In addition to the formal articles I post here, I also have a What Betty Knows Facebook Page where I sometimes post quick tips that don’t warrant writing an entire blog entry. So occasionally I will round those up and post here for future reference:

Hint for crowdfunded project owners: show your proposed project and reward descriptions to someone who has no involvement in your project or area of expertise BEFORE it goes live, and ask “What is my project’s goal? What rewards do you get for $X, $Y?” Because the 5 confused people who email you once it is live represent at least 50 people who looked, thought “WTF?!” and moved on to pledge elsewhere.

Pre-storm tip: download ebooks to your ereader BEFORE the storm knocks out power/wifi! A charged Kindle is no good w/o books on its local disk.

Pro tape tip: when your backup tapes (or any other recording tapes) have been in an unheated van for hours, separate them for more air circulation & let warm to room temp in their cases before loading into tape libraries.

Quick food prep tip: get a cheap silicone baking mat, cut to fit the size plate you use when microwaving a melty cheese item (pizza, quesadilla, etc) and place under the item to save you from the later endless scrubbing to remove cheese from the plate (just don’t use a sharp knife when cutting the food on it)

An example of why, IMO, it’s better to buy DRM-free ebooks you can actually own and use without depending on the vendor – all Amazon-purchased ebooks are really only rented by you for as long as they like you 

YMMV, but personally I’m more likely to back a Kickstarter project if I see that the project’s owner has backed at least one other project before launching their own. Seeing “0 backed” feels to me like they want the benefits of a community without even minimally supporting it themselves…

If you are in the Boston area and need a new computer very cheaply, check out Semi-New Computers in Allston – they refurbish PCs decommissioned by local universities and sell you a desktop and monitor with XP Pro for ~$200.

A quick heads-up: if you have a older Mac and HP printer, be aware that some of those printers will no longer work if you update to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) – list of printers here