Pumpkin Carving Video

I ran across the site How2Heroes recently. It has a number of instruction videos similar to what you would find on YouTube, but it specializes in how-to videos related to food and entertaining. From the site, "How2Heroes is a how-to online video destination that celebrates people’s passion for food – the flavors, the presentation, the secrets to success, the cultural inspirations, and of course the “heroes” who share their knowledge and experience." One video in particular that I thought was pertinent this week was a great primer video on etching pumpkins. I was also interested in watching the video on eating lobsters becuase my daughters school is doing a live Maine lobster fund raiser. BTW, let me know if you would be interested in purchasing a live lobster flown down from Maine for $15.

Electronic Shoebox

Do you keep your important recipes in a shoebox? Many of us don't even do that. However, it is important to be able to locate receipts especially around tax time. I found this company that is trying to assist in that effort. It is a site that keeps an electronic "shoebox" for your receipts. You can mail them to the company, scan them, take pictures of them from you camera phone, or if you do online purchasing you can have the receipts emailed to them. Then they will electronically store the receipts for you. They have a system that automatically scans the receipts and categorizes them for you. It will use categories such as "Clothes," "Food," or "Retail," based on the merchant or product names. The site does charge a monthly fee depending on the level of service you require, but it is free to try for several months and sure would be handy come tax season.

Help with Works Cited

When writing reports and papers there is a need to properly cite the resources that you used in researching and writing your paper. Properly formatting your citations has become even more difficult in this day and age when so many resources come from places such as the Internet. I have found that there are a number of useful tools on the Internet that help you to properly format your citations. One of the sites that I have used is the Citation Machine. This site supports several of the common formats including MLA and APA. You select the format that you would like to use and the type of reference - i.e. newspaper article, web page, online encyclopedia. Then the web page prompts you for the information you need - i.e. author's last name, title of web page, web link. Then once you submit the information, the Citation Machine spits out a properly formatted reference that you can copy and paste into your paper or report. The site is quick easy and very handy. Enjoy!

Cell Phone Questions

Have you ever had questions about how your cell phone works?

I thought this article from TidBITS was interesting that explains:

1. How your cell phone calls follow you.
2. How cell phones work in cars and planes (including the real reason that airlines don't want you to use your cell phone on a plane).
3. Why text messages work when your phone won't ring.
4. Why you sometimes receive voice mail when your phone didn't even ring.
5. Why the iPhone GPS is faster than the GPS in your car.