Five Hard-to-Kill Houseplants for Your Home or Workspace

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By Adam Pash

Plants can transform your home or workspace into a more peaceful, tranquil, and beautiful place, but if you’re not good with them, your improved space can quickly turn into a depressing chamber of death. The solution: Get some more resilient plants.

All-things-home weblog Apartment Therapy rounds up five hard-to-kill houseplants that will keep your peaceful, plant-adorned space alive even if you’ve got the brownest of thumbs. Those five:

Click on any of the images below to see a closer look at the plants.

Note that some of the plants aren’t pet-friendly (actually, all but the Bromeliad is listed as toxic to cats and dogs by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), so you’ll want to either avoid those if you’ve got a pet or make sure your pet isn’t a plant-eater.

We’ve also covered plenty of other methods for helping keep your plants alive and kicking, like the previously mentioned wine bottle plant nanny and the self-watering garden. We’ve also highlighted plants that give you better air and plants that don’t need much water, so between all those posts, you should be able to find a plant that works for you.

If you’ve had good luck with any particular plants despite your lack of a green thumb, let’s hear what resilient plants you’ve had luck with in the comments.

Setting Up Home: 5 Hard-to-Kill Houseplants [Apartment Therapy]

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September 24, 2009
Categories: Apartment Therapy, Biology, Consumerist, Dracaena, Environment, Gardening, Gawker Media, Household, Houseplant, Kotaku, Plants, Valleywag, Workspace . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

DIY – Turn a 55-Gallon Drum into a Barbecue

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By Jason Fitzpatrick

Your BBQ and grilling exploits don’t require a premium barbecue—in fact with a little scavenging you can be sporting a spacious grill for very little cash outlay. Follow this simple tutorial to turn a 55-gallon drum into a grill.

Barbecuing is a forgiving process. You need meat, heat, and a place to combine the two for an extended period of time. A steel 55-gallon drum has a large volume—great for keeping a stable temperature—and a broad cross section for laying out a variety of cuts and burgers.

Johnny Blegs, an industrious tinkerer, put together a tutorial at the DIY site Instructables which takes you from acquiring a drum all the way to putting the finishing touches on your new grill. If you scavenge carefully, as he did, you can get your hands on nearly all the parts for free. Even if you’re not as lucky, it’s not an expensive project given the size of the grill you end up with. Check out the tutorial for additional photos and tips.

Have experience building grills or outdoor ovens? Share the wealth in the comments below.

How to Build Your Own BBQ Barrel [via Make]
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September 13, 2009
Categories: Barbecue, Consumerist, Gawker Media, Grill, Home and Garden, Instructables, Shopping, Valleywag . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

Extend Your Razor’s Life with a Pair of Jeans

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By Azadeh Ensha

If you use disposable razor blades, odds are they get dull more quickly than you’d like. Instructables points us to a video demonstration showing how to extend their utility with a pair of blue jeans.

The DIYer in the video says he’s kept the same disposable razor sharp for six months. How? By taking a pair of jeans and running the razor up and down 10 to 20 times in one direction along the entire length of the jeans and then again in the opposite direction. Apparently “the threads of the jeans run in a diagonal so switching directions allows for [a] balanced approach to fine tuning the blade’s edge.”

Check out the above video to see the tip in action, and while you’re getting more from your blades, remember that drying them can drastically increase their shelf life, too. If you’ve ever tried this method (or a similar one), let’s hear how it worked out for you in the comments.

How to Extend the Life of Your Razor Blade [Instructables]
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September 13, 2009
Categories: Azadeh Ensha, business, Casual, Clothing, Consumerist, Gawker Media, Jeans, Valleywag . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

Choose the Right Sized TV for Your Space with a Simple Formula

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By Azadeh Ensha

So you’re in the market for a new HDTV, but don’t know what size screen to buy. You could go with the “bigger is better” adage, or you can precisely calculate a more suitable size by applying the following formula.

Gadgetwise blogger J.D. Biersdorfer and NYT personal tech editor Sam Grobart demonstrate how to determine the right television size using one simple formula.

According to the duo, the process involves taking the viewing distance from the screen (in inches) and dividing that by the number two. Why two? According to Jude, salespeople will tell you to divide the distance by 1.5 because they want you to buy a bigger set, whereas non-salespersons typically suggest 2.5 as a benchmark. The “pragmatic thing” to do, she says, is to split the difference between these numbers and divide by two instead, which should provide you with a proper screen size.

Check out the above video clip to see the simple calculation in action. If you don’t want to hassle yourself with all that inconvenient math (or you just want a more forgiving scale of sizes within maximum and minimum viewing distances (not everyone is sitting exactly the same distance from the TV, after all), this previously covered TV-to-space chart can do the trick, too.

Choosing the Right Size for Your New TV [Gadgetwise]
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September 12, 2009
Categories: Clips, Consumerist, Electronics, Gawker Media, HDTV, High-definition television, Jude, Kotaku, Shopping, Television, Valleywag, Video clip, Video Demonstration . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

Etiquette – Dealing With Others’ Tardiness

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Credit – Lifehacker.com

Taking control of your own schedule is one thing, but what do you do when it’s always the other party showing up late? Photo by Street Spirit.

WikiHow, purveyor of all manner of how-to guides, posts a guide to dealing with those plagued by perpetual lateness. Their guide deserves points for both usefulness and brutal honesty, opening with this first step:

Call it what it is – a respect issue. When it comes right down to it, that’s what it’s all about. Why is your time any less valuable than your friend’s? Why should you put up with a lack of respect for your valuable time? The answer is, you should not. … There are no excuses to justify this kind of behaviour, and you need to make your friend clear on that.

The principle defense against the tardiness of others is to establish clear boundaries. Perpetually late people have gotten by in life—albeit with a fair number of penalties along the way—because people tolerate the tardy behavior. Establish boundaries with your friends and coworkers by specifying the window in which you will wait should they be tardy, but that you expect them to be on time. Equally important is to structure your plans so that the chronically late party is not absolutely critical to the outcome of the event. Don’t leave the concert tickets in their hands or the presentation on their laptop. Invite another, more punctual friend along. Should it come time to rehash your plans without the oops-I-missed-the-bus-again friend, you’re not left flying solo.

An occasional missed appointment is one thing and easily forgiven, but a pattern of lateness is a less than subtle gesture of disrespect for both the tardy party’s time and that of the companion left waiting. For more tips and tricks on dealing with chronically late people, check out the full entry below. Have your own tactics for solving tardiness issues? Sound off in the comments below.

Dealing with Someone Else’s Latelyness [wikiHow]

Credit – Lifehacker.com

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June 29, 2009
Categories: Consumerist, Etiquette, Friends, Friendship, Gawker Media, Jason Fitzpatrick, Kotaku, Latelyness, lateness, Office Politics, Someone Else, Time management, Valleywag, WikiHow . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

Job Search – Know the Answers to These Questions Before Your Job Interview

By Adam Pash, Credit – Lifehacker.com

If you’ve gone on more than one job interview, you know you can count on hearing many of the same questions at each. Make sure you’ve got these 10 answers down pat before you head out the door to your next interview.

Photo by Aidan Jones.

Weblog Dumb Little Man rounds up the 10 interview questions you should be ready for, including:

Tell me about yourself.
Chances are the employer doesn’t want to know how much you weighed when you were born, when you learned to tie your shoes, or how much you had to drink last night. He or she wants to know how you would fit into the company and what your relevant job experience is. You might answer by asking the interviewer what he’d like to know. Or you might talk about your education, the fact that you’re a team player, or whatever you think might be important to this particular company.

Why did you leave your last job?
Never put your former employer or your co-workers in a negative light. Don’t blame them for your departure. Give a positive reason, such as you left to take advantage of another opportunity that was better suited to your skills.

If none of these sound terribly new, that’s because they aren’t. The post aims to narrow down the 10 most common questions, so you can refresh yourself on how you’re going to answer each cliché without tripping up. In fact, the idea is that you can take the opportunity to wow the interviewer with your well prepared response.

If you want to go really in depth, check out 50 more common questions or try previously mentioned GlassDoor let’s you view common questions for specific job types.

10 Answers You Should Know Before Your Job Interview [Dumb Little Man]

Credit – Lifehacker.com

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June 9, 2009
Categories: business, Careers, Consumerist, Employment, Gawker Media, Interview Skills, interviewing, Interviews, Job, Job interview, Job search, Lifehacker.com, Valleywag . . Author: atliphoneblog . Comments: Leave a comment

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