Language: English

Why should you soak in water various nuts & seeds overnight?

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You might have heard that if you plan to eat some nuts & seeds on Friday, you should consider leaving them in a cup of water from Thursday evening. What are the benefits of doing so? Better taste. Yummy! Better activity through your body (they tend to be hard to digest otherwise): The body absorbs the minerals better. The body can digest them easier. They produce more nutrients. A quote: Soak your nuts and seeds anywhere from 20 minutes, to 2 to 3 hours, even overnight in the refrigerator. In general, harder nuts will take longer to soften. If your recipe calls for soaked nuts or seeds and you are low on time, try to squeeze in 20 minutes or just do a really good job rinsing them. Otherwise, plan ahead a bit and soak them overnight in your refrigerator in a glass container with an airtight lid. Soaking nuts in plastic is generally not recommended as plastic can leach into the water and into your food. (Soaking Raw Nuts and Seeds: Benefits (Raw Food Diet)) Some details on the process: wikiHow to Soak Nuts

Pros and Cons for having URLs for an ecommerce web site (flat vs. hierarchical tree structure), e.g.: site.com/product vs. site.com/category/sub-category/product

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Let’s say you have an online store with 5 categories, 3 subcategories each, and 10 products in each subcategory. How to make the URLs?

You have the following options:

  • site.com/product-page-url
  • site.com/category/product-page-url
  • site.com/sub-category/product-page-url
  • site.com/category/sub-category/product-page-url

There’s also a mixed option, in which the product page looks like this:

  • site.com/product-page-url

, while the categories look like this:

  • site.com/category/
  • site.com/category/sub-category/

(in this scenario, things are mixed – the product page has no hierarchy, while the category page has one).

In each of these options, the URL can contain the full title of the product or category, or they can be abbreviated. For example, if you sell air conditioning equipment, you could have any of the following:

  • site.com/air-conditioning-equipement/manufacturer-toshiba/toshiba-air-conditnioning-9000-btu-led-display-tos47838389 (notice the long path), or:
  • site.com/air-conditioning/toshiba/tos47838389 (notice the abbreviated names)

So, what to choose? Should you use subfolders (/category or /sub-category or /category/sub-category), or should you directly link to products? Also, should you use abbreviated names or long names?

Jeremy Keith - URL design, https://flic.kr/p/dUPasK
Jeremy Keith – URL design, https://flic.kr/p/dUPasK

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Some Gmail add-ons for better productivity

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If you want a piece of software which makes Gmail better, you should know about: Free – Mail-Trail for Gmail: when you send an email, you set a number of days in which you wait for a response, and when that time passes, the email automatically gets sent to inbox, back again. Paid, but with better functions – RightInInbox.com – Schedule send emails in Gmail. Track emails. Set reminders for follow ups / Scheduled sending and email reminders | Boomerang for Gmail. Free – Rapportive – gives you detailed information about the people sending you emails. Free – Gmail Labs – Undo send – helps you cancel the sending of an email. Free – Gmail Labs – Canned Responses – helps you pre-write a message. Free- Gmail Offline – read & compose messages while offline. Other ideas: Clean Up Your Messy Gmail with These Extensions and Services 5 Essential Add-Ons That Will Make Your Gmail Great The Best Chrome Extensions for Gmail | PCMag.com 7 resurse care iti fac contul de Gmail mai bun | M A N A F U *

Despre reclama “Lemon”

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O reclamă e făcută ca să vândă. Sunt multe lucruri extrem de discutabile aici, dar scopul e vânzarea. Mă irită seria de reclame, îmi stă pe nervi repetiția din final, gluma mi se pare slabă. Dar am reținut reclama mai bine decât pe altele. Îmi place să mă uit la reclame, nu am televizor și când am acces la un televizor, prefer să mă uit la calupuri publicitare (schimb canalul până găsesc ceva), mi se pare că în 30 de secunde sunt investite extrem de multe resurse, cunoștințe, timp, efort, creativitate. În reclama de mai sus vinde umorul, repetiția (final), surpriza. Ești indus emoțional în Africa, căldură, soare, totul e hot. Multe din reclamele de la SuperBowl din ultimii ani mi se par extrem de agresive, și mă irită. Dar mă uit pentru mecanismul din spate, și ca să înțeleg cum gândesc alții.

Excessive promotions

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See this ad: It is supposed to make me go from “free service – 2 GB” to “paid service – 10 GB”. What’s the problem with it? It tries so much to do upselling, that I don’t trust the brand anymore. It’s obviously I generally wouldn’t pay for social sharing (I can share things very well on my own, thank you very much, and, also, generally the things which I send via a service like this aren’t meant for Facebook / other network sharing. I can create a password encrypted archive very easily, but I can see the utility of the service (for ease of use, for the people who might not have installed on their computer a software with ability to decompress files with passwords. Personalized pages. Come on, this is not meant paying for. No ads (it’s not included in the list above, but it’s a reason). Yes, going from 2 to 10 GB is a powerful reason. I understand why I would pay these money. But the extras? Not so much. Perhaps most people look at the list above and say to themselves – “look, you also get this and that”. Perhaps this happens. I don’t deny this. I’m just saying that to me, personally, this is really a frustrating ad to see and by giving me so many (useless) options, I have a smaller trust in the brand.

How to learn a foreign language better? Watch movies with subtitles in that language

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“We’ve all probably tried to learn a new language at some point. Foreign films can help you learn those words and accents, but a recent study suggests that subtitles can help a lot. Your first instinct is probably to turn on subtitles in your native language (English subtitles on a Spanish movie for example). But ideally, you’d watch with the subtitles in the foreign language as well. In the study, students learned the accents better and were able to understand new material easier. Plus, it helps you pick up individual words when people talk quickly.” Source – Learn a Foreign Accent by Watching Films With Subtitles The study (Foreign subtitles help but native-language subtitle… [PLoS One. 2009] – PubMed – NCBI) says: Understanding foreign speech is difficult, in part because of unusual mappings between sounds and words. It is known that listeners in their native language can use lexical knowledge (about how words ought to sound) to learn how to interpret unusual speech-sounds. We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken. Personally, I always watch movies in English with English …

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Mental math

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Mental math is by no means required to survive in the world, but being able to do a few basic calculations in your head makes life a lot easier. For example, calculating a tip is all about basic percentages and is simple to do in your head: To find 5%, find 10% and divide it in two. To find 15%, find 10%, then add 5%. To find 20%, find 10% and double it. To find 25%, find 50% and then halve it. To find 60%, find 50% and add 10%. To find 75%, find 50% and add 25%. (source – The Skills We’ve Lost to Technology (and How to Get Them Back))

Empowering the hero in movies

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I see this happening more often than not. You take one character, and you give him more power than the adversaries. When James Bond is in prison, there’s always an escape route, even if in real-life, James Bond would probably not escape. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, it’s just difficult to escape. Sometimes, in more recent movies, the bad guys also have lots of power. They dominate, and they almost win. You need to believe this, that if you have some special skills (intelligence, brute force, agility), you can overcome any obstacle. Real life is really not like that. You can be a professional martial arts fighter and get beaten in a club. I like “Gattaca” a lot. One of the reasons for doing so is that it is really really difficult to beat your condition. I also like “The Grey“. In the movie, there are no superheroes. Plain humans. It’s hard to beat your condition. Same for “Le notti di Cabiria” – no super powers. Real, tough, life. I really don’t get into superhero movies. Sure, it would be lovely if life were like this. It generally isn’t. James Bond, in the last movie of the series, has little weapons arsenal, has little powers. He beats others with his intelligence, mostly. In the last Superman movie, the main character is very powerful & all that. But he’s not invincible, based on powers. He still needs brains. You can’t solve all the dilemmas by insisting. In the last Bourne, the bad guy is better than …

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Some Design/Usability ideas I got from SmartWeb Conference 2014 (Radisson Blu, 2014.09.23)

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On September 23, 2014, took place SmartWeb Conference 2014, Bucharest (by Evensys) – “A conference for East-European web designers and developers, bringing you an exquisite lineup of speakers.”.

Speakers at the conference:

speakers-smartweb

Below, some design/usability ideas I got from the conference. (with photos) :)

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The Hustler (1961) – very good movie! (for three reasons – inner fights / fight to be better than the system / well made script)

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I just saw The Hustler (1961) for the second time. I actually saw the main scenes of the movie quite a few times during the past years, I liked reseeing the movie quite a bit. (note!) Spoilers ahead, don’t read the review unless you already saw the movie (note!) Some thoughts? The movie is intensely psychological. On the surface, it’s a movie on fights & winning. But the inner fights, the inner struggles are much deeper and are quite interesting to see. Some conflicts to see: Eddie Felson (Paul Newman), the main character, and his wish to win. Eddie Felson and his wish to beat his condition. Eddie Felson and his wish to never settle for something small. Eddie Felson and his fight with the systems (he is insubordinate, he always fights). Eddie Felson and his fight with being better. Eddie Felson and his fight with its vices (drinking). Eddie Felson and his fight of being the successful capitalist, rather than the unsuccessful socialist (there’s a fight with other people, who prefer people to be equal one to the other; he develops his skills, others want to drag him down). Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), the already-proved champion, and his fight to always succeed. Minnesota Fats and his fight to be a kind person, nevertheless. Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie), Eddie’s girl, and her fight to have a fulfilled life. Sarah Packard and her fears of the unknown. Sarah Packard and her fears of not being loved. Bert Gordon (George C. Scott), the bad guy, and his fight to succeed. Bert Gordon and his fight to make life more exciting, his appetite for the …

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