Spotted in QLD

Body hack!

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It happens to the best of us. You use your high speed internet connection quota 12 days into a 31 day month and now, regrettably its been shaped to the shithouse. So how can you idle the time away yet still maintain an online presence on extremely low bandwith? Try to optimize your accounts. Forget Facebook, torrents, WoW, iTunes, Flickr and the like. Heavy bandwith sites are out of the question. I’ll happily cook dinner while I wait for an awesome two and a half minute YouTube video to buffer - yet you need to draw the line somewhere. Therefore, I present to you the Top 5 Ways to Manage Life On A Shaped Internet Connection.

1) Clean up your bookmarks. This may sound boring yet the point is to declutter your online browsing experience. Whether your bookmarks are browser or web based is irrelevant. Web based bookmark interfaces are generally low bandwith sites and it gives you time to focus on arranging tags, categories and folders accordingly. If you use a browser based bookmark system, it is a great time to clear out that video you bookmarked when drunk on Tuesday night.

2) Type something. If you publish online such as a blog or a journal then type something. Remember you don’t actually have to be connected to do this. Open Word or even a simple text document and type away to your heart’s content. Afterwards, you can format it appropriately and post it online.

3) Label and update your email contacts. Many established online services such as Yahoo, Gmail, MSN and, more than likely, your ISP offer a basic HTML web interface to manage email. To my surprise you can find yourself spending a good hour punching in your friends email, mobile, work phone, address, etc.

4) Sort out your email addresses. You and I both have more than one email address. Most people have a personal email account while others also have a separate work, domain name, ISP and even mobile phone email address. When the bandwith drought hits, now is the time to map out what email addresses are you have and if you have POP3 or IMAP available for them. You may want to set your accounts to forward or sync with each other. A low bandwith exercise.

5) Turn off the computer and read a book. Exactly what the title says. It’ll be good for you.

Very cool pool trick.

This fellow Aussie responded to my Nifty Bar Trick. Very cool response. I give three thumbs up. Well done, jackboy360. Props to you. And thanks to beechmachine for the heads up.