Tip and Tricks
LibraryThing
If you’re like me, you like to read. If you like to read, then you probable have a few books. If you have a few books, then you should probable have a way of keeping track of what you have. So I present to you LibraryThing.com. I just found out about this place last night and I’m loving it.
LibraryThing.com is a place to store all you information on the books that you have. And it is so simple to do. You just enter either the title of the book or the ISBN, find the book in the corresponding search, and add it to your library. The let you do up to 100 books for free and then after that it is $10 a year for unlimited books.
I fell in love with this online app instantly. I don’t have a huge library, but Shannon and I are adding to it every week. It is slowly getting to that tipping point where I won’t be able to remember what books we have anymore. This will allow me to keep track of them and even search for certain topics.
I’ve already started adding my books and I’m about a fourth of the way through. If you want to check out my catalog, you can go to:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gregqualls
Try it out and tell me what you think about it.
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Use a Feed Reader
I learned a little trick a few months ago that I thought I would share with everyone. If you’re like me, you probable have five or six different sites/blogs that you like to keep up with. So everyday…or multiple times a day, you go through your routine of checking all these different sites.You know there addresses by heart. You have a special folder in your bookmarks. Whatever you do…you spend lots of time trying to find out when there is new stuff posted on these sites. What if I was to tell you that you get all the latest information from your favorite site delivered to one place! Yes you heard me right. Oooonnnneee place. It’s called a feed reader. Let me explain…A feed reader allows you to “subscribe” to all your favorite sites/blogs. Then every time you open your feed reader, it will search the sites you have subscribed to and see if they have new content. If they do, it will grab that information and show it to you in the feed reader. 
For example, I use Google Reader (yeah this could be a small endorsement). I have about 14 blogs that I try to keep up with. In the past I would have to go to all 14 sites to see if a new blog had been posted. Now all I have to do is open Google Reader and all the new articles are there…just like email.So how do you use it? Well first pick a feed reader of your choice. There are a lot out there. Then go to your favorite site and look for the RSS image (the orange thing that is pictured above). Click on this. Then copy the feed address from the address bar and input it (subscribe) into your feed reader. This is the long way.Most blogs and sites will actually give you links that you can click on for your particular feed reader that will subscribe you to that site. Hey look!!!! There are some in the left hand column right now. * All you have to do is click on the button associated with your feed reader and you are ready to go. No more hopping from site to site in hopes that new content might be there (sorry Christmas is still in the blood). So go get a feed reader and enjoy your blogs.*This post is from my previous site that had those individual link. Now you can do this through my feed itself.
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BTotD #4 - The Smell is Swell
Welcome back all my fellow beer drinkers out there. This next one is just a short tip for those who are looking for the full experience here.† If you remember from BTotD #1, your perception of taste is drastically affected by you sense of smell. From some research that I did on the internet (a quick google search), your sense of smell affects the way something tastes by up to 75%. From some other research that I’ve done (listened to a podcast), it is said that your first smell of a beer is the most important. So how do we make that first smell of a new beer count? Use a coaster.
No this isn’t some random way for me to get you to save your furniture from unsightly rings. You actually cover the TOP of the glass with the coaster. While you are doing the four step beer tasting process (Look, Agitate, Smell, Drink), you cover the top of the glass with a coaster while agitating the beer (the cheap paper coasters from bars, applebees, and the sort work real well and keep you from getting in trouble for making all you coaster smell like beer). Then when you go lift the coaster to smell your beer, all those good smells have been trapped for your smelling pleasure.
One other small tip. Unless you are using a really big glass, only fill the glass about 3/4 of the way full. This gives you room to agitate the beer without covering your coaster with beer. This also gives your beer room to breath. After you’ve tasted the beer, then you fill it up the rest of the way.
So here is your homework. Get a beer that you haven’t tried before (or haven’t tried in a glass before) and taste it straight from the bottle. Then try the coaster method and see how much of a difference it makes.
Until next time, enjoy your beer.
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BTotD #3 - Drink, Drink, Drink
‘So I’ve been listening to a lot of what I have learned about beer has come friends, podcasts, and the beeradvocate.com. One of the greatest tips I learned was from the podcast beerschool.com. It is as follows…it takes three drinks of a beer to really know if you like it.
Before you look at the reason for three drinks, go to the beeradvocate.com article on How to Taste Beer. There are certain steps to drinking a beer (Look, Agitate, Smell, Taste).
This one sounded a little weird to me when I first heard it, but I have found it to be so true. Here is the reason why. Drink one cleans your pallet from all the weird tastes that are already in it (for instance I have the coffee taste in my mouth right now). Drink two is for the retro-olfaction process.† This is where you swish the beer around in your mouth and exhale after you drink the beer.
“This process of exhaling is called “retro-olfaction” and will release retained stimulations at the mucus and mouthfeel level, but at a higher temperature.” - beeradvocate.com
Drink Three gives you your final overall taste of the beer giving you a full experience of what the beer really tastes like.
Like I said I thought this was crazy talk. But as I started doing this, I noticed that certain beers that I thought I didn’t like after one drink I started to like after three.† As a side note, this works for any drink: beer, wine, Dr. Pepper.
So here is your homework for this tip. Take a beer that you had discredited before and give it the three drink chance. You never know you might find that you’ve found your new favorite beer.
Until next time, enjoy your beer.
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