doug nelson: DISENGAGE!

A short compendium of tricks and tips for easing your life if you, are, well, me.

BLOGLINES
The best way to read 100+ sites a day is to skim them, design-free, via your Bloglines account. Considering the now-huge amount of things that have RSS feeds (your Flickr comments, your church, NPR, Strongbad, Penny Arcade, your Gmail folders), Bloglines or a similar reader can reduce the massive amount of information you must (MUST) have to a good fifteen minutes a day.
Tip: Use the folders to let certain categories languish when you’re not into ‘em. I only check my MP3 blogs and “Misc” once every couple of days, but “Politics” and “People” get clicked every time.

KNOWING IT ALL
In the office, on dates, and in new situations, the opportunity may arise to mine your vast bed of obscure knowledge for a string of facts about some random item. Form the string in your mind, and cut it in half: Listing the band name, album name, song name, and association of a song just sounds desperate.
Tip: Phrase your fact-drop like a question. “Oh, that’s, because of the Magnetic Fields song, right?” Congratulations, you’ve belittled your sparring partner and hoisted yourself another notch on the knowledge-o-meter!

BUDGET
Set an amount to spend each month, and track it. I do it by updating a Livejournal that’s RSS fed to my Google Homepage, but everyone has a method. Does this keep my budget under control? No. But it keeps it from wildly deviating, which can happen when you forget that, oh yeah, you already bought something huge this month.

CLOTHESLINE
T-shirts and undershirts should not be dried: It shrinks and damages them! Instead, rig up a clothesline somewhere in your place for cheap and easy dryin’.

SPRAY BOTTLE
Nothing tells a cat “no” like a spray of water in the face. That’ll learn’em.

FLASH CARDS
Don’t go anywhere without flash cards! Why miss the opportunity to learn things while looking like a nerd?

CUT OWN HAIR
Save money and lengthy, frustrated conversations with people who don’t understand your desire to look like a sleepy poser! Cut your own hair, but make sure you use a wall-mounted and hand mirror for the back.
Tip: Never do this after more than two drinks. I’m serious.

REPEATING PARTS FROM MOVIES OR TV SHOWS
Never be the first to do this. While it is a handy form of communication with many individuals, the key is to pick out which ones will respond positively and which ones will think you’re an effing nerd.
Tip: If it’s a quote from any Monty Python movie, or the Parrot Sketch, just don’t do it.

DON’T SHOP
You already know what you want: Things on the internet. With the exception of clothing, shopping is no longer excusable.

TRASH
When the trash fills up, it can easily be stacked in the sink!

SPADES
If your partner isn’t the Nil Partner, that means it’s YOU. But be extra-careful about going Nil before he/she gets to bid.
Tip: Nobody likes a sensible Spades player. If you’re 200 behind, Nil or 10-for-200 every chance you get.

GMAIL
One: Keep your inbox clear of non-actionable items. I’m serious, just hit Archive, you jerks.
Two: The concept of ‘half-spam.’ Half-spam is when John Kerry e-mails you to tell you to call someone and tell them you wish we weren’t in Iraq. Half-spam is when Comic Alert! e-mails you your daily update, or Amazon tells you your item has shipped. This stuff doesn’t need to come up as “New Mail!” in your notifier, it just needs to sit there until you have some time. So, make a new label for it, and begin adding filters with each half-spam e-mail you get. Soon enough, that blue New Mail icon will be exciting again!

WEBCOMICS
There are very few worthwhile webcomics, and the majority of those update so infrequently it’s not worth paying attention to. Use Comic Alert to keep up on these, and only check one or two that you REALLY LIKE (Penny Arcade, PBF) or just are inexplicably drawn to, hoping that the plot will advance or humor will become funny (Questionable Content).
Tip: Most webcomics (especially stories like the beautiful Stuff Sucks) are best read in huge swoops than weekly packages of minor plot advancements. It might be worthwhile to save a pack of these as “Webcomic Night” strips, for twice-a-year catching-up.
Tip: Don’t expect any kind of payoff in plot-driven webcomics. Even the long-running, well-written Avalon died with a pathetic whimper. To date, no plot-driven webcomic has had a resolution that lived up to the creator’s original dream.

DESIGN
When something doesn’t work out, spend time figuring out exactly what’s wrong, and consider what steps could be taken to resolve this in the future. This could take several flops before it works, but having the issues and goals in the back of your mind is more helpful. Items I’m currently working on: “Spacing” and “Color Intensity.”

STYLESHEETS
It’s disgustingly anti-semantic, but using wrappers is the best solution to 90% of your layout problems. Wrapper1, wrapper2, wrapper3, content1, content2, content3…hell, I even use three wrappers for photos and captions these days. No more box model bugs, no more IE margin troubles.

BRIKWARS
Don’t ever tell your girlfriend you’d kind of like to join a DC group of BrikWars players. You will get an unpleasant look.

JOE’S GOALS
Joe’s Goals is a system for figuring out what you want to do on a daily basis, what you want to avoid doing, and how to chart these accomplishments. So far, it’s helped me with a number of things like taking vitamins, oversleeping, shaving, etc.
Tip: Assign appropriate punishments for bad behavior. One of my negative items is “Sleep past 8:25,” and one of my positive goals is “Read,” but I don’t get to cancel out coming into work three hours late with a chapter of Harry Potter.

RESIDENT EVIL 4
Much like the Half-Life series, this is an ammunition game. The best tip I can give you is to shoot zombies in the knees, run up, and knife them while they’re down. Every bullet counts here, so use the knife whenever possible. Also, remember that pushing ladders over damages whoever’s climbing up, so tip those guys whenever you see a hand on the top few rungs.

DOCTORS
Overrated. Avoid’em.

CARNIVAL CRUISES
Never, ever register at Carnival.com. You’ll get an e-mail every day, and some guy will call you a lot. It’s stupid.

LAST.FM / ELBO.WS
Last.FM’s recommendation box should be carefully watched and dealt with, as listening to all five recommendations quickly each time they appear will produce huge amounts of new music. The easiest way to find many of these bands might be through Elbo.ws, an MP3 blog aggregator that finds fans who saw fit to upload the music you want for reviewing purposes. And who knows, you might find some new favorite blogs.
Tip: This is when it gets okay to go on Limewire. If Last.FM tells you to listen to Coldplay (AND IT WILL), don’t buy Coldplay, and don’t just let it stay on your rec list. Get three tracks off the Lime, listen to them to the 80% mark, and delete them. This tells Last.FM that yes, you’ve heard of Coldplay, but you’re not crazy about’em.

OFFICE HAPPY HOUR
Ask people what they’re doing this coming weekend. Sometimes, ask twice.

BEGINNING TO LEARN JAPANESE
Start with sentence structures, as most common Japanese phrases are grammatically nonsensical (like many of ours). ____ wa ____ des!

CARD FLOURISHES
The Charlier Cut is the simplest card flourish there is, and improving your speed on repeated Charliers is easy and builds a good sense of deck control. If you want a one-handed shuffle (probably the best learning time-to-impressiveness ratio), you should probably go with Jerry Cestkowski’s split/turn version, but if you can’t pick up the book, the simpler-but-less-stable/impressive version can be found as the bottom link of this page.
Tip: Card flourishes are a hell of a lot of fun to practice while watching movies or waiting in an airport, but don’t push it when you’re actually playing cards. A quick Charlier or Scissor cut here and there is fine, but it’s best to use the regular shuffle for an actual game.

LOCKPICKING
Let’s face it: Lockpicking is effing tough. The best way to practice is to buy the cheapest doorknob Home Depot has to offer, and wedge it between your knees as your practice. You need it to be extremely stable.

iTUNES
Two smart playlists you can’t do without: “Not Much” and “Not Recently.” The first is a list of songs you haven’t yet heard a certain number of times (in my case, two), and the second is a list of songs you haven’t listened to in three months. This ensures that mediocre songs don’t linger on the ‘Pod, and it keeps you in touch with the collection you started listening with.

PHOTOSHOP
Put one layer into the mask of another by holding ALT and clicking the space between them. Yes, this does work with multiple layers. Seriously, it’s the fastest way to apply gradients and photos to spaces, and it makes it very easy to change the size/placing of the items later on (a co-worker taught me this one, and it’s incredibly helpful).

KATAMARI DAMACY
You may feel tempted to slow, reverse, or turn for objects you missed, but DON’T. Unless we’re talking about a 10-high stack of items here, just keep on rolling: This is a game about speed, not neat-freak collection. You can always get the items you missed later, when you’re the size of a house.

ANIME
While isolated portions of Japan’s animated culture are fascinatingly original, 90% are absolute bullshit, just like our TV shows. Good: Spirited Away, Totoro, Akira, Grave of Fireflies, Evangelion (if you can watch the whoooole series), Naruto (if you’re doing something else while watching), Great Teacher Onizuka, Cowboy Bebop. Bad: Millennium Actress. Okay, I’m sure there’s some more bad, but for now, just steer clear of MA: It’s awful.

GIVING BLOOD
Remember: Giving blood (Disengage Classic!) means someone will call you. A lot. Just so you know.

Vampires.

FAVICONS
No site you launch should be sans Favicon.ico.
Head over to PhotoshopSupport to get the basic plugin and setup, but if you want to take it that extra, irritating step, check out My Vogon Poetry’s guide to animated favicons.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT
While the game is best played with a dedicated group, feel no shame in dumping your clan for ones that better suit you. After all, you don’t want people on the wrong coast (huge time-sync problems), you don’t want people whining about girl problems, and you don’t want people who play more often than you do and get too far ahead (then it’s not like being in a clan at all).

TELEVISION
There is almost nothing interesting on TV. Avoid it, with the exceptions of a few favorite shows. If something great comes on, believe me, people will tell you about it.

POLITICAL ARGUMENTS
Unless your knowledge specifically corners the area in the spotlight, avoid this stuff. Your nuanced opinion on any event or issue will get verbally trampled by the one-line truth of your opponent. The Big Lie trumps the Complex Truth every time.

SETTLERS OF CATAAN
In this board game, nothing is really off-limits. Offer to hold cards for opponents, strike obvious alliances, and point out whenever one player is in the lead.

THE METAPHYSICAL
If one is as suggestible as I am, it’s very easy to get caught up in ideas of psychokinesis, mind-reading, and projected/invisible fighting techniques. Fortunately (or un-), James Randi is here to render the world sane: His million-dollar grant to anyone who can prove a single paranormal property of this universe effectively disproves almost every crazy-yet-compelling thing I’ve ever heard. After all, if Uri Geller really believes he can do what he claims to do with his mind, why wouldn’t he want James Randi’s million bucks for doing it in a controlled environment (much less the satisfaction of proving his greatest critic wrong)? Mind: At ease.

iSTOCK
If you can take 4mb (I think)-plus photos with your camera, you can put stuff up on iStockphoto.com. While iStock’s relatively low payoff might seem dissuading, the key to remember is popularity: iStock is widely used, serving millions of designers every day. My meager iStock portfolio (which I barely update) makes me $200 a month, and that’s not bad for shots I took while I was bored. If you can get model releases, you can do even better than I do. For a benchmark: This shot has made me nearly 900 dollars so far, and it took me five minutes to set up and take. Mid-range stock photography is a great way to make extra cash, and a great way to spend the off hours of your vacations and nights out.