Useful tool for searching your own LJ

I got friended by someone on Twitter this morning, and couldn't see any obvious linkage between us. I knew there was a tool for finding people in common between two twitter accounts, and that I originally found out about it on a post in my LJ, but I was darned if I could remember where it was.

So I grabbed my copy of LJArchive, updated my archive to include the last few weeks of LJ post and comments, and then typed "Twitter" into the search box. I instantly had a list of all the posts which either had that word in them directly, or had them in the comments. And one of them, indeed, had a link to the site I wanted (here).

Paternal leave

In Sweden, two months of the post-baby leave has to go to the father.

85% of them now take it.

Most interesting stat: A mother’s future earnings increase on average 7 percent for every month the father takes leave.

Also:
Among those with university degrees, a growing number of couples split the leave evenly; some switch back and forth every few months to avoid one parent assuming a dominant role — or being away from jobs too long.

From

Other things that are making me giggle this morning

via pickwick

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 6-12-2010

• Mamma Mia! It's the voice of Mario!
  (tags: Mario nintendo voice acting)
• Some People (a comic)
  (tags: comic)
• The canonical computer hardware chart
  (Now waiting for someone to point out all the things it doesn't contain)
  (tags: hardware computer reference)
• The 10 Most Harmful Novels for Aspiring Writers
  (tags: writing literature books advice)
• The Onion Sports Introduction To World Cup Soccer
  Now I understand everything!
  (tags: football onion infographic funny)
• Playing Grand Theft Auto with a 4-year-old
  (tags: gaming children gta kids videogames)
• Product is ready
  (tags: funny technology)
• Publishing Company Under Fire for Putting Warning Label on Constitution
  (tags: history news shopping)
• How to add ITV HD to Sky+HD
  (tags: tv uk itv sky hd)
• Unhealthy living almost universal in Scotland
  More fries with your deep-fried pizza?
  (tags: health scotland diet alcohol obesity poverty smoking)
• Israel plans to send bill to Palestinians over boycotts
  (tags: israel palestine politics EpicFail)
• Gender neutral language in roleplaying games
  (tags: gender language roleplaying games)
• Orange to follow O2 and Vodafone in dumping "unlimited data" tarrifs
  (tags: data mobile broadband uk technology)

Lifehacks

Here's a little trick that helped me learn 10-finger-typing really well:

When you read an article in your browser, activate the search function (ctrl+f) and just start typing the text you are reading. With firefox or chrome, the text you are typing will simultaneously get hightlighted.

Just read the hightlighted text. You'll want to know what comes next so you'll type as fast as possible. You want to read the text fluently, so you'll type blindly and so on. Worked 100 times better than all these boring training programs.

From

I learned to touch type (ish, very ish) by forcing myself to look away from the keyboard when i was typing, and stare at the screen. This lead to about a week of very slow typing, as I kept fumbling my fingers across the keyboard, trying a key, deleting it because it was wrong, trying a different key, etc., etc. And then, after that, my typing as was fast as it had been before, only I didn't have to look at the keys. And, shortly after that, it was faster.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of things like that - places where you have to leave a point of high optimisation*, and be _less_ efficient for a while, in order to find your way up a different hill to a new optimal solution. I did that when I left my previous job and moved to my current one - I took a £3000 paycut because I believed that I'd have more potential in the current job - and sure enough my pay is now 70% higher than it was then. there have also been the odd social situation like that - I found it very hard to let go of some things because it felt like life was getting worse, but it was necessary to do so in order for things to improve in the long term.

*See Local Optimum for more on this kind of thing

Big Bang Theory Pilot

Interesting. Not sure this would have worked nearly as well.
via henriksdal