Making life easier isn't always about massive, miraculous changes in habit, or chucking vast quantities of your belongings. Sometimes, preventing just one little hassle can make your day.

You know how the little bit of soap left in the cup after you dump it in the wash always manages to leak down the side of the bottle when you recap it? Usually, you don't notice it until the next time you do the wash, and have to pry the jug loose from a sticky, lint-colored pool. To prevent this from happening, toss the cap in along with the wash instead of recapping the bottle right away. It comes out squeaky clean, and you just have to shake off a little water before screwing it back on the bottle. I suspect this would work with the top of a dish soap bottle too, though you'd have to ask Ray, the gallant cleaner.

An Interface of One’s Own

I was delighted to see my favorite OS X writing app, Scrivener, turn up in today's "The Medium" column of the New York Times Magazine. I reviewed Scrivener about a year ago, and still use it whenever I have to research, plan, and draft anything more complicated than a blog post. In fact, as luck would have it, I was actually working on my upcoming Macworld talk in Scrivener when I took a break to read the paper and saw this article. Kismet or something.

Columnist, Virginia Heffernan, notes the app's beloved full-screen capability:

To create art, you need peace and quiet. Not only does Scrivener save like a maniac so you needn’t bother, you also get to drop the curtain on life’s prosaic demands with a feature that makes its users swoon: full screen. When you’re working on a Scrivener opus, you’re not surrounded by teetering stacks of Firefox windows showing old Google searches or Citibank reports of suspicious activity. Life’s daily cares slip into the shadows. What emerges instead is one pristine and welcoming scroll: Your clean and focused mind.

High fives to other great apps mentioned in the article, including Ulysses, WriteRoom, and Nisus Writer. Slightly lower fives go to Microsoft Word, which, once again, takes its usual drubbing as The Application Everyone Wants To Get Away From™. Poor Microsoft Word, the mascara-smeared Gloria Swanson of word processors.

• 1Password to Rule Them All at LifeClever - Chanpory reviews the game-changing 1Password. I think I've tried to make it my Pick of the Week on MacBreak Weekly about 3 times now. One of the truly indispensable OS X apps, and Chanpory shows you why. (Loving the graphical password strength meter in the latest beta)
• Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines - "Apple's market share rose 7.5% for the Mac and 33% for the iPhone in a single month." Wow. That ain't hay.
• TVShows automatically downloads your favourite shows If you don't mind getting your IP address stuck in the door (and, IMO, you should), bit torrent can bring much bounty to your Mac. This OSS app grabs the torrent for your favorite TV shows (not the actual video file) then passes it along to your BT app to complete the work on your dirty little scheme. Neat idea. [via JimRay (but you didn't hear it from me either)]
• 30 Minute Clutter Solution - Good Housekeeping - Useful series of articles (hidden behind an un-useful form UI) gives tips on how to deal with many of the problematic clutter attractors in your world. Try the medicine cabinet or mail and keys for practical advice on problem areas.
• Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect - There's something weirdly Mythical Man-Month about replacing your best employees with noobs in order to save short-term money. Bonehead decisions like this have your "shareholder value" swinging. [via Daring Fireball]
• San Francisco Storms | Ask MetaFilter - I'll admit that San Francisco's lack of real weather has made this Florida boy into a nervous nelly; we're headed for supplies at the Home Depot this morning...because it might be a little windy. Friends back in Tallahassee are surely pointing and laughing right now. As is appropriate.
• Will You Look At That - Until I do that long-overdue post on "Amazing sites I look at all day but that you may not know about," enjoy entry #1: this nicely-curated collection of cool photos from Flickr.
• Movie-Montage.com - Training Montages - Oh, sure you've got Rocky eating lightning and crapping thunder, but who can forget "Hungry Eyes" from Dirty Dancing? Oh, Baby, nobody puts you in a corner. Nobody. [via MeFi]

Reason Magazine - Secrets of Weight Loss Revealed!

This review of two recent diet books underscores what most of us already know all too well: while it's easy enough to drop a few pounds for a short while, it's nearly impossible to lose a lot of weight for a long time.

What caught my attention for anyone wishing to apply some fancy book-learning directly to the affected area was this chunk of insight on eating mindfully -- alongside a smart bit of life-hacky weight loss advice:

Google AdSense Tips

Having noticed Google's new "Newbie Central" site, Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen posted a swell pile of his own best tips for improving AdSense performance on your site. Linked here because (at least IMHO) it's depressingly rare to find useful, non-douchey advice about making money with a website.

Typical of the sage stuff from PL:

This Week's Featured Job

➪ Senior Web Developer - Vodori, Chicago, IL

You an Employer? Here's 30 days for $30.00

January is a popular time to start job-hunting, which also makes it a great time to find new talent for your organization through the 43f Job Board.

To get that ball rolling for our baby new year, post as many jobs as you want to 43f and use coupon "30for30til0106" at each checkout to receive 30 days' placement for only $30. (that's over 60% off the current rate). Jobs must be posted by Sunday (1/6/08) to qualify, so hop to it.

<

p>Many thanks to all our job posters. And good luck making the connection in aught-eight!

This is the time of the year for everybody to make lame, half-hearted resolutions about how they’re going to lead a better life in the new year: lose weight, stop smoking, eat less fried cheese, take a ceramics class, etc. My gym is already full of flabby, confused-looking people who spend more time adjusting their iPod cases and checking out their new track suits in the mirror than actually doing reps. I usually treat January as my month to be lazy; I stay away from the gym for a few weeks until the interlopers poop out.

But it is a new year, and it’s not a bad idea to at least try to alter some of your bad habits, pick up a new skill, or do something to make yourself happier. My suggestion for this year addresses a problem I suspect many of the people who read this site have: the sheer number of online commitments--that is, blogs, social networks, message groups, IM accounts, Flickr, Twitter, and any other online time sink that ends with an R--that we try to maintain.