Things I learned this week 2 Dec

• When heating leftovers in a microwave, leave a hole in the middle of the food so that the food is shaped somewhat like a bundt cake. This will heat it more evenly.
• Use binder clips to fix broken keyboard feet.
• Columbia House and BMG music clubs didn't pay any royalties on the music they gave away for free and only paid $0.75 on the dollar for music they sold. They also pressed their own CDs and other media. The cost to the club for the free discs was $1.50 each while the discs you bought at full price cost them anywhere from $3.20 to $5.50, a margin far surpassing what a store could make.
• Windows 7 has a built-in reliability monitor that graphs problems over time. In the start menu search, type 'reliability' and look under the control panel result.
• Your foot is the same size as the distance between your wrist and your elbow.
• Research has shown that you can remember about 3-4 things (for about 20 seconds) and then they will disappear from memory unless you repeat them over and over. We used to think it was 5-9 things, but it turns out someone just made that up. Also, people can’t effectively choose between more than 3 to 4 items at a time. Does that mean you can only have 4 items in a menu or 4 tabs on a screen? No, you can have more, as long as you group and chunk.
• Justin Trudeau believes in legalizing marijuana.
• PC sales are down 14%. There were more iPads sold last quarter than the top PC maker (Lenovo).
• Bazooka Joe gum is cancelling its comics.
• Microsoft Surface Pro: $899; 64GB of storage; no keyboard; 4.5 hours of battery life. This is the future of notebooks? Not likely.