Things That Improve Your Life

[osmosisch]

For Android folks who like podcasts, I thoroughly recommend Pocket Casts and BeyondPod.

I'll second that BeyondPod is extremely worth it. I was stubbornly still using Google Listen and was shocked at how much better BeyondPod was when I tried it.

[ThunderPeel2001]

People have asked about creativity in the past, so here's a video from John Cleese explaining how he thinks you can become more creative... A definite life improver, if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtQP9nwrQA

List:

1. Turn off those annoying annotations/adverts by clicking the white speech bubble under the video.

2. I'm stuck on number four.

3. You can watch the entire lecture here: http://bit.ly/UWG7GQ

[James]

MemRise is new (completely free) website that specializes in visual learning. It helps your brain remember things by creating images from what you see. I recently learned how to read a Chinese food menu and can attest to how well it works. (I can't imagine a situation where it's going to come in handy, but I hope it will one day!)

I was impressed with the Chinese menu thing, so I took a look at the rest of the site, and found there were a few courses on basic Swedish. In theory I've been trying to learn for a while, but I've been shamefully lax in my efforts, so any new way to get me at least doing something is welcome. Obviously Swedish uses largely the same alphabet as English, so the visual metaphor thing isn't as significant a factor, but there are still several user-contributed mnemonics for each word or phrase. Some of them are quite a stretch, but it seems to me that mnemonics don't actually have to be particularly close matches, as long as they stick in the mind somehow. That said, already having some experience of Swedish, I'm really using it as more of a tool for giving me bite-sized lessons and tests, which I find much more digestible than reading through a book (although that's obviously necessary to properly understand grammar and so on). Also, every phrase is recorded, which is obviously very handy for pronunciation.

Anyway, it's a nice way of structuring your learning and practice. It's not really anything you couldn't do yourself, but it's so much easier when it's all presented to you, and you can do it on your computer, and they'll prompt you by e-mail when it's time to come back and test your memory. Hopefully that should help me maintain some forward momentum.

And going back to cool tech: Buy a CD from Amazon after 1998? Check Amazon Cloud Player for MP3 tracks Dayum!

That's even cooler than the thing where they automatically add MP3 purchases to your Cloud Drive, but like that, it looks like it's a "USA first, wherever you live if and when we get around to it" affair. Which is understandable, given the legal wranglings and infrastructure and all that stuff they probably have to get through for every territory, but it's still frustrating.

I think the MP3 thing did eventually reach UK accounts, though, so I look forward to AutoRip.

[brkl]

That's excellent. I studied Swedish for six goddamn years because the law said I had to, and I even matriculated with a decent grade, but I'm hopeless at it. 6000 Swedish words here I come.

[James]

Learning's no fun when someone else is telling you to do it.

I'm reminded of this graphic I saw on Wikipedia:

[brkl]

There are political and historical reasons for it, but IMO it just doesn't work for anybody in the long term.

[Forbin]

People have asked about creativity in the past, so here's a video from John Cleese explaining how he thinks you can become more creative... A definite life improver, if you ask me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtQP9nwrQA

That's solid advice. I also like this Ira Glass video that gets linked all the time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY

[Erkki]

Learning's no fun when someone else is telling you to do it.

I'm reminded of this graphic I saw on Wikipedia:

What? Get rid of forced Swedish?

[Nappi]

Basically, yes.

[James]

Yeah, it's a campaign against mandatory Swedish in Finnish schools. I can see how that could be a rather contentious political issue.

Anyway, lest we derail the thread too much, I actually have a contribution for once:

My flatmate and I have been struggling with sorting out the distribution of bills, with lovely complications like different recurring rates, discounts from council tax for being a student, and so on. We'd been flinging it all at an increasingly hectic Google Docs spreadsheet, but he got fed up with that and declared that we should instead use Splitwise. I have no idea how well-known it is – perhaps you're all already familiar with it – but with e-mail reminders and in-built recurrence and various ways of splitting bills, it seems like a much easier way of managing things, and it's certainly a lot less of an eyesore. So if you have someone you're splitting bills with, it might be worth a look. And even if you don't, you can use it to keep track of IOUs (both in– and outbound). I've never been very good at staying on top of all that stuff.

[Luftmensch]

I always moisten my first sheet of toilet paper, with warm water if possible. Nothing like the feeling of a warm moist wipe on the butthole to make you feel clean. Honestly, scraping my bare ass with a dry sheet of paper is one of the most unpleasant and dirty feeling experiences, especially when I'm at someone's house where they have that weird paper that's all soft and linty and you end up having to scrub balls of crusty paper out of your butt hair.

So yeah, moist toilet paper. If I had a bidet, I'd use it.

[Lu]

You can buy these packs of moist butt towels, whose dispensers you can attach to the wall. My bathroom experience no longer feels complete if not for that final, heavenly, very moist wipe. Refreshing. And seconding the essence of your recommendation!

[toblix]

Just be sure that they're flushable, so you're not slowly clogging the sewers of Amsterdam with compressed butt towels.

[Lu]

Yes, do watch out for that. Strange fact, but the amount of moist wipes you can flush differs from brand to brand. Hmyes, aren't you glad you know that now.

[James]

OH GOD WHAT HAPPENED

[Roderick]

Yeah, this thread took a turn somewhere.

[TychoCelchuuu]

This has become the second "plug your shit" thread but it's about actual shit.

[Luftmensch]

Did I hear someone say "Plug Your Shit"?

(so sorry for taking this train even further off rails. But I still insist that moist toilet paper improved my life)

[ThunderPeel2001]

You know, it definitely says something about this community that it can't sustain a thread without someone trying to prove how incredibly ironic and cynical they can be.

Just ONE thread.

[Nachimir]

Ok, something sensible: Having an accountant.

He costs me a not insignificant chunk of change per year, but he gives me excellent, sensible advice; notifies me of things that might be useful financially; has ready answers to a lot of questions that otherwise have cloudy answers online; frees up time I'd otherwise spend on admin, learning to jump through bureaucratic hoops, and probably screwing up something important; and most of all, sorting out my company and personal tax returns plus everything related to them this month has been an absolute breeze (compared to other years when I did my personal return myself, and also compared to the freelancers I know who are right now procrastinating and pulling their hair out as the deadline approaches).

If you freelance or have even a small company, I really recommend getting an accountant. If you use the time you save to work instead of playing games in your underpants, then it will probably offset the cost.

[ThunderPeel2001]

This could possibly be the best advice here... (for me) but I'm intrigued as to what constitutes "not insignificant", though. Three figures? Four figures?

[Nachimir]

It varies a lot, and it's pretty hard to find prices online. Mine's around £1000 a year, and he does my returns, payroll, and is authorised as my agent to take care of all dealings with HMRC. I think he's probably at the expensive end of the spectrum, but by no means the most expensive. One person I know said theirs is about £400 a year, but when I was looking for quotes none I got were anywhere near that low (IIRC, £800 or so was the lowest I found). Likewise, another person I know who runs a small shop and does freelance work got a quote for loads of stuff for £300, but the accountant then didn't do the work.

It's worth asking the people you know and choosing carefully. Cost isn't the only factor. Get one who is based near you so you can meet them face to face when need be; several times in the past few years we've needed to discuss aspects of the business or changes to the tax system. I met informally with a few before settling on one who seemed to understand my business, too. Others seemed perfectly competent, but had absolutely no clue about the internet or any kind of business that works online.

At the very beginning, I had the best intentions of learning to do all of this stuff myself, but quickly realised they didn't translate into action or actual willingness; just a nagging, annoying to do item that seems to have something else more important floating in front until a deadline approaches. If you're disciplined and willing to put in the research to understand the tax system, maybe you can do it yourself, but I don't know many people who run businesses for whom it's not a huge headache without an accountant. IMO, unless you're willing to take time off work to do it, tax stuff does not mix well at all with anything else that requires project management.

Record keeping can be pretty easy if you do a lot of stuff online. Both my bank and paypal offer CSVs of all transactions, and beyond that the records I need to keep are mainly a cashbook, all invoices and receipts, and a record of my own pay. Updating records is trivial with something like a google spreadsheet, and collating all of the records to send to the accountant is a few hours work, tops.

(Edit: "you're", not "your". Oops)

Edited January 16, 2013 by Nachimir

[Luftmensch]

Related to that, I listen to Scriptnotes on a regular basis (hosted by Jordan Mechner's longtime collaborator John August), and some weeks ago he had a show with advice about when it's worth incorporating yourself.

Six Figure Advice transcript

[JonCole]

Related to general financial stuff, I like Mint for helping me with money management stuff. I have pretty simple finances but it still does help me keep everything in order without having to have four different tabs open from different websites in order to just figure out when do I have to make a payment to whom. It also does budget stuff by organizing your purchases into different expense categories and letting you set spending limits for each ($100/mo. for food, $50/mo. for games, $30/mo. for the movie theaters, etc). Unfortunately, it's a US/Canada thing only so it wouldn't be of much use to a fairly large portion of you guys.

[subbes]

If you freelance, try Freshbooks.