The biggest secret of the best web users is not a browser, or a program, or a web site. The biggest secret is two keys that have been on your keyboard from the very moment you got a computer – Ctrl-f. To those in the know about Ctrl-f, the idea of not knowing might strike you with surprise and pity. How, you may ask, is it possible for someone to go about their daily lives, skimming through every paragraph, scrolling through every article for an elusive snippet of text? How could you function? If you don’t know what I’m writing about, you are not alone – according to Dan Russel, a search anthropologist at Google, 90 percent of people they studied don’t know the single most useful function for perusing the web. Ctrl-f (or command-f if you are using a mac) is a keyboard shortcut that opens a search function in any browser, on any computer. If you type a word or phrase into the search bar, it will show you every instance that the phrase appears on that page. Try it here – let’s say you are trying to find our blogroll. Punch in Ctrl-f, type in ‘blogroll’ then hit enter. Bam! It snaps you directly to the word you are looking for. Hit enter to toggle through the various time the word is used on the page until you find what you’ve been looking for. This doesn’t really show the true functionality of this gem, though. Anyone scrolling…
Okay, there’s no real shortcut to writing, per se. Writing requires you sit down, collect your thoughts, organize them, and turn them into text. But as a writer, I sometimes wonder what button or link I inadvertently touched that made my computer do something wacky and unexpected. Then I realize my knowledge of a set of shortcuts on the keyboard may help me get out… [Read More]
Filed Under: Bold, Control, Copy, Cut, Italics, keyboard shortcuts, New Tab, Paste, Print, Select All, Undo
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Alexandra Fuller’s latest book, The Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (Penguin Press HC 2011) continues to roam around in my imagination more than a month after I finished reading it. She is a memoirist who transports the reader to a time and place you could never otherwise know and experience it with compassion and good humor. Even her title invites the reader to… [Read More]
If you are a writer with a book project, book proposal or complete manuscript, you absolutely must have a website. Why? Publishers and readers demand it. The world must be able to find you on Google. Writers need a professional online presence, beyond the personal Facebook profile and e-mail account. If you are going to publish, you need to have a public persona. Not the… [Read More]
Passion for good, simple, healthy food is something farmers and hunters share with chefs, urban homesteaders and metropolitan diners in these new books about meat and so much more. It’s become cool to be carnivore. Farmer and evangelist for the grass-fed movement, Joel Salatin’s new book, Folks This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World (Hatchette 2011) points… [Read More]
Filed Under: Blood, Bones, Butter, Carnivore, Chefs, Cookbooks, Foodie memoirs, Gabrielle Hamilton, Georgia Pellgegrini, Hank Shaw, Hunting, Joel Salatin, Meat, Memoirs, Omnivore Books, Ruth Reichl, Stephane Reynaud, Tamar Adler
Much of the labor of creating a snappy and engaging blog is visible to the outside world – your carefully crafted content, your punctual updates, your original style and creative voice… But under all of that outward cultivation lies a rushing river of information, a spring of data that you need to tap. Who is visiting your site? How long are they staying? How did they get… [Read More]