Lifehacker - tips and information for everything

Lifehacker is one of those web sites that has so much stuff you don't know where to start.

Lifehacker features tips, shortcuts, downloads, and information to help you get things done smarter and more efficiently. Lifehacker has won many awards and accolades and I always find good ideas or resources on the site.

Software, web sites, products, tips and tricks, and other ideas are published each day (sometimes more than 20 articles per day). They range from web browser extensions, to how to maintain a computer, to how to best grill a steak to fixing things at home, and more. Chances are if you have a question, they have an answer.

I've found some great tips on cooking, travel and technology on Lifehacker. 

I highly recommend subscribing to Lifehacker and browsing the site. There are always new jewels to be found.

And now for something different - recent trip to NYC

I thought I'd share my trip with my wife to New York City this past weekend with my readers.

I'm very lucky that I live in Fairfield County Connecticut, right on the shore and right along Metro-North train line. It's only 90 minutes by train into New York City and my wife and I love going.

We know the city very well and rarely need to use a map (although Google Maps on Android with GPS is a great help when you get turned around) and we pack and dress appropriately for our trips. We don't look like tourists and people ask us for directions. We have a small pack from Swiss Army that we carry with water and misc. supplies. We can also fit some purchases in it. Big cameras and lots of bags are dead give-aways of tourists. Another good tip is to keep you money and credit cards in two different places. Crime against visitors is not very prevalent, especially when in the more populated areas, but better safe. Front pockets are best. The city is cold and gusty in the winter, so dress warmly.

Sunday, we headed down to the city for a little shopping, dinner and fun.

When we reached Grand Central Terminal, we had a New York bagel for lunch. There's just something about eating a bagel in New York.

We then headed over to 5th Avenue and headed north, window shopping in all the stores and stopping in a few to shop. Tiffany's was an experience. They have greeters everywhere and even have elevator attendants. One thing I really liked was that their items are categorized by price range making it easy to find something you can afford. We also stopped in to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lit a candle for my mother and my wife's grandparents.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We ended at FAO Schwartz's toy store, but the line was way to long, especially since we've been there before. If you've never been, it's a lot of fun. That's were the famous piano scene from "Big" was filmed.

From here, we grabbed a cab and headed to Little Italy. We went to Ferrara's bakery and had coffee and a pastry and then walked around Little Italy for a while. Ferrara's is an institution and the coffee and baked goods are the best anywhere.

Little Italy decorations with Chrysler Building in background. 

We did some more window shopping downtown before heading to dinner at MESA Grill (Bobby Flay's flag ship restaurant). The food and service was incredible, as usual. It's not cheap so it's a once every couple of years event, but well worth it. If you have the chance to go, try the Blue Corn Pancake with Barbecue Duck appetizer and the New York Strip steak and then have the Churro's for dessert. It's a food high like none other.

From here, a nice walk up 5th Avenue while downtown and then a cab ride up to Rockefeller Plaza to see the tree and the projection on Saks' exterior wall. A very cool quote for educators is on the GE Building that reads "Wisdom and Knowledge shall be the stability of thy times", from Isaiah 33:6 (KJV).

Rockefeller Center Tree

Some more window shopping and then back to Grand Central to come home.

It was a great time and a great trip. We always love our trips to New York.

If you are going to visit New York City, don't hesitate to ask for some tips and ideas.

Guest Post - 5 Strategies for Staying on Top of Schoolwork While Traveling by Ripley Daniels

Even students have to follow the basic rules of travel - travel light, and always be ready to leave in five minutes. How can you do that if you are working or studying? Here are five strategies that should help.

Scan chapters from heavy textbooks into electronic format to reduce your suitcase weight.
 

Likewise, scan papers that you will need. There is no faster way to end up with an overweight baggage fee than to fill up your bags with books and files. Even if you are not flying, it's still a nuisance to have to carry a lot of books around. If you know ahead of time which chapters you

will need to refer to , you can save them in pdf format on a laptop, iPad, or an ebook reader.
You may also want to save them in “cloud” format - using online storage that you can access
from any of the above devices, or from your phone. If you choose to save references that you
will need to the cloud, though, make sure that you also save them to a device that you will have
with you - just in case your Internet access becomes spotty while you are traveling.

Set up a travel email plan if you are planning to be gone for a long time or if you receive a
lot of junk email.

You won't want to waste Internet time (if you have to pay an hourly fee for access in a hotel, for example, or if you simply have limited time because you are waiting to get on a plane) on email that doesn't require your immediate attention. There are several ways to configure your email account for travel. First, don't rely on cloud computing for email access while you are traveling - even if you don't normally use an email program that resides on your computer. Use one that you can read and respond to email offline, downloading all your email and uploading all your replies at one time when you are able to connect to the Internet. Consider setting up a special email account that you will use for email while you are away. Then use email filters to forward the emails that you know you will want to receive. That way, when you configure your computer's resident email program to download email while you are traveling, you won't end up downloading the thousands of archived emails that you may have sitting in your Gmail account.

 

Add the "Read It Later" add-on to Mozilla Firefox (if you use Mozilla).

Read It Later is a bookmarking program specifically for storing the URLS of online articles that you know you want to read, but that you don't have time to read right now - a situation that you may run into frequently while traveling!

Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to download a website into pdf format and save it on your laptop or iPad, if needed.

Just go to the file menu, click "create pdf," and then choose "from website." In fact, if you have an ebook reader and are taking some time to load travel reference materials onto it, you may want to save several websites that you frequently refer to and then transfer them to your ebook

reader.

If you have an iPod or other MP3 player, consider using it as portable storage for your trip.

You can store computer files on your iPod, if you do not have enough space on your hard drive,
or if you will not be bringing a laptop or iPad along. In addition, if one of your courses is a
foreign language, you may want to make use of your iPod or MP3 player to help you practice
your language listening skills. It's hard to make up for time lost practicing your conversational
skills in a foreign language class, but listening to audio content (or even watching soap operas in
another language, if your MP3 player can play video) may help.

Additionally:

Evernote is a great resource to store your scanned book pages, clip web pages to read later, and to take notes and other resources with you electronically. And, it works on all platforms and can be a one stop repository for all of your materials. 

Ripley Daniels is an editor at Without The Stress

http://www.withoutthestress.com/

advisory firm located in Los Angeles