In honour of Airbag sending out a web-wide bitch-slapping to the truly dubious life hacks that are becoming more and more prevalent, may I present…

Jason’s Really Super Useful Guide for How to Make Toast!

1. Get a slice of bread. (Once you are comfortable with this procedure, you can work your way up to two slices. However, if you find yourself required to make three pieces of toast or more, a permit from your local municipality may be required.)
2. The bread must be sliced. A loaf of bread does not toast well. It is actually unlikely to fit in the toaster. Do not even try this with a hamster. (While a hamster is likely to fit in the toaster, jam does not spread well on toasted hamsters.)
3. Put the slice of bread in the toaster. Be certain to have the slots of the toaster face the ceiling (or sky if you are toasting outside). Having the slots face the wall could lead to crumbs on your nice new wallpaper. And having the slots face the counter could lead to toast-shaped indentations in the counter, depending on the strength of your toaster. (However, in theory you could modify your counter by slicing toast-shaped holes in the top of it, allowing a slot-side down implementation of the toaster. If you attempt this modification, please let me know how it turns out!)
4. Press down on the lever on the side of the toaster until it clicks. If it does not click, press it further. If it still does not click, stop immediately and go to your local YMCA or fitness centre. You are too weak and need the services of a personal trainer. Do not even attempt to make toast again until you are stronger. (Wimp.)
5. Step away from the toaster. It will not work while you look at it. Don’t even try. I said, step away. The toaster can sense your presence. The one thing you do not want is a pissed-off toaster. They’ll get you while you sleep. (Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.)
6. Assemble your further ingredients. You will require: (1) a plate to place the toast on, (2) a knife to spread the condiments on the toast, (3) condiments (e.g. butter, jam, peanut butter, liquid paper, honey, etc.), and (4) a first-aid kit to stop the bleeding caused by the knife.
7. If the toaster has not ejected the toast, take a very quick glance and then look away. What did you see? If you saw smoke, the toaster knew you were looking at it earlier and is now burning your toast in a burst of vengeful rage. It is your fault. I told you not to look at it earlier. If it is not smoking, continue to look away. I also recommend whistling. It makes you look innocent and will put the toaster at ease.
8. When you hear a popping sound, you are then permitted to turn around. The top of your previously untoasted bread should now be visible at the top of the toaster slot. Remove the toast quickly and reverently and place it on the plate.
9. Thank the toaster.
10. Take your knife and spread your choice of condiment on the toast. (Remember — if you live north of the Equator, you must spread your condiment on the toast in a clockwise circle. Vice versa if you live south of the Equator.)
11. Open your first-aid kit and retrieve a bandage. Place it over the wound on your finger. The bleeding should stop shortly.
12. Enjoy your freshly-made toast!

Stop reading this right no-

OK, so some friends and family have been asking me how I keep up with so much stuff online and still get anything done.

(I do get things done by the way.)

So I would like to offer…

Jason’s Shack ‘o’ Browsing Tips!

• tip the first: Mozilla Firefox! This is the most important step you can take towards a speedier and more productive online experience. The majority of the following tips will not help you without Firefox as your browser. Believe me, you will not regret it. Firefox includes built-in pop-up blocking and an integrated search bar (which defaults to Google), and has a vast number of extensions available for further customisation. And for those few sites that only work in IE, the number of those sites is decreasing every day — the very small amount of time that you need to spend using IE to access these sites will be more than paid back through the time-savings you will have through using Firefox. Go download it. Right now.
• tip the second: Tabbed browsing. No more clicking back and forth between pages as you try to read a page and follow the links in the page. Simply open the links in a new tab and continue on. And being able to save a set of tabs as a single bookmarks, or even set your homepage to be a whole set of bookmarks, is just dandy. Flip between tabs using the mouse, or even better by hitting ctrl-tab. To open a link in a new tab with your mouse, either press ctrl as you click the left mouse button or click on the center button or scroll wheel. Using your keyboard, press ctrl as you type Enter.
• tip the third: Keyboard shortcuts. Learn them and use them. Your mouse is only slowing you down. The ones that I use the most are ctrl-l and ctrl-k . ctrl-l moves the focus to the location bar (sometimes it’s a whole lot faster to just type the address of the site you are looking for rather than mouse through all your bookmarks). ctrl-k moves the focus to the search bar. Alt-left-arrow moves you back to your previous page and alt-right-arrow move you forward a page.
• tip the fourth: RSS and Bloglines.com. More and more websites are publishing their content through RSS feeds, which is an XML format that allows content to be syndicated and viewed through a variety of services. The medium that I use the most is Bloglines.com, which is a web-based feed reader — you create a free account with Bloglines and subscribe to the feeds that you want to read. Bloglines then periodically checks the feeds for your subscribed sites for updated content. Then, when you go to your Bloglines page, you are shown the sites which have new content and can view the new content directly in your Bloglines page. This works best for sites that are primarily text-based content, but there are feeds for photo galleries, comic strips, and many other forms of content. This is a huge time saver — rather than checking each individual site in your list of bookmarks for new content, you only have to go to one site for all updates. (Further info available through RSS feeds)
• tip the fifth: SuperDragAndGo. SuperDragAndGo is a Firefox extension that allows you to select a piece of text or a URL on a webpage and “throw it” (drag it slightly). Once “thrown”, if the text is a website address or a link, it will open a new tab to that site. For all other text, it will do a Google Search on the selected text. So if you find a phrase that you want to do a search on, you just select it and drag it slightly — voila! a search is initiated. (And throwing an image will open up a dialogue box to save the image to your computer.)
• tip the sixth: Find-as-you-Type. In Firefox, go to Tools > Options > Advanced. There, under the Accessibility tab you will see a checkbox next to “Begin finding as you begin typing”. Check this box. Then, when you are on a page, just begin typing the word you are looking for and it will begin an incremental search throughout the document. Type “j”, and it will go to the first word beginning with “j”. Type “a”, it will move to the first word beginning with “ja”. Delete “a” and it goes back to “j”. And so on. It makes searching within a single page a single-step process and far more intuitive — you just type what you want to find. What could be simpler that that?
• tip the seventh: Keywords. One last Firefox tip! In your Bookmarks, if you select Properties, one of the available properties of each link is a keyword. This keyword can be whatever you want it to be. So if you are regularly heading over to lifehacker.com for a dose of lifehackery, set the keyword for your Lifehacker bookmark to “1″. Then, you can simply enter ctrl-l to move to the location bar, type”1″ and then Enter, and you’re on your way!

While these are not all of my browsing secrets (I can’t give away all the magic), you will definitely find these will enable you to make your time online much more productive.

(i.e. You’ll have more time to look at cute pictures of cats.)