happen to watch tv while in bed on a regular basis, your brain starts to associate going to bed with watching tv. So if there's a night when you aren't watching tv in bed, your brain is wondering why you aren't, and will keep you up with the notion that you should be watching tv. Same thing happens with reading in bed, which I'm a victim of. You sit there lying awake at night, thinking to yourself, since I can't sleep, I should read. But you're probably too tired and just want to sleep. You should try to remove as much non-sleeping activity out of the bed and bedroom as possible. If you can train your brain to think of going to bed as going to sleep, it will make shutting your brain down a lot easier.

#2 Your Eyes Need Rest
     This falls into the same kind of territory as #1 but its a little different. Looking at a computer screen can tire  your eyes out, but it also keeps you awake because of the brightness of it. If you're wanting to head to dreamland, it's best to ditch a computer an hour or so before you plan on heading out, because looking at a screen when you want to sleep will just make your eyes alert and harder to shut down. To help with this particular problem, since I have a computer in my room, I've started using the program F.lux. F.lux is a little tool that changes your screen's hue to adjust for the time of day in your part of the world, and for natural light. So at my house, where it gets dark around 7 PM, my screen goes from it's natural brightness down to an orange-ish hue, getting darker into the night, until it reaches a certain point and waits for sun-up, when the brightness goes back up. It helps your eyes get adjusted to the real light and not a screen's backlight, and if you have to use a computer, it helps your eyes out a little.

#3 Your Stomach Needs To Rest
      When dieting, the general rule is to not eat after 7 PM, because food takes about 2-3 hours to digest, and assuming someone goes to bed at around 9-10 PM, you want your stomach to be problem free. When you sleep, your stomach does little digestion of whatever you put into it, which is why people who prefer to have a midnight snack have a little bit of fat around the middle. It makes sense in the same way then, that if your stomach has food partially digested in it, you won't be able to fully take advantage of sleep. It can't always be helped, eating after 7, sometimes past then is just when you have to eat on a certain day. But a general rule is to just not eat two hours before you head to bed. If your stomach is at ease, you will be too.

#4 Routines Make Your Mind Rest
     Humans are creatures of habit. It stands to reason then, that if you don't have any fixed time you go to bed or wake up, you have no habit of sleeping. Your mind however loves having routines. It gets used to patterns and makes it easier on itself to work if you do the same thing every day. Sleeping is no different. If you have problems getting to sleep or waking up at a decent time, abide by a routine. Make sure you are in bed with the lights off at a certain time every night, and have an alarm clock ready to wake you up at the same exact time every morning. After a few weeks, your mind does all the work for you. By the time a month has passed of doing this routine, your body will be just the right about of tired at the time you set to go to bed, and you should have no problems sleeping, and you'll wake up around the exact time, maybe earlier, that you set your alarm clock for. Our minds are smart, and we can train them to do whatever we like, we just have to give it enough time to get itself into a routine and it will make sure you get just the right about of z's.

#11 How To Vectorize

#10 How To Make A Key Out Of A Soda Bottle