Make Facebook Less Painful with FB Purity
I don't know about you, but I have a like/dislike relationship with Facebook. I enjoy connecting to good folk and having good conversations. But I don't much like being distracted by posts that I find annoying, distracting or even painful.
I used to be a news and political junkie. If there was a news story, I had an opinion about it. If someone did something I didn't like, not only did I have an opinion about it, but I vented my spleen about it. In short, I was like an unpaid radio talk-show host commenting on everything that came my way as though what I said made a bit of difference to anyone. But on Facebook, that's OK because I was one person in a crowd of millions who were all doing the same thing. Lots and lots of people with an even greater number of opinions. And every one of us was absolutely sure that he or she is correct and anyone opposing them must be the devil or stupider than dirt.
After too many years of this, I had enough. I saw it for the waste of time it always was. And I stopped - cold turkey, the day after my side won in the elections in November 2014. My side won and I saw the futility of it all. And thus, watching my dust settle on a counter top became more interesting and useful.
However...
No one on Facebook got the message that I no longer wanted their views about news or politics. And anyone who did get the memo wasn't about to stop just because of me. I'm not king of the world - and you can think your lucky stars for that.
I could, of course, unfriend everyone who posted this drivel, but many of my friends posted such stuff only once in a while and had other things that were worth exploring.
So I looked to Facebook. Surely they had a way for me to filter out the crap (the technical term for news and politics). But sadly, Facebook does not seem to provide a way to block posts based on content. So I was stuck seeing words and phrases like "George W. Bush," "Obama," "Clinton," "global warming," or all the myriad things that all the really hip and smart people have time and energy to dwell on. I didn't - and don't have the time or the patience anymore.
Solution
And then I found Nirvhana. A little browser app for most browsers (except for poor Internet Explorer (*sniff*). Do you use Chrome? Firefox? Opera? Maxthon? Safari? Yes? Then you're in luck. This FREE little app is available for you. If you are still using IE, you'll need to find a different solution.
So what is this Nirvhana?
The app is called FB Purity. You can use your favorite search engine to see if the app is available for your preferred browser. I've provided links to where (as of this writing) you can get the app for Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb-purity-cleans-up-facebook/
- https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/fb-purity/?display=en
I found the installations on both Chrome and Firefox to be a snap. I'm guessing it's similar with Opera and other browsers.
Once you log in to Facebook and go to your news feed, you give FB Purity permission to monitor your news feed.
FB Purity appears just below the What's on your mind box?.
Click the link in order to see everything under FB Purity's hood. There is a lot there. Below is a partial screenshot.
I'm going to just go over the two that I found most immediately useful: News feed sort order and keyword filtering.
#1 - News feed sort order
Facebook decision makers seemed to think everyone wanted to see what they designated as top stories rather than the most recent posts. FB Purity brings choice to the kingdom. Click anywhere outside the message entry box and press R (for recent)and the posts will immediately reorder to show the most recent. A small token fo sweet, sweet sanity.
#2 - Keyword Filtering
Even getting the most recent comments can get a bit annoying if everyone happens to be posting about things you'd rather not be subjected to.
FB Purity again brings peace to the realm. Simply tell it that any post containing words you don't ever want to see should be kept from appearing in your news feed. And guess what? It works! To make the magic happen, click either of the FB Purity buttons and the FB Purity dialog appears. Enter the words you want filtered into the Custom Text Filter box and then click Save and Close.
Since I started using it, I haven't seen a single post where the text includes the names of politicians, activist rants and prods, etc.
When I don't see it, I don't react to it. I don't respond to it. I'm free of it. And I get back hours of time I wasted when I wasn't free.
It's free - and I donated. The author [mts: name?]makes it clear that FB Purity is free, but he does ask for a donation.
If you are looking for peace in the Facebook space, I can't say enough about this little app. Check it out and see for yourself.
P.S. - FB Purity should be in the arsenal of anyone who wants to control what they see on their Facebook news feed. And it is part of a larger discussion about focusing on what's important to you and not allowing yourself to get distracted. I found a neat little Kindle book called How to Focus on Amazon. It's 25 pages long and a quick read. You can even skim it and get value from it. You can read about it here: http://amzn.to/1duahz0 (associate link)
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Announcing the Music Hall
Instrumental music is a passion of mine. This includes classical and more recently jazz and new age music. This doesn't exclude songs or choral pieces. Beethoven's 9th Symphony stands as the Mt. Everest of music in my and many other people's views, and it would not be the masterwork it is without the chorus and soloist singers. But my focus is on instrumental.
It is my intention to, at some point, share some of the music that I create, but I'm not really ready for that yet. It's not stage fright... it's that the pieces I'm working on are not to a point that I like. One of my chief goals is to be able to have the music be printable so as to be played by musicians rather than by software. One of my pieces is slowly getting to that point. So we'll see.
In the meantime...
In the meantime, it will by my honor and pleasure to share with you some of the music I find online. There is so much talent and genius out there. But it's not always what many people search for by default. For instance, I found Beethoven's Grosse Fugue (usually scored for string quartet) delightfully and masterfully played as a piano duet by sisters Amy and Sara Hamann.
I love publishing my finds. Up to now, I've been posting them on Facebook (example), but that's not a good place to post things if you want to provide your audience with an easy-to-access resource. I acknowledge, too, that a blog isn't nearly as good for quick access as say a playlist on one of the music services.
However, it has the advantage of letting me set up contexts for the music I point to. The reasons why something gets selected, perhaps why something else doesn't. It allows me to connect dots in a way that simple playlists cannot - and do not. And, there's nothing to stop me from creating, say a YouTube of Spotify playlist and sharing it out. Maybe I'll do that one day.
Introducing the ApplyThisToday.com Music Hall
So to kick things off, and to see where things evolve, I am introducing The Music Hall which you can access from any blog entry along the right column in the What's Your Interest? section.
For now, I will be discussing my thoughts about music and composition as well as pointing you to some wonderful music I find along the way.
Enjoy. I know I will.
One more thing: you Are invited: Get your complimentary subscription to my ezine, Better Ways - Today and get notified when I create a new post about music and other things that you can apply - today - or at least quickly.
Each of our journeys start with a step and continue with more steps. Sometimes a step accelerates our progress, and sometimes, these steps come from ideas you receive along the way. Give Better Ways - Today a try and who knows where your muse can take you? Simply provide a working email address. I'd like to be able to call you by your name, but entering your name is optional.
Can You Say Soli? One Day You Will – We All Will (Maybe)
Good evening,
In this post, the thing to apply today is to visit another website at ZMEScience.com. Rather than repeat what Mihai Andrei says there, I'll simply tell you what you will find.
I'm not what you would call an early adopter, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate cool stuff when it is on the horizon. Enter Google Soli, which seems to a real evolution of virtual reality converging with what is called the internet of things.
Imagine being able to rub your fingers and have technology act per your command. Or snap your fingers and have that same technology do something else. It's almost as if Arthur C. Clarke's idea that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's almost the feeling I get with the demonstration of Soli.
I have long felt kind of schizophrenic about Google because it does things that I consider creepy. On the flip side, I can't imagine the modern world functioning without it and companies like it. Soli seems to be on the light side of the Force. And Mr. Andrei does a good job of describing it for you.
You can find out more about this very cool technology at his most interesting website, ZMEScience.com.
What do you think? Do you agree that this technology would be cool?
P.S. - If you'd like to be notified when I post again, get on my announcement list, Better Ways - Today. The current free gift is my original report, ShatterTime. Simply provide a working email address. I'd like to be able to address you by your name, but entering your name is optional.
Your Wish List is Amazon’s Command
How does a book lover part with precious books? A little more than a year ago, my better half and I decided to do just that. We both love books, and have special attachments to many of them. But over the years we had accumulated too many, and we needed the space for other things. We agreed to get rid of as many of our books as we could bear; reselling them if possible, donating them if not.
It soon became clear that there were some books I simply was not up for getting rid of. Older, out-of-print and difficult to replace books, primarily. But if I could easily find the book on Amazon.com, especially if I didn't care if it had been or would be revised from the edition I had, then I put my copy in the resell/donation pile.
Now, replacing those books on the spot would be expensive. Even though Kindle editions tend to cost less than paper versions, it's still a good chunk of change to replace upwards of 200 to 300 books.
During this decluttter effort, while browsing Amazon, I saw that they have a Wish List feature. (You can find a link to your Wish List it in the upper right corner of the Amazon.com window.) A light bulb went off. Why not store the titles that I was getting rid of as a wish list. If I ever wanted to read one, I could buy it at that time. Or, perhaps I could find it at my local library, which offers Kindle versions as well as paper for many titles. The point is that I could use the wish list to store all the book titles I owned.
That made getting rid of most of them much easier. Rather than storing books on physical shelves that took up much needed space, I would store the titles on Amazon's virtual shelf.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
I soon discovered a problem, however. A list of 20 or even 50 books was manageable. But the number of books I was going to put on a wish list numbered upwards of 200. I needed a way to organize things. On my physical shelves, I stored things by subject or genre. Science fiction, philosophy, business, etc. They each had their own sections.
Does Amazon offer something similar?
Indeed they do. You can create multiple wish lists and give them any name you want. Happy days!
I created a wish lists called Science Fiction, Psychology, Business, etc. and moved the titles from the general wish list to the genre wish lists, as appropriate. And if any of these lists gets too big, I can repeat the process, e.g., scifi fantasy, scifi thriller, scifi comedy, etc. (So far I haven't needed to feather things out that way).
There was one more concern I had. I'm a fairly private person. Could I make my lists private? Yes I could. And so I did.
These virtual shelves have some additional advantages over physical shelves: For one thing, you can search through all your wish lists for titles. You can also pick a wish list and sort it by title, by price (low to high, high to low), by the priority you set for it, and by the date you added it.
Accessing Your Wish List(s)
To see your default wish list(s), click this link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/ref=nav_wishlist_btn
If you are not yet logged in, you will be asked to do so, and then you'll be redirected to your wish list.
Once there, you will see your default wish list in the main area of the window. (The image is of a demo account I set up at Amazon.)
To the right of each title are three actions you can take: move the item to a different wish list, delete it from your wish list, or buy it.
Along the left column is a list of all the wish lists you've created. At the bottom of this column are two choices: Manage your lists and Create another wish list.
Managing your lists enables you to do just that. You can change the privacy (public, shared or private), you can specify any of them to be your default list, or you can delete the wish list. Be careful with deleting the list because your decision is final. BTW, if you want to make your list available to specific other people, set it to shared. This will create a link that you can share with whoever you want while keeping it private from those who don't have the link.
One last thing: to change the name of a list, click it in the left column so it appears in the main area of the window. The list title appears at the top of the screen. Click the title and it becomes editable. Click Save to save the new name or Cancel to keep it the same.
Now you know why and how to use Amazon.com wish lists.
So now what? Well, I'd suggest you start wishing. Enjoy.
P.S. - If you'd like to be notified when I post again, get on my announcement list, Better Ways - Today. The current free gift is my original report, ShatterTime. Simply provide a working email address. I'd like to be able to address you by your name, but entering your name is optional.
Mutitask TV To Be Less Unproductive: Two Simple Ideas
Just recently, NASA scientists discovered a galaxy 300 TRILLION times brighter than the sun probably caused by a massive black hole in the galaxy's center.
In other news, TV sucks too many people in like a black hole.
How about you? Do you watch a lot of TV? Of course you do. Otherwise this page would probably not be of any interest to you, right?
Maybe you have cable TV. Maybe you watch free movies online. Maybe you have Netflix or Amazon Prime. Doesn't matter. And maybe you're a news junkie or you binge watch Game of Thrones of reruns of Giligan's Island. Again - doesn't really matter. Can we admit that this is a truly unproductive use of our time? Our own version of a black hole?
So given that we engage in this guilty pleasure, here's a simple idea that might give you some of your time back.
Multitask. I know that multitasking has been given a bad rap lately. Maybe this is valid; maybe not. But if you are engaged in something unproductive anyway, then what can it hurt? For example:
1 - You can combine multiple unproductive activities in a wondrous feast of unproductivity: While you're watching your favorite binge show, play a game on your tablet or phone, too. Read the news. Catch up with the latest gossip on Facebook or Twitter.
The value of this kind of multitasking is easy to understand: since you are already engaged in an admittedly unproductive activity, then engaging in one more unproductive activity at the same time will save you the time you'd spend if you did these activities separately. When you have finished watching TV, you may also have played 20 rounds of your game and thus be tired of it. (And if you're not, you'll be 20 games closer to being done.) That will free up your time.
2 - Alternatively do something that is actually worthwhile, but doesn't interfere with your ability to watch the show. My wife walks in place while she watches, thus getting some exercise in. If you don't need to see what is on-screen, you can do chores while listening to your show. I have been known to wash the dishes while watching the rerun of a favorite
show. I do sacrifice a little bit by not watching and only listening. But if it's a rerun, that's OK.
If you do this, then when you have finished your show, you will have also completed a chore. How sweet is that?
What's Next?
Well, hey - don't you have other things that need to get done? And how about that blog post? Or that conversation with a friend you've been putting off. They're not going to get themselves done. Get a move on! 🙂
Do you already do this? What other unproductive activities do you combine? How else do you give yourself the gift of time when being unproductive? Let the world know by commenting below.
P.S. - If you'd like to be notified when I post again, get on my announcement list, Better Ways - Today. The current free gift is my original report, ShatterTime. Simply provide a working email address. I'd like to be able to address you by your name, but entering your name is optional.
Today’s Highlight – Sibelius with the Seattle Symphony
Donna and I had a wonderful time at the Seattle Symphony this evening. The orchestra is doing the complete series of Sibelius' 7 symphonies, plus the Violin Concerto and Finlandia. Which is a wonderful way for me to cap off my 60th year. A pleasant gentleman was good enough to take our picture before the concert began; you can see some the performers on-stage behind us.
Two Critical Ingredients In Learning New Things
Over the last few months, I have been taking music theory lessons from a wonderful teacher, Heidi Wischler. At my choice, these lessons are rather free-wheeling, and we get into some pretty interesting discussions that take me to learning things in a fairly eclectic way, and I am very pleased with the way this education process is going.
Prior to this, I'd been working at this on my own, with only the knowledge I'd picked up over the course of my life, which was enough to get me started, but not enough to move me beyond some very real limits. Through these lessons and discussions, I now see two important parts to the learning process. Read More...
Boom46!
A light-hearted entry from my personal journal, dated today (2014-06-24): Boom 46
Boom46 refers to anything that turns people on in a positive, exuberant way. Thus it excludes crime, cruelty, meanness, etc.
Boom46 consists of two memes: Boom and 46.
Boom - explosive, powerful, anything but shy. Ideally, not only is the overall context is felt as positive, but there occurs real, honest-to-god growth.
46 - the number of chromosomes in a human being.
Boom46 - anything that moves 46rs to go BOOM! in a positive and happy way.
Possible Usages
"That is so Boom46!"
"Boom46!"
"Have a Boom46 day."
etc.
A little whimsy for a world I so often take far too seriously.
Winning the battle with Type 2 Diabetes, or “I’m buying new jeans!”
I recently commented on Facebook that I had not eaten starches or sweets (fruits, yogurts, desserts, etc.) for almost a year. As has happened several times over the last year, a friend suggested that I not be too rigid about this.
But context matters, and it's appropriate for me to set the context. Here's my story... Read More...
Changing Your Thinking Can Change Your World
Meta-Note: The next few days are Your Thinking Makes Your World Days at ApplyThisToday.com. You can see more at my Facebook page.
Changing Your Thinking Can Change Your World - At Least a Little Bit
Sometimes little, even trivial things can serve to make a big point, or as W. Clement Stone said in The Success System that Never Fails, it is "little hinges that swing big doors." This blog post serves as an anecdotal example.
This coming Sunday is my birthday. Number 59 by my reckoning (as well as what's on my driver's license).
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I started feeling Read More...