Have anything to confess?

If you do, then I have the perfect place for you to go to. As part of the roll-out for the new Tim Burton movie "Sweeney Todd", coming to theatres on the 21st of December, the studio has set up a site where you can confess your secrets anonymously.

What's really cool about the confessional site is that you can make a confession in three ways - by phone (the only thing that gets posted is your location, not your name or anything else), posting it to their site, or even by making your own video and posting it to the site.

They're looking for you to confess previous acts of revenge that you've done. However, I would think that any kind of nasty act would fit into the theme of the site. ;)

Personally, I have to confess that, and this was nothing to do with revenge or anything, but it happened, when I was in high school, I wrote up a document about setting some goals in a certain timeline. However my words were misunderstood, at least in my opinion, and it was taken as a command to get everything I asked to be done within the space of a few weeks done that day. I wound up having to apologize and then helped out with them sorting out the mess I had started.

As I write this, I am listening to some of the music which I would guess is from the soundtrack to the movie. I have to say that the music is really excellent. It's akin to music you'd hear in a musical. If you want a taste of the music, along with being able to check out the trailer to the movie, you can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site.

Also, like so many movies, Sweeney Todd has a site on MySpace. Interestingly, if you add them as a friend there, you can have the chance to meet Johnny Depp at the global premiere of the movie. If you want the chance to enter, simply visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace. (You may have to click around to get there ;)).

Still missing out?

Hey, it's me again, here to tell you about what you've missed if you're still getting my old blog feed through Blogger.

You've missed me talking about my exploits in driving. Also, of course you're missing out on the weekly features, The week in Walks, along with This Was The Week That Was. There have been some excellent links posted in there the last few weeks.

If you need help with getting over to my new site (which I doubt, y'all are very smart ;)), drop me an email; the link is to the right; otherwise, y'all keep good. ;)

Save some money Christmas shopping with CouponChief

I've always been one for a good bargain, and I've always been looking for sites that can give me the inside track on discount codes and coupons for all of my favorite stores. Of course, you could sign up for various stores' newsletters, but you always run the risk of having your email address sold to anyone out there.

That's where CouponChief.com comes in. They are another in a line of sites which have gone through the possibly-daunting task of collecting discount information for hundreds of stores, both online and offline.

One of my favorite stores is Best Buy; it's the only store I've ever bought computers from, and it's my primary source for buying my high tech toys, or even simply the DVD discs I burn. I usually look through their weekly flyer, but I have the option of looking at the Best Buy deals at CouponChief.

Another store that I spotted on there that I use on occasion is King Size Direct. Can I just say that they have amazing selection, and they have clothes in the sizes that I fit into. Also, their shipping isn't a bad deal, plus they always have many offers going on at a time. I subscribe to their newsletter so I know it quite well, but if you don't want to get their email newsletters, then you can check CouponChief for the latest King Size Direct coupon codes.

Like I said, there are literally hundreds of stores listed, and most of them have multiple offers available. So, if you're looking for a place to possibly save bigtime as we head towards the Christmas shopping season, definitely check out CouponChief.com!

Check out what you've missed!

If there's anyone still out there who hasn't switched to the new feed for my site yet - the subscribe icons are on the right sidebar here, and if you've got the new bookmark for my site, you probably don't see this, here's a sample of what you missed. I posted this picture as an example of what happens when you do too much compression of an image.



Also, it's NaBloPoMo time again, and I'm doing it along with the commenting challenge; I've got all the details at my WordPress blog - Sephy's Platzish (auf WordPress)

Hi there

I'm still missing some of y'all over on my new site!

If you haven't updated your feed reader yet, now is the time to do so. In fact, you can do it from this blogspot blog. All the subscribe buttons are set up for the FeedBurner feed, which gets all the posts from WordPress and delivers them to you like any RSS feed does. ;)

There's some good stuff you're missing out on...

Looking for a faucet?

Note: This post is a sponsored post.

If you've watched any kind of home improvement programming, then you've probably heard the line "Buy it for looks, buy it for life." You'll probably immediately recognize that this is the tagline for Moen Faucets.

Faucet.com have a wide range of Moen faucets available at their site, and they have a convenient guide for buying both kitchen faucets and bathroom faucets. In these guides, they describe the different types of faucets that you can purchase, from basic models that require just one hole be made in your sink's exterior, to ones that may suit your needs if you have an especially wide sink.

I know that it can be confusing to figure out what kind of faucet to purchase, but faucet.com makes it easy to compare different faucets. Their prices are fairly competitive with other stores, and they provide free shipping on all orders over $50. Also, unless you're in New York, the price you see is the price you pay - there's no sales tax charged on sales outside of New York.

You can also save an additional $10 on your first purchase from them if you subscribe to their email newsletter. If you're concerned about your privacy, simply use a throwaway email, or create a new address on your own. ;)

If you're looking for a place to buy your next (or first) Moen faucet, give faucet.com a look. I know Moen is a name that you can trust and they have styles and fittings for any amount you want to spend from simple two handle, traditional, faucets to faucets in copper and bronze that include a spray attachment for the faucet.

You can even buy a complete two-wall shower system with pretty much all the bells and whistles.

Where in the world has Sephy gone?

Hey y'all!

If you're reading this post, then you are probably wondering where I've been since Wednesday. Well, I haven't gone anywhere. Well, that is, except over to a WordPress-powered blog. That means that the updates on this site will become less frequent, but I will be having the odd review posted here from time to time.

If you are reading this in a feed reader, then you should use this link and resubscribe to my feed. You'll get all the posts I've made over the last couple of days. Also, if you haven't already, you'll be able to check out my new look site; it looks really good and if you haven't seen it already, then you don't know what you're missing!

Here's the blog for you. Thanks for reading! ;)

If you're reading this...

...then you've got the old feed of my site. I have now moved my site over to WordPress, with 39 flavors of header images! ;)

The FeedBurner feed isn't quite working perfectly, because it can't find the RSS feed for my site, and if I try the alternative, it tells me something about "White spaces are required between publicId and systemId". I have no clue what that means.

Anyway, I'm no longer publishing on this version of Sephy's Platzish. As always, I am available at http://www.sephyroth.net - if you've got that bookmarked, you're probably not seeing this, and you are seeing the WordPress site already. However, if you have my old Blogger feed in your reader still, then you should change the link, ok? ;)

Thanks!

I got the hint!

When I woke up this morning, I got a slight hint as to something that I was being, well, told to do (it wasn't on my to-do list, but I am getting the stuff that is on there done, so it's not impacting my time too badly).

Here is the hint that I had -

That's a pretty blatant way to get the message across, I have to say. The hint, of course, was to make chocolate chip cookies, and I've obliged by making them. The only difference between the recipe I was suggested to make and the one I did wind up making was that I used a different brand of chips to the one that is in the picture. The recipe on the package I used is the exact same one as on the other one.

I don't know about you, but I think that Toll House should consider suing Hershey's for stealing their recipe. ;)

Anyway, it went together in the usual fashion - cream 2 sticks of butter with 3/4 cup each of white and brown sugars and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, then adding 2 eggs and mixing that until it's combined. Next is beating in 2¼ cups of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (mixed together in a separate bowl), then adding in the package of chocolate chips.

Here's what the bowl looked like when I was mixing it all together -

One thing that we've always done when making chocolate chip cookies is to mix the chips in using a wooden spoon, and it always comes out good. Here are the cookies before they went into the 375°F oven for 10-11 minutes -

Just a note about this pan, it is one of those "air cushion" pans - we've used it for many, many years now, and we have not burnt a single thing on it. They're relatively inexpensive and I heartily recommend you using it. :)

It took a little over an hour to get all the cookies done; even after having some of the dough (bad, I know! ;)), the final yield was 49 cookies, because there were four batches of 9 and a batch of 13; here they all are on the cooling rack -

So, I got the hint and came through with it, and there won't be any complaints about not doing what I wasn't asked to do, just what I was hinted at doing. ;)

Use Google Calendar to organize your life

I admit that I'm not the greatest at time management; considering that I often find myself "distracted by shiny objects" - usually at the worst time, but one thing that I've always loved using are online calendars. In fact, I started to use a computer-based calendar back around 2000, using Microsoft Outlook to list the various activities that I was in.

Even when I was in college, I'd kept using Outlook to keep track of where I was and what I was going to be doing during the day. I even had a Palm Pilot (which disappeared one day on me, unfortunately) where I'd sync the contents of my Outlook calendar with the organizer. However, I went away from using Outlook's calendar when I left college and fell into the routine workday habit.

Now, I've rediscovered using calendars, and have started to use Google's calendar, aptly named Google Calendar. If you haven't used it before, there isn't a lot to learn to get to use it like a pro. You can have your own private calendar, make a calendar that you can share with your friends, have any variety of public calendars listed, and even make a public calendar for yourself.

Obviously, when you start to use it, you will be asked to give some basic information - your name (just put in whatever you want; it's what's used for the name of your main calendar), location, and timezone (if you want to use a timezone without changing your country, simply check the display all timezones box). Click Continue to proceed.

The first thing that you will see is this week's calendar, with each day split into its 24 hours. You have a variety of views that you can choose from - Today, This Week, This Month, the Next x Days (you can change this in the settings), and the Agenda. At the left, you have this month's calendar laid out for you to have a glance at - if you have an event on a certain day, it will be marked in bold. However, since we've not made any events (in this calendar, at least), you won't see any dates in bold.

Creating events couldn't be any easier than Google have made it - to make an all day event, simply click in the gray bar below the date, or if you are in month view, click on that day. When you're in Day, Week or Next x Days mode, you can also click and drag to make an event that has a set time. Just as an example, I'm going to make an event for Tuesday 9th October from 6.30-10.30AM. I simply click and drag from 6.30 to 10.30, and up pops up this little bubble -

If you want to add details to the event right away, you can simply click edit event details » and you can add information about the item like location, a description, and have control over the guest list; however, more on that later. When you make an event in the calendar view, if you words such as "at" or "in", the calendar will recognize the next portion of your entry as the location. Since I'm not creative in any sort, I'm just going to use Google's example of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and click Create Event to book the event, which makes it pop up in the calendar, like this -

Has the event changed dates or times? All you need to do is, instead of manually changing the date and time, just drag the box to the new time, or if the event got longer or shorter, just drag the bottom of the event's box up or down to change the length of the event.

Calendar Settings

There are a number of settings you can change with regards to your calendar. From the front page, you can change the color of the calendar's display, and have access to the full settings for that calendar. All you have to do is click the little down-arrow next to your calendar's name, which brings up this menu -

In the Calendar Settings page, you can change a number of settings for your calendar, including making a description, changing its name, setting a location and customizing the timezone. At the bottom are two sets of addresses which you can use in order to view your calendar in another program that accepts xml or ical calendars, or view your calendar in html.

The other page I will cover right here is the Notifications page. Here you can adjust the settings for how you want to be notified about events, or remove default reminders. You can also set notifications for invitations you send or receive, and if you wish to be notified on your mobile, have the notifications sent directly to you. It's all fairly straightforward, and here is what it looks like -

There are also the overall settings that you can change by clicking on the Settings link in the upper right. Here, you have options to change the look of your calendars, set the formats of times, dates, and the week. There are a couple of interesting items on this page - first is the Location field - that doesn't set your location in your calendar, but allows you to view the weather for your area. This is only available if you are in the US.

The Calendars tab allows you to change calendars that you have, and calendars that you are viewing, along with being able to add public calendars to your view. The Mobile Setup tab is where you can input your phone details if you wish to have notifications sent to you via SMS; normal rates apply. Click here for a list of supported carriers.

Sharing Calendars

If you want to share your calendar with a friend, it's down right simple. All you have to is click on Share this Calendar in the drop down on the front page, which takes you to the Share this calendar page.

All you have to do to share the calendar with a friend is put in their email address under person, set their permission and then Add them. They'll receive an email inviting them to add your calendar to theirs. Here you can also set the public sharing options. If you share your calendar publicly, then it can be searched out by all people and visible by anyone out there.

Adding Public Calendars

While sharing your calendar might be an unwise move, there are a lot of useful calendars that you can add to your calendar for reminders of TV Shows, Holidays, sport schedules, just search for it and you'll likely find it. Google have put together a list of some of the most common calendars, and you can access them by clicking on the Add link on the left hand side and clicking on Add a public calendar, which brings up the "top pick" calendars:

Of course, there are quicker ways to do things than just clicking. ;)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Like most Google products, calendar has its own set of keyboard shortcuts that make the service easier to navigate. Here is a handy table for you cut out and keep (note that there is no help key to make a list appear)

Key	Function
c	Create Event
q	Quick Add
d	Daily View
w	Weekly View
m	Monthy View
x	Custom View
a	Agenda View
p or j	Go to Previous Timeframe
n or k	Go to Next Timeframe
t	Go to Today (in current view)
s	Calendar Settings
/	Search

Alternatives

If you're not one for Google knowing your agenda, would like to have your calendar available offline (through Google's syncing options), or prefer to simply do all of your calendar management offline, there are a couple of programs that you can use for your calendar.

The first one is the one I mentioned at the start - Microsoft Outlook. I'll only recommend this option if you already have Office installed on your system; there's no point in buying the full suite of applications when you only want to use a portion of the functionality that is available to you. Also, Outlook is definitely harder to use than Google Calendar.

If you would like to use your Google Calendar both online and offline, you can pick up a free piece of software from SourceForge called GCALDaemon. Download it here (you will have to have the Java Runtime Environment installed). The folks at Lifehacker have also put together a how-to for the software.

Another option available for both Windows and Linux users is Rainlendar - it is a simple calendar that sits on your desktop, always available for you. They also have a pro version which includes support for Google Calendar. You can find out more information about the product here.

The last option is for those of us who like using Mozilla products like Firefox and Thunderbird - Sunbird & Lightning. If you already use Thunderbird, you can download the Lightning Add-on (or extension) and integrate all the features of Sunbird into Thunderbird. If you don't have Thunderbird or your Thunderbird is already pretty chock-a-block with extensions and accounts, there is Sunbird, which is a standalone program.

Like the two previous options, you can integrate your Google Calendar into the program through the use of another extension called Google Calendar Provider. Click here for more information on these options.

Further Reading
In the companion post to this, Snoskred will talk about time management and she has some great tips that you really should follow. :)

Her post should be up sometime in the next few hours; I'll have a link to it when it's up.

It is now up. You can read her tips on Time Management - Tuesday Think Tank

Tips and Tricks for Google Calendar
Rock Your Google Reader in 18 Ways
Stopdesign | Google Calendar tips
Geek to Live: Black belt scheduling with Google Calendar

Previously in the Tuesday Think Tank
21st August: RSS
14 Reasons Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog
Tuesday Think Tank: All About RSS

28th August: Blog Templates
Blog Design - Open Your Eyes.
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing

4th September: Nofollow
Spam, Spiders And Do Follow, Oh My!
Say No! to Nofollow

11th September: Site Meters
Do NOT Rely On Your Site Meter.
Track Your Visitors with Google Analytics

18th September: Technorati
Technorati - Sending Out An SOS
The Ups (and Downs) of Technorati

25th September: Google Reader
Google Reader Can Make Your Life Easier - Here's How.
Improving your Google Reader Experience

2nd October: HTML
Basic HTML for Bloggers.
Some HTML Tips & Tricks

Over to you
Do you use a computer-based calendar for your organization? If so, which one do you use?

Also, do you have some tips that would make using any of these calendars easier?

Of course, if you have something that you'd like for Snoskred and myself to discuss, we are definitely open for suggestions. You can leave a comment or send an email to me, or contact Snos via her contact page

If you've liked what you've read, you can stumble the post using your toolbar or the link below.