Unhappy People Watch TV, Happy People Read/Socialize :: University Communications Newsdesk, University of Maryland

bbbco — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:54:52 +0000

According to the University of Maryland, Unhappy People Watch TV, but Happy People Read/Socialize. “[T]he TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.” I think I discovered this fact a long time ago. Not that I don’t watch TV at all, its just that TV all the time is actually pretty depressing. Yeah, so like anything in life, just another thing to take in moderation.

Relient K - Sleigh Ride on Vimeo

bbbco — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:06:07 +0000

Check out this humurous video of Relient K’s Sleigh Bells.

Food Hacks: Microwave an Instant Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Mug

bbbco — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:28:32 +0000

I think I’m gonna try this out here soon: Microwave an Instant Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Mug. What better way to have chocolate cake when you are flying solo?

‘Probably No God’ slogans for city’s buses

bbbco — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:59:03 +0000

Prominent athiest Richard Dawkins is matching the British Humanist Association’s efforts to raise money to display ‘Probably No God’ slogans for city’s buses. However, the included adverb allows for Pascal’s Wager to quickly refute such a statement.

What to Do with all the Facebook Friends?

bbbco — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:11:00 +0000

(Author’s Note: This post was inspired by a comment on Lifehacker asking which was better when it came to Facebook friends: Quanity or Quality? I personally prefer quality, however, you can’t always enforce that easily)

If you are like me, then you have a Facebook profile (along with most everyone else on the internet in the world) and you have Add as a Friend request from people that you either don’t know, or do not care about. It is these requests that caused me at one point to think twice about adding them. Why? Because I am a quality type of guy when it comes to Facebook friends, and I did not necessarily want everyone who wanted to be my virtual friend to have access to personal information about me (cell phone number, address, current employer, etc).

But I have been burned by people who were offended for denying their request or, doing like I used to do and just keep their request in limbo and not make a decision (which Facebook still allowed them to see your basic profile anyway, and of course they will know eventually if you are not ever among their friends). However, I discovered a way to not offend these people and eat my cake too. Its all about combining the Friends List feature and customizing your Privacy Settings.

Login to Facebook if you have not done so already
Click Friends in the Top Menu (left side)
Create a New Friends List (left sidebar) called Acquaintances (or whatever you want)
Add any current friends you do not want to be able to see all the info on your profile
Click Privacy Settings under the Settings tab in the Top Menu (right side)
Click Profile
Click the drop-down of any of the groups you don’t want these people to see (i.e. Personal Info, Photos Tagged of You, Status updates, etc)
Click Customize
In the “Except These People” textbox, type Acquaintances (or whatever your new friends list name is)
Now any of the sections that you don’t want these people to have access to, they will not be able to see
From now on, whenever you get an Add Friend request from a person you don’t really know, quickly add them to the Acquaintances list before confirming them.

If you ever want one of these persons to have access to your info, go back to your friends list and remove them.

This technique is extremely useful for limiting what those people see about you, however, it does not limit what you see about them. Remember, they can still message you, chat with you, and interact with you via certain third part Facebook applications. However, I have found that it is annoying to still see status and news feed updates about these people that I don’t really care about. I do wish that Facebook allowed you to exempt Friends Lists from the News Feeds.