6 Awesome DIY Projects to Do Over Christmas | Dramel Notes

Christmas is a time for family, friends, festive spirit, and if you’re a tech geek, avoiding all these things as much as possible. Even with all the commitments that comes with the holidays, with no work and lots of things closed you still get plenty of free time. And what’s the best way to fill that free time? A DIY project or two.

Even better, if you take on a Christmas themed project you can legitimately claim to be getting into the holiday spirit all while locking yourself away with your favorite soldering iron and an Arduino. If you need to fulfil some family commitments you can just let the kids help. The holidays really are a perfect time to do some DIY.

Let’s look at seven awesome project ideas you can do over the Christmas holidays.

Christmas Snowball Lights

Regret buying those tacky Christmas lights? It doesn’t take much to turn them into something a lot more special: a box of ping pong balls and a drill can be enough. Instructables user hboom does just that in this super simple Christmas themed project. Sometimes you don’t need to go all in with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis to make something cool.

By putting each bad LED inside a ping pong ball, you can turn the worst Christmas lights into beautiful glowing orbs. For half an hour of your time and a few dollars it’s easy to dress up your decorations this Christmas.

Control Your Christmas Lights With an Arduino

If you do want to get a bit more involved, it’s possible to use an Arduino and Raspberry Pi to get total control over your Christmas lights. You can create static or dynamic patterns like in the video above. Osprey22, another Instructables user, has made a tutorial that shows how to do just that. This setup is far more capable than anything you can buy in a store.

Combine this with the previously mentioned snowball lights, you’ll have the coolest Christmas tree going.

A Tiny Arduino Powered Christmas Tree

An Arduino powered Christmas tree doesn’t have to be a huge space hog. This awesome little Christmas mini tree from Instructables user Imperkins, is built just using LEDs and copper wire. It will fit in even the tiniest apartment and would make a cool Christmas table center piece.

If you’ve got the few hours you need to build it, it’s a great little project for putting your soldering skills to the test, and learning how to control lots of LEDs with a limited number of IO channels.

The World’s Cheesiest Christmas Sweater

In Ireland there’s a tradition of awful Christmas sweaters (we call them “jumpers”). The cheesier it is, the better. Around Christmas time people try to outdo each other with how bad a sweater they can find. This year, I know I’m going to win by breaking out some simple DIY skills.

This tutorial from Instructables user librarianjd shows how to use a LilyPad Development Board to add flashing lights to an (already awful) Christmas sweater.

It doesn’t matter if you want to show off your (lack of) festive dress sense or just start experimenting with e-textiles, adding some lights to a Christmas jumper is a quick and easy project to do over the holidays. You could even make one as a present.

Make Your Own Christmas Cards

I already showed how to design your own Christmas card in Photoshop but if you’re not comfortable with software or want something a little more hands on you can break out your DIY skills. With a few sheets of card, a couple of pens, glue, and a bit of creativity you can make some stunning, personalized Christmas cards that will impress anyone — even the most demanding mother-in-law.

Whether you’re on a budget or just want to show people you care, a DIY Christmas card is one of the best ways to spread some holiday cheer (and show off your skills at the same time).

Of course it’s too late to send them now, but with all this free time you can be sure you’ll have a set of beautifully unique cards for next year.

Build Anything With Children

Perhaps even better than building something for yourself is to take the time to build something with children. These could be your children, your sibling’s kids, or even just a family friend’s, but Christmas is a great time to share your DIY skills.

A Raspberry Pi makes a great stocking filler, so why not give one to the kids you’ll be seeing over Christmas (here are some reasons why) and spend a few hours teaching them how to use it? Getting children started early with DIY is one of the best things you can do. It gives them an understanding of how the world around them works.

Here at MakeUseOf we’ve covered some great Minecraft DIY projects you can do with children. Most of them can be done in just a few hours; perfect for a lazy day after Christmas.

Whatever DIY Project You’ve Been Putting Off

Any DIY project you do over the holidays doesn’t have to be holiday themed. While Christmas day itself tends to be very busy with family commitments, the few days after are often a lot quieter. It’s the perfect opportunity to put some real time into whatever DIY project you’ve been putting off.

It doesn’t matter whether the project is big or small, whether it’s to learn a new DIY skill or build something awesome, the holidays are a great time to do it.

Wrapping Up

Christmas is a time for family, friends and festive spirit, but it’s also the perfect time to grab a soldering iron and do some DIY. You can even combine all your Christmas commitments with DIY by making something Christmassy like snowball lights or an Arduino powered Christmas tree, or you can just get your family and friends involved by sharing your skills with them. Some of my happiest childhood memories are when my brother, my dad and I would spend the day after Christmas building things.

If you build something over Christmas we’d love to see it. Share any projects or ideas in the comments below.

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5 Diet and Nutrition Apps You’ll Actually Use | Dramel Notes

There is a lot of conflicting information out there about diet, but if there’s one consensus it’s that self-control matters.

If you’re the kind of geek who loves reading about how to get things done, you know that it’s easy to get lost in the planning stage: researching to-do list apps, reading about optimizations, tweaking software. It can all help, but it can also distract you from what needs doing.

Diet is similar: it’s really easy to get lost in books and apps without ever creating an actionable plan. With this in mind, here are five apps we think might help you stop thinking about improving your diet and start actually doing it. Let’s get started.

7 Second Diet (iOS): Dead Simple Tracking For Diet and Exercise

Far too many diet apps and programs bog you down in numbers, charts, and other abstractions. Keeping track of calories can be really helpful, but you’ll never get anywhere if the thought of doing that stops you from even trying in the first place.

7 Second Diet is an iPhone app that tries to help with this. Every meal, you quickly record whether it’s healthy or not by choosing between “Good”, “Meh”, or “Bad”. That’s it.

Most of the time you know when a meal is bad for you, and you know when it’s good for you. Overall the goal needs to be to eat fewer meals that are bad. If nothing else, this app serves as a reminder of that fact. For $5 you can unlock your complete history, helping to keep track of your history so you can see if you’re doing better.

This approach reminds me of the don’t break the chain style of productivity, where you simply try to develop a habit. Give it a shot if you’re not

DietBet (Android, iOS): Eat Better or Pay Up

Put your money where your mouth is. If you can’t muster up internal motivation to lose weight, Diet Bet gives you external motivation. You’ll join “games” of people trying to lose a percentage of their current weight – meet the target, and you get a cash prize. Miss the target, and your money is gone.

The money is part of the appeal, but maybe even more important is the social aspect: you’re committing to a goal with a bunch of other people, meaning you know that you’re not alone in what you’re trying to do. And even if you don’t care about the money, winning feels good, right?

This site can be combined with any of the other apps here, and can give you just a little bit more motivation to follow through on your goals.

Eat This Much (Web): Simple Diet Assistant That Crunches Numbers for You

If you already have a diet set up, you still might struggle to find decent meals that fit it. Eat This Much is a web app you can use for that. Just head to the site, say how many calories you’d like to limit yourself to over a number of meals, and you’ll get a few recipes. You’ll end up with a meal plan.

Sign up for an account, however, and you’ll get access to all sorts of other features, from calorie tracking to shopping list management. If you want an all-encompassing approach, dive in and see if it helps you.

The Flexible Diet (Web): Another Way to Think About Food

Want another perspective? This site is worth a quick read, and offers some tools to experiment with too. The idea is that there’s no such thing as “clean” or “junk” foods – just foods made up of particular macronutrients.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll get access to a tool for calculating your daily body expenditure, which you’ll use to determine how many calories you need. Fill everything in and you’ll learn about the systems for setting and keeping goals.

Diet Point (Android, iOS): Plan Healthier Meals

Still looking for a diet plan that works? Diet Point is a single smartphone app that gives you access to 130 different plans. Pick one, and a combination of meal plans, notifications and shopping lists will help you stay on target.

Jumping between diets regularly probably isn’t going to help you much, so have an idea of your goals before diving into an app like this. But once you’ve got that worked out, Diet Point could help you quite a bit.

What Are Your Dieting Tips?

A lot has been written about diet, and I won’t claim to be an expert. Personally, though, I’m a fan of author Michael Pollan’s simple advice:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

But reasonable people can disagree. What are your diet tips, and are there any apps out there that help you stick to them? Let’s talk in the comments below.

I’ll get us started: here are some weight tracking apps for Android, some health apps for iPhone, and some dieting web apps we didn’t include in the column today. What else can you recommend?

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How to Change Passwords on Any Device (Windows, Mac, Smartphone) | Dramel Notes

It may seem like a simple thing, but changing your password is a fact of life, and knowing how to do it is something we here at How-To Geek generally take for granted, but the question is: do you know how to change your password?

Changing your password regularly may not be the best course of action, but changing it to something strong and hard to crack or guess is.

It’s a fairly routine process once you know what you’re doing, but assuming that everyone knows exactly how it’s done doesn’t make it so. Today, we want to show you how to change your password on Windows (7, 8.1 & 10), OS X, Android, and iOS (iPhone and iPad).

We hope then, armed with this new knowledge, that you’ll take a moment to change your password on your devices because while it isn’t the most secure method of locking out snoops and hackers, it is still often the first and only line of defense against them.

Changing Your Password on Windows

To change your password on Windows, you will need to go through the following steps.

Windows 7

Wndows 7 is still the choice of a vast majority of Windows users and as such, needs to be addressed first. To change you password, you’ll first need to open the Control Panel and click “User Accounts”.

In your user account screen, click “Change your password”.

You will first need to enter your current password and then you can change it to the new one.

Let’s move on next to Windows 8.1, which has an entirely different way of going about things.

Windows 8.1

With the introduction of the Windows 8.x Start screen and the “Metro” style interface, the method of changing your password was moved entirely to PC settings.

In the PC settings, click on “Accounts”.

On the Accounts screen, click the “Change” button under the Password heading.

You will first need to enter your current password.

Once you enter your current password, you can then change it to something new.

Up next is Windows 10, which isn’t entirely different from Windows 8.1.

Windows 10

In Windows 10, the PC settings are now simply called Settings, and the way to change your password is still located in the Accounts section.

In the Accounts section, click on “Sign-in options” and then click “Change” under the “Password” heading.

Assuming you’re using a Microsoft account, you’ll immediately be prompted to enter your current password before you can proceed.

Once you enter your Microsoft account password, you’ll again be prompted to enter your old password and then you can change it to your new password.

If you use a local account on either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, the procedure will be almost entirely identical. Simply go to the Accounts section in the PC settings or Settings, respectively, click “Change” in the Password section, and follow the prompts.

Changing Your Password on OS X

Changing your password on OS X is cinch and should only take a few seconds. First open the System Preferences and then click on “Users & Groups”.

Now, you should see your account Password screen where you can click the “Change Password…” button.

If you want to use your iCloud password to log into and unlock your Mac, you can do so at the next dialog, however, for our purposes we’re just going to change the local password on our machine’s user account so we’ll click “Change Password…” when prompted.

Simply now fill in the blanks. Enter your old password and then the new one. If you’re having a hard time thinking of a new password, then click the key icon next to the “New password” box for a handy password generator.

It’s as simple as that to change your password on your computer(s). Let’s move on now to smartphone and tablets.

Changing Your Password on Android

Android doesn’t really press you to add security to your device, which we think is a bad thing. You should always have some kind of screen lock just in case you lose your phone or it gets stolen.

To add or change your device’s screen lock, first open the Settings and tap open the “Security” option.

On the next screen, you will see the “Screen lock” option. Tap that open to add or change your device’s accessibility.

You’ll have three options to choose from (we don’t recommend None or Swipe). Out of all three, the Pattern is probably our preferred method but you can also choose a PIN or a traditional Password to unlock your device.

Finally, let us move on to iOS, which takes device security far more seriously than Android, in our opinion.

Changing Your Passcode on iPhone or iPad

If you’re using a recent iPhone 5 or later, then you’ll have the wonderful option of Touch ID to unlock your device, but you will still need to enter your passcode from time to time such as when you restart.

To change your passcode, first open the Settings and then tap open “Touch ID & Passcode”.

You will immediately need to enter your passcode before you can proceed.

Scroll down until you see the passcode options. You can either turn the passcode off (not recommended) or you can change it.

When you change your passcode, you will again be prompted to enter your old one.

Once you do that, you will need to enter a new one.

Note, there are also options to use a different type of passcode such as an alphanumeric code, which is a traditional password, a custom numeric code, or if you’re using iOS 9, you can resort the older and less secure 4-digit passcode (not recommended).

Knowing how to change or even add passwords to your devices is smart and often necessary. Unfortunately, device makers typically don’t make this obvious and as such, users often use the same method of accessing their devices for as long as they own them.

To that end, it’s up to you to make your device’s security your personal goal. The chances or your devices being “hacked” or broken into depends entirely on how careful you are with it, and the complexity of the security you’ve put into place.

Don’t be complacent about this, much of your life is contained within a very small item that can easily be lost or stolen.

We hope this article was useful to you and you now feel confident changing your passwords on your computer, phone, or tablet. If you have any questions or comments you would like to contribute, please leave your feedback in our discussion forum.

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5 Genius Money-Saving Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know | Dramel Notes

Not sure where your money goes? You’re not alone. Let’s talk about ways you can figure this out, save thousands every year, all while feeling happier than you do right now.

Money is weird. Most people spend five days of every week trying to acquire it but also avoid discussing it much with friends or family. And sometimes it seems that no matter how much we earn, we never have enough. How does this happen? And how do you fix it?

Money is just a system that needs optimizing, and any true geek loves optimizing systems. That’s how a little tech knowledge can save you thousands every year, and that’s how you can get a grasp on your money with just a few mental tricks.

Think of Your Purchases as Year-Long Expenses

Every kid learns how to multiply in elementary school, but way too many grown-ups seem to forget how it works. That leads to all sorts of bad money decisions.

Let’s use the cliché example, and imagine you buy a $3 cup of coffee every day. Doesn’t seem expensive, right? But multiply that by the 365 days in a year and you’re looking at a $1,095 annual expense.

Would you pay $1,095 a year for a “coffee subscription”, that entitled you to one cup of coffee every day? Probably not. But if you buy a cup of coffee every day, that’s what you’re doing.

Any money that you spend routinely multiplies, and humans aren’t naturally great at this sort of long-term thinking. So it’s important that you develop the mental habit of multiplying ongoing expenses, then re-accessing their value. My prefered method is to work out what habits are costing me annually, then thinking about them accordingly. For example:

• Eating out once a week for $15 costs you $760 annually, so consider doing that less.
• Buying a $60 video game every month costs you $720 annually, so consider ways to save money on gaming.
• A $70/month data plan for your phone costs you $840 annually, so consider ditching your data plan.
• An $80 a month cable bill costs you $960 annually, so consider cutting cable and switching to streaming.
• Buying $25 of fuel every week costs you $1,300 annually, so consider alternatives to driving like walking, biking, and public transit.

I’m not saying you should cut all of these expenses out of your life, just that you should try to be aware of how your spending is multiplying and work on ways to reduce that ongoing spending.

Think about it: if you could save $100 on your next computer purchase by shopping around, you’d spend a few hours looking for a deal. So why not spend a similar amount of time thinking about your ongoing expenses? It could end up saving you thousands every year for the rest of your life.

Pro tip: figure out how much your daily habits are costing you annually to put potential savings into perspective.

Don’t Let Luxuries Become Routine Spending

There’s nothing wrong with occasionally going out for coffee, eating out, or otherwise indulging in something nice. But as we just learned, doing so regularly adds up quickly.

This isn’t just about money: it’s about contentment. Doing anything regularly changes it from being a luxury that you deeply appreciate into a routine that you take for granted, meaning you’re spending more money without feeling more satisfied.

Let’s get back to the coffee example. That $3 cup of coffee you have every day – which, remember, is costing you $1,095 annually – isn’t going to feel like special if it’s a routine thing. So maybe you switch up your order, occasionally ordering a $5 latte instead just to treat yourself.

Not a big deal, it’s just an occasional treat. Right? Sure…until it isn’t.

The danger is you’ll eventually order the $5 latte more regularly, until it stops feeling like a treat at all and just becomes your routine. That $5 treat becomes your daily order, turning your $1,095 annual coffee budget into a $1,825 one.

Even worse, once that latte becomes a habit it won’t feel special – meaning you’ll probably end up getting something else when you want to treat yourself later on. It’s a vicious circle of spending, sure, but it’s also a vicious circle of dissatisfaction. It turns what was special to you into a routine, making it simultaneously less valuable and more expensive.

This isn’t just about coffee: it can apply to everything. If you’re a gamer, you probably remember how freaking excited you were about every new game or console you got at Christmas.

It wasn’t that games were better back then – they weren’t – it was the relative scarcity of new games you got that made every time feel so special. Buying more games won’t bring that feeling back; it will only make new games feel routine. You’ll have wasted thousands on Steam, but still be left wanting more.

You can save all sorts of money, and feel generally more satisfied, by spotting all of the luxuries you’ve turned into routines – then turning them back into occasional luxuries. You’ll spend less and enjoy more.

Being an Early Adopter Is for Suckers

Never buy cutting-edge anything. Not only do you pay more for your phone, computer, or gaming system than anyone else – you also end up with a worse experience.

No matter how much beta testing companies do, there always seem to be a few bugs to work out after release. And who suffers through those bugs? Early adopters. Wait six months or even a year after release and these bugs will all be sorted out.

Even better: you’ll spend way less money. Smartphone prices, for example, tend to drop dramatically one year after release, sometimes costing almost half as much after only a few months after release.

Coming back to gaming, new consoles routinely cost hundreds of dollars more in their first couple years on the market. For all that additional money, you get a system with a relatively shallow selection of games and basically nothing available on the used market.

Wait a couple of years, however, and you’ll not just pay less: you’ll have access to hundreds of games right away. Even better: a few years of consensus means you’ll know exactly which games are worth paying for. So you’ll not only save hundreds on the console itself, but also avoid spending hundreds of dollars on bad games.

You can apply this sort of thinking to just about anything, it just takes stepping back a bit and not buying into the hype. If something’s worth having, it’s worth waiting for.

Pro tip: Most smartphone prices drop by half a year after release. Through lagging behind by one update cycle, you will save $400-500 a year.

Learn To Make And Fix Things Yourself

Say you’ve stopped going out for coffee every day, and deeply miss it. Why not spend some of that thousand dollars you’re saving annually on learning to make better coffee at home? You’ll learn a new skill, save money over going out for coffee, and be able to offer your guests something delicious.

Learning new things is a great way to save money, but also leads to feel a deep sense of satisfaction – and makes you into a more interesting person. It’s why MakeUseOf offers all sorts of DIY projects, which I hope you’ll check out.

You could pay someone to fix your iPhone, or your could fix it yourself. You could spend money on board games, or you could find open source ones you can make yourself. You can spend money eating out, or you can get over your kitchen fears and learn to make your favorites.

All of these ideas let you save money, sure, but they’re also satisfying.

Learn To Love Shopping For Used Things

Shopping can be fun, which is part of the reason you end up spending so much money. But buying things on the used market can be even more fun, feeling more like a treasure hunt than a retail experience.

This is why I spend time browsing thrift stores, and exploring Craigslist: it’s fun. And like most skills you spend time honing, you get good at it. Get good at it and you’ll be amazed at how much money you save.

Clothing is an obvious example: there’s all sorts of great stuff you’ll love at your local thrift shop. But you can also find great deals on surprising things sometimes.

I’m writing this on a refurbished Mac I found on Craigslist for $400 below retail, and thanks to the way that Macs hold their resale value I’ve got a good chance at getting a lot of my money back when I decide to upgrade.

Mindfulness, Money-Style

All of the above tips basically boil down to awareness – to thinking about where your money goes instead of just shrugging your shoulders. You are in control of your decisions – the trick is realizing that and acting on it.

These tips have worked wonders for me, but I want to learn from you. What money saving tricks do you use? Let’s talk about them in the comments below, along with any thought you have about the ones above. I’m looking forward to it.

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With 1 Billion Views So Far, We’re Moving How-To Geek Forward | Dramel Notes

Nine years after starting How-To Geek, we’ve served up 1 Billion pageviews to our readers. Here’s the (brief) story of how we did it, and how we’re going to take things to the next level. Spoiler: We’ve hired an awesome new editor-in-chief.

In case you don’t know who I am, my name is Lowell Heddings, and I’m the founder, owner, server admin, programmer, and current editor-in-chief of How-To Geek.

How-To Geek Has Come a Long Way

Our story begins in the fall of 2006 on the only day that I ever showed up to my programming job early. I was trying to figure out how to configure something in Windows, and the Microsoft help article I was reading was so terrible that I thought to myself “Why don’t they just have a picture of what it’s supposed to look like? I could do a better job than this!”

Ten minutes of brainstorming later, I registered howtogeek.com, setup a quick WordPress site, and spent the rest of the day writing articles. The logo was based on a drawing from high school that I had scanned in a few weeks before. I added a couple of ads to the page, and promptly forgot about the entire thing.

A few days later I remembered and went to check to see if I had made any money. Imagine my surprise when I had made $2 in just a few days.

This, I told myself, is what I’m going to do with my life.

Our Overnight Success Took 9 Long Years

Building a website without funding from rich people is hard. Many months went by where I worked 20+ hours each day, writing articles before going to my day job, and then staying up all night long writing articles. I had access to the Windows Vista beta, and it was so annoying that I had a rich vein of article ideas to work from. By the time Windows Vista was released, How-To Geek was the only site on the Internet with not only a full set of articles on how to fix all the annoyances, but the only one that had pictures to go along with them.

Within days of the Windows Vista launch we went from a few thousand views a day to tens of thousands every day, and our reputation as a help website was solidified. From there the trend just kept going up… slowly but surely. We made a lot of mistakes along the way (does anybody remember Productive Geek or the ill-fated How-To Geek “Blogs”?) and we had a lot of success (Geek Trivia and our email newsletter).

1 Billion pageviews in 9 years. Not bad.

These days we’re seeing the result of working so hard for so long: 20 million unique visitors every month and hundreds of thousands of people have subscribed to the site, whether on RSS, Facebook, Twitter, or through our email newsletter. We went from this site being my hobby to it being a successful business with eight full-time employees and a lot of freelancers. We’ve seen competitors come and go, and we’ve continued on.

We’ve had 1 billion page views since we started, which is an incredible milestone, but it’s just the start.

Growing Pains Are Hard

When we started the only things we really covered were Windows and Linux, and it was a lot easier to keep on top of technology. Over the years technology has changed dramatically — the world is mobile now — and with those changes has come an explosion in what we need to cover to be a general interest tech site. Now we need to cover iOS, Android, Windows, OS X, Smarthome, apps, services, and so much more.

Since I’m the CEO, server admin, programmer, and also the editor-in-chief, I’m stretched far too thin to put the focus where it needs to be: On you, the reader, and what you’d like us to write about. I don’t have time to give the writers the feedback and direction that they ask me for, and I don’t have the energy to tinker with technology like I used to. The biggest thing holding How-To Geek back from where it needs to go… is me.

And let’s face it: we haven’t done a great job lately covering things like Android and Windows, and a lot of people have complained that there’s too much Apple focus, or that we haven’t covered Windows much lately, or Android, or Linux, or any number of things. These are valid complaints.

It’s Time for a Change (For the Better)

So how do you take a successful site and make it much better? Simple: you bring in the one person who ran a more successful site than ours, and is much better for the job than I am. He’s the kind of guy who builds his own computers and loads custom ROMs on his old Android phone to make it run faster. He’s a true geek. And an amazing writer and editor.

Starting January 1st, Whitson Gordon, currently the Editor in Chief of Lifehacker, will be joining How-To Geek as our new Editor in Chief.

Whitson will be responsible for all editorial decisions, and he’s going to help take things to the next level. He’s the guy who would actually know whether editor-in-chief is supposed to be capitalized in this sentence because I have no idea. He’s the only choice we even considered for the job, and we’re thrilled that he’s decided to captain this ship.

Don’t worry, we’re still going to be exactly the same as we are now… except better. Like how? Like this:

• We are going to branch out into new areas (PC hardware, gaming, Smarthome, cybersecurity, and more) while doing a much better job covering what we already cover today (Windows, Android, iOS, Office, etc).
• We’ll be more timely in covering things — we still aren’t going to ever be a news site, but when important things happen, we need to do a better job of explaining them sooner.
• We’re going to work to engage and build the community more, whether on our forum or through our social channels. These are all things that we’ve done a pitiful job of so far, but with Whitson in charge, we’ll do a better job of in the future.
• We’re working on going back through all of our articles and making sure that they are all updated and valid. And we’re going to keep our articles updated all the time — it’s a huge project, but it’s something we need to do.
• A few months from now, we’ll be unleashing a revamped and reorganized site that makes it easy for you to find articles about a particular topic. If you are interested in articles about Windows security, you’ll be able to easily drill down and find them.
• Many of our readers will be happy to know that Whitson is a Windows and Android user, unlike myself who is such an Apple fanboy that I’m writing this in the iOS Notes app on an iPad Pro.

Make sure to give Whitson a warm welcome in the comments, even though he’s not actually starting for a few more weeks.

I’m not going anywhere, we have some big projects in the works, and I’ve never been more excited to be a part of How-To Geek. And now, for the first time, I can be a How-To Geek reader like everybody else.

Here’s to another billion pageviews.

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Why Brand Loyalty is the Enemy of Productivity | Dramel Notes

Being a geek isn’t about joining a tribe: it’s about gaining knowledge. And you can’t gain knowledge of something you’re not willing to explore.

That’s why, when Harry explained how your Apple/Android/Windows hate is irrelevant, it really got me thinking about my own preferences and prejudices.

Do I prefer Mac OS X to Windows because it’s better, or just because I preferred Lion to Windows 8 back in 2012? Why do I think Evernote is better than OneNote? Do I think Google is the best search engine for any particular reason, or just because it was better than the competition back in 2003?

And, more importantly, if I try new things out could I become more productive?

Many tech fans don’t ask themselves these questions, and that’s too bad – we’re probably all missing out on something awesome. The only way you’re going to find out is by experimenting, so I’ve been trying to do that more. Here’s what I found out, and how I hope we can all keep learning.

DuckDuckGo Taught Me “Familiar” Does Not Mean “Better”

Also, I had to google how to take a screen grab on the mac. COMMAND+SHIFT+4?! I thought these things were supposed to be intuitive.

— Sarah Jørgensen (@sosarahsays) August 19, 2015

Humans tend to conflate what’s “intuitive” with what’s “familiar”, which creates a big mental bias against trying new things. A longtime Mac user who switches to Windows is going to think of anything different as hard, because it’s really easy to forget the years spent learning how to use Mac OS. The same goes for switching to any system: you’re going to think of anything you need to re-learn as “unintuitive”, when it’s usually just a different way of doing things with its own pros and cons.

Thoughts on Windows 10 so far: It took me way too long to find out where Word was. Intuitive, my foot!

— Beth Montague-Hellen (@PhdGeek) September 2, 2015

That’s why, to really get a feel for something, you need to work out more than your initial impressions – and be willing to throw yourself into something new. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, which is why I forced myself to use DuckDuckGo for two months. I’d been meaning to do this for a long time, but put it off because I was nervous: blogging for a living means I search a lot, and I didn’t want anything to slow me down.

In the end, when I finally did give DuckDuckGo a fair chance, I ended up loving it. Not right away, mind you – I was annoyed with the differences at first – but after a few weeks of using DuckDuckGo I found all sorts of things I preferred, like the excellent !bang system for searching other sites and support for keyboard shortcuts. Now that the experiment is over, I’m still using DuckDuckGo constantly – and my life is just a little bit better because of it.

Now, I’m not saying DuckDuckGo is the right search engine for everyone to use. But I am saying that, if you’re not willing to give other tools a chance, you don’t actually know what’s right for you: you’re just using something out of habit.

A little willingness to experiment could pay off for you.

OneNote Taught Me to Ignore My Prejudice

In the mid-2000s I was a massive Linux fan, and at some point slowly drifted to the Mac side of things. That entire time, however, I’ve read people in forums repeat one simple mantra: Microsoft is stupid. Their products are bad. We hate Microsoft. If you find yourself agreeing with universal rules like this, you’re probably denying yourself access to something cool – whether you know it or not.

Which brings me to OneNote. I’ve been an active Evernote user for a half-decade, using it as my default place to dump ideas and things I wanted to try later. I’d heard a lot about why OneNote was better, but never gave it a shot. If I’m honest, it’s my general dislike of Microsoft was no small part of what held me back.

And you know what? That was stupid.

Because for the last few months, I’ve been absolutely loving OneNote. There are so many little features it offers that Evernote just doesn’t, and I never would have found out about them if I let my anti-Microsoft prejudice keep me from using the software. I tried it out as an experiment, and ended up migrating all of my old notes to OneNote. I haven’t looked back since, and am happier now because I tried something new.

Everyone is Biased, But Experimenting Helps

The point of this article isn’t that you should switch to OneNote, or switch to DuckDuckGo: the point is to try new things. The world of technology changes fast, and what was relatively terrible three years ago might be fantastic now. The only way you’re going to find out is by giving things a shot.

Everyone is biased, and its time we all stopped pretending otherwise. If you’ve been using OS X for 15 years, it’s unlikely you’re going to love Windows 10 after one hour of usage. But give a new system like that some time, and you’re bound to find some things you like – and that knowledge can help you get more out of your devices, whichever OS you decide to stick with.

Basically, if you want to get more out of your technology, you have to be willing to experiment a little.

Even if you’re not a Linux fan, the experience of booting up a Linux Live CD and trying it out can show you a different way of thinking about technology – one where you take a more on-hands approach.

Even if you’ve used Firefox for ten years, giving Microsoft’s new Edge browser a try could show you something you didn’t know you wanted.

Even if you prefer Android, observing the reasons your iPhone-using friends and family enjoy their devices can leave you with a better understanding of how people relate to technology.

It’s 2015: there’s very little in tech that sucks right now. Trying new things out is fun, and you’ll learn a lot.

So I want to know: which tools should I give a shot next? I’m willing to learn if there’s something you think is great, so let’s chat.

Image Credit: Dirty and clean work table by Elvetica via Shutterstock

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Thanksgiving Giveaway: Download WinX DVD Ripper Platinum Full License for Free [Sponsored] | Dramel Notes

If you have a lot of DVDs that you haven’t ripped, and you missed out on the Digiarty Halloween giveaway here on How-To Geek, you’re in luck, because there’s a new giveaway for Thanksgiving. This time it’s for WinX DVD Ripper Platinum, and it’s a full license for free.

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum Giveaway: rip DVD to MP4, H.264, AVI, iPhone, etc

For the welfare of DVD hoarders, Digiarty comes up with two totally different yet equally enchanting options for every participant of this Thanksgiving promo: get a giveaway version of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum that only sees the absence of free lifetime upgrade feature compared to the full version or buy the $59.95 complete edition at a jaw-droppingly low price of $19.95 (valid until Dec.4th). Click on the links listed below to know more.

• Download a Free Copy Of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum (Giveaway) – originally $59.95
• Buy WinX DVD Ripper Platinum with Lifetime Free Upgrade and Support

WinX DVD Ripper can run on Microsoft® Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7/8 and Windows 10 (32 & 54 bit) smoothly. The latest version is 7.5.12 built on Sep.17.

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum Overview

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a top-notch DVD ripper proficient in flawlessly ripping any protected or non-encrypted DVDs on Windows to mainstream videos for playback on latest smart devices. Not only that, 4 unique DVD backup modes are provided to conduct 1:1 DVD backup to hard drive for protection and longer storage.

Besides regular DVD (homemade DVD), WinX DVD Ripper Platinum supports DVD discs which are protected by CSS, RCE, UOP, Sony ARccOS, APS and Disney X-project DRM. With it, you can rip any DVD to MP4, H.264, AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV, FLV, etc for playback on latest smart phones/tablets like iPhone 6/6 Plus, iPad Air 2/Mini 3, Samsung Galaxy Note 4/S5, Kindle Fire, among others.

Even better than that, four DVD copy modes are offered by WinX DVD Ripper Platinum for longer storage and better protection, which are:

1. Clone DVD disc to ISO image
2. Replicate DVD to a folder at a 1:1 ratio
3. Backup DVD main title content for playing on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox, etc
4. Copy DVD title fully to a multi-track MPEG2 file with all videos/audios/subtitles

How to Rip DVDs with WinX DVD Ripper Platinum

The user-friendliness is another merit embodied by WinX DVD Ripper Platinum worth mentioning because you can’t exclude the possibility that some of the users belong to those learning the ropes. Read on to know how easy it is to rip DVD to iPhone video with this thoughtful DVD ripper.

1. First, load a DVD by clicking the Disc button on the tool bar.
2. Enter Apple Device category, select iPhone Video and choose iPhone 6’s MP4 format.
3. Hit RUN to run the conversion.

Suffice to say, WinX DVD Ripper Platinum, with its vast inputs & outputs, four delicate DVD copy modes and easy operation, could be easily hailed as one of the best DVD rippers for Windows. And the Thanksgiving special offer just gives you one more reason to leave a place in your PC’s software library for this top-notch DVD ripper.

Ripping DVDs is not allowed in some countries. Please refer to your local copyright laws and don’t use the software for commercial use.

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