Do I climb the looming summits of some private Kilimanjaro of the mind, digging for gold with a pickaxe?

Or do I descend into some underground lair of wild ideas, slaying the best and dragging them to the light?

It is far less adventurous than that, I’m afraid.

The honest answer is: I absolutely don’t have a clue where they come from.

Far from having a systematic process of generating them, I’m more or less at their mercy. There are many methods of “being creative” and while I don’t think that they’re bad, real creativity can’t be coerced, at least in my experience.

But there are certain things that at least seem to provide a heightened probability field for their gestation:

1. Milking The Mundane

The only summit worth climbing for ideas, as far as I can see, is a mountain of unwashed dishes. Now, that doesn’t sound all too exciting? And yes, it isn’t. But it seems to work better than any smart mind-mapping method or $19.99 “creative thinking” manual.

I’ve read somewhere that the sensation of running water may be beneficial for stimulating certain neuronal currents, hence the many reports of “shower thinkers” who get their Eureka moments in the bathroom.

Apparently, the phenomenon is so widespread that someone managed to turn it into cash by selling waterproof notepads for the shower.

2. Networking Vs. Facebooking

In his book “Where ideas come from” Steve Johnson takes us on a tour of the “history of innovation”, hunting down behavioral patterns and environmental settings that create new ideas.

What he found is that the classic Eureka moment of the lone thinker sitting at his table contemplating something until suddenly the big picture comes together might be a concept that needs to be updated.

Behind the stories Johnson tells about historical innovations we see a larger pattern: Instead of the individual that comes up with new ideas alone, we see social networks in which innovation is emerging.

For more about this concept, I highly recommend his presentation on TED or Youtube:

 ”Social Network, you say? Great, I’m on Facebook all day long but I never get any ideas, at all.”

It seems we have to make a distinction here between social networks in an outer and an inner psychological sense.

As far as I understand it, each idea is generated by another one, a bit like cell proliferation in biology. Therefore, there needs to be some kind of starting point, an input with a certain quality.

These inputs can be generated by reading good books or talking to people. They form a network. My high school philosophy teacher used to tell us that he enjoyed regular conversations with Plato and Aristotle and while we laughed about his “voices in the head” what he really meant was that he had created an inner social network.

Also, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just add 5,000 friends or “follow” smart people. There needs to be some kind of mirror-image of these networks on the inside of a person.

3. Not Looking, Not Knowing, Being Surprised

Now, after having speculated about the effects of water on the brain and esoteric concepts of an “inner pantheon of ideas” I have to return to what I said above: I don’t have a clue where good ideas come from!

It seems that the best ideas come unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere.

There certainly is some sensation of just going with the flow or even being in an almost dreamlike state, where the everyday consciousness is somewhat faded out or in the background and doesn’t block new idea downloads.

And again, while methods like Oblique Strategies can sometimes work, it seems that it can’t be learned to have ideas. Many people will disagree with me, especially those who make a living selling books and seminars about “how to be creative” but I think in the end we have to admit that we don’t have a clue about certain things and over-analyzing them won’t yield their inner workings.

I’ve found the following quote from an interview with science fiction author William Gibson also very telling:

“[T]he part of me that sits here having this conversation with you is incapable of doing any very original literary work. The part of me that creates stuff is right now largely offline and unavailable, and I couldn’t summon it if my life depended on it. I have to make myself available and hope it turns up. To me, that’s where the good stuff comes from. It’s like, William Gibson doesn’t get ideas for novels while I’m walking around in the world” – source

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img:  Some rights reserved by blankdots

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

These days, first thing in the morning I turn on my Kindle and read my personalized newspaper, hot off the press.

Here’s how (and why) I use a free and customizable way to feed subscriptions to my Kindle every day with Instapaper.

An Avalanche Of 1-Star Reviews: e-Ink ain’t Paper

If you take a look at the Kindle store under Newsstand you’ll find a lot of bad reviews. At the time of this writing, a subscription of TIME magazine which costs $2.99 per month has 95 reviews, 36 (!) of them only 1 star.  Bottom line: almost 38% of reader don’t seem happy.

And it’s not only TIME. Amazon’s Newsweek subscription has 52 reviews, 23 of them outraged.  NYT has 91 bad reviews out of 375…

I think a core problem here is that people expect the Kindle subscription to be the same (or very similar) to the paper experience. But what if a Kindle subscription could be something completely different, not just a daily lump from the same editorial board, but a highly customized and personalized newspaper which includes all your favorite blogs, magazines and more?

 Kindle Subscriptions: The KindleFeeder Way

If you google the topic you’ll immediately stumble over a service called kindlefeeder.com. It allows you to choose from a variety of different feeds and then send them to your Kindle.

At first I was very excited, but then I noticed a few things:

• automatic delivery is only for premium users (and there’s no other plan than $19 per month)
• there’s no way to share articles to my networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• some of the feeds don’t display full articles but only snippets
• sometimes the formatting of the articles was broken

After experimenting with this for a few days I decided to look for another way.

A Lean Mean Reading Machine: The Free & Social Way

The heart of this system is Instapaper because it allows you to send automatic updates for free and is wonderfully streamlined for sharing to virtually any social network.

First of all, let me show you a little chart of how I got it set up. Then I’ll walk you through the steps:

1. Check if there’s a new feed item and if yes, send it to Instapaper

2. Tell Instapaper to automatically send you a collection of your unread articles

3. Read & Share via Instapaper

This is how the process works. Simple, isn’t it?

A Step By Step Tutorial

1. Sign up for instapaper

Under “Account” click Manage my Kindle Settings

2. Set up Sharing under Account

3. Sign up for ifttt.com

4. Activate Instapaper under Channels -> Instapaper (direct link)

5. Use this “Recipe” to set up your first query. (You could also easily create your own, but let’s begin with an example)

In our example we will be adding the feed to odditycentral.com. Here’s how the recipe looks like:

You can put your own feed where it says “Feed Url” but for example’s sake you can also just hit “create task”

5.  Repeat the same procedure with different feeds. If the blog/newspaper you want to read on your Kindle doesn’t offer full feeds, you might find this little tool here helpful. Simply put the feed URL in there first and then add the url they give you to your ifttt recipe.

6. If you’ve done everything right, you’ll now get your personalized, custom newspaper delivered to your Kindle every morning at 5am.

7. Whenever you read an article you like, hit “LIKE” on your Kindle and it automatically goes to the networks you selected in step 2.

The Result

update:

here are some screenshots of how it looks like on your Kindle and how you can use it.#

in the beginning and at the end of each article you’ll find the following buttons:

clicking like will “broadcast” this article through the channels set up in your instapaper account.

In addition to that, at the end of all the articles, you’ll find the following two buttons:

clicking “archive all” will make sure you won’t get the articles sent another time. “Download Newest” will order a fresh supply from your Instapaper unread list.

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  Some rights reserved by B.K. Dewey

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Skype is not just a software. It’s a verb. As the Oxford Dictionary informs us, it can be used both with an object ”When is a good time to Skype you?” and without as in ”We skyped before we met in person.“

Skype is a word that is understood by grandmas and expat toddlers all over the world. Chances are it’s even more widespread than “to google”.

Not so well known is that besides calling family and friends or having cat conferences Skype can be a great business tool for anything from online collaboration and training sessions to reducing phone costs.  It is (not only) for these professional users that the following tips will be interesting.

1. Quick Mute

Description: Quickly mute your microphone by hitting a combination on your keyboard

Benefits: Danger of sudden background noise such as a sneeze, car alarm or ringing phone? Need to talk to someone beside you while in a professional conversation? Hitting mute will spare your caller the distraction and protect your privacy at the same time. The best thing is that these hotkeys work even when the Skype window is not in focus, meaning it will work even when the call is running in the background. (Of all these tips, this is what I use the most)

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Hotkeys

Make sure Hotkeys in general, and the Mute function in particular are enabled.

Choose a combination. Finished.

(I chose Alt+Space because the keys are directly next to one another and I can easily mute/unmute with one hand)

2. Disable IM Sounds

Description: When you get a lot of instant messages or simply use this function daily, these “plop” sounds can be very annoying, especially with headsets, especially if it is for some reason too loud and a tiny IM shoots directly through your skull.

Benefit: One of the best tips to curb distraction and preserve sanity: disable IM sounds.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Sounds

remove the tick where it says “incoming IM”

3. Disable Online Notifications

Description: Whenever one of the people on your contact list goes online, Skype will tell you by popping up little window on your screen, even if you’re doing something completely different at the time, such as writing a blog post or trying to figure out where your money went that month. If you have a long contact list with a lot of users, you’ll see a lot of these notifications. Most of the time they aren’t relevant. Also, whenever someone experiences connection instabilities he will “flicker” and you’ll see these messages popping on and off.

Benefit: Clear your headspace! Remove them!

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Notification Settings

Remove the tick where it says “comes online”

4. Call Phones All Over the Planet

Description: Use Skype to reach mobile phones and landlines

Benefits: Very cheap, good cost control and you have your phone book with you whenever you log in somewhere else.

How To:

Simply dial a number anywhere on the planet (Skype will help you to find the right prefix)

Skype will tell you to upload funds to your account. Yep, it’s not free, but still very affordable and convenient. I never use anything else anymore to make international phone calls.

5. Call Forwarding

Description:  Forward your Skype calls to your mobile phone

Benefit: Receive Skype calls even when away from computer and offline.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Calls -> Call Forwarding

Note: You have to pay for this feature. Standard rates apply.

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Did you like these tips? Here are some more…

Even More Tips

Set up your personal Skype wake-up call

Run Two Instances Of Skype Simultaneously

Build Your Own Call Center with Skype

Record Your Skype Calls

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What tips do you use? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Some of us have learned to love the screensaver images Amazon ships with their Kindle reading devices. Others quietly suffer the rotating  selection of dead poets and educational images of fishes and plants. And yet others simply ask: “What if I’d like to see something else?”

Personally, I belong to the third category. I was neither particularly thrilled nor appalled by the Kindle stock wallpapers of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and others. But, as so often, a little innocent question led me down a rabbit hole of business interests, hacks and limitless creativity.

So, in case you’re wondering. The answer is NO! You can’t change the screensaver on your Kindle. At least Amazon doesn’t want you to do it. Why? The answer to this question is a bit more complicated, but I’ve read on forums that earlier Kindles ( I think it was V2) actually had an option to choose custom screensaver images but Amazon scrapped it because newer Kindles used this feature to rotate advertisements.

Warning Notices  and Re-Claiming eReading Turf

Fortunately, that’s not the end of this story. Thanks to inquisitive individuals all over the world, there’s now a relatively danger-free way of re-configuring your Kindle so that it will allow you to choose custom screensaver or wallpaper pictures.

Compared to “unjailing” iPhones, there’s allegedly little danger of “bricking” (destroying) your Kindle this way, and the providers of the hack even offer packages to uninstall and reverse any changes you may have made, but it does require a bit of willingness to experiment.

If you want to do it, here’s a link to a detailed tutorial.  At the top it says “WARNING: Use at your own risk! “”

At first I was sceptical, too. But never underestimate the power of an innocent question. So, finally, I threw “caution” to the wind, it worked without problems, and I never missed Amazon’s Twains and Dickinsons. Instead, I now choose whatever I want to see, just like selecting a wallpaper on any other device I own.

Where To Get Alternative Screensaver Pictures From

Keep in mind that the best format for a Kindle wallpaper is 600×800 pixels and the e-ink doesn’t display color so you might as well select something grayscale from the start.

The easiest way to find suitable, ready-made Kindle wallpaper material is to browse collections.

Online Collections

kindlesavers.com

Stylish, minimalist collection.

kindlewallpapers.tumblr.com

contains some great ones!

note: there are other collections, but I’ve found them wanting.

Browse & Crawl

If you’ve exhausted all collections so far or couldn’t find anything you like, here’s four other ways:

1. Do a FlickR search!

2. Browse Tumblr for everything that was ever tagged with “kindle wallpaper”

3. Look at /r/kindlescreensavers/ on Reddit.

4. my personal favourite: use Google image search and set image size to “exactly” -> 600 x 800 px and color to -> “black & white” (see screenshot)

Make Your Own

If all of the above still isn’t enough, be creative and make your own! Tip: Use a service like www.picresize.com to transform your snapshots  into the right dimensions.

What’s Your Favourite Source For Kindle Screensavers? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by WheresWilson

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

I have no other word to describe the feeling one gets when reading the blogs or watching the videos of Yet Another Self Appointed Expert: as if SEO was a secret order to which mere mortals are not admitted (unless they buy that $200 SEO-SECRETS guide, of course).

But as time passed it became very clear that 99% of it was mere smoke and mirrors. Everyone wants to be #1 on Google. And people are willing to believe almost anything to get there.

So is SEO a lie? Far from it. But you should take everything people say with a grain of salt. Instead of believing the experts, experiment!

Having said that, here are a few tips that I wish someone had told me when I started out.

1. Know Your Keywords: What Would Google Do?

Keywords. You read about them on every SEO blog, in every SEO guide, so it must be important, right? That’s what I thought when I first heard about them. And still I had no clue what I was supposed to do!

Now I know that this reaction was perfectly natural. First of all, there’s not much to do! This doesn’t refer to secret knowledge of any kind. No, it simply means learning to think like a search engine.

Because, despite all the “smart algorithms” search engines are stupid. They are machines! They don’t have a clue what you mean when you search for something. All they know is key words or phrases. So, for example, when you write 1,000 words about the “White Album” by the Beatles, and you neither mention its title, the band’s members, producers or anything, it’s invisible to Google or any other search engine for that matter.

This is the cornerstone of SEO. You have to use the right words and phrases for your content in the right places. How do we know which are the right ones? Simply look at what other people are searching for.

Google’s Keyword tool is a great way to do this. Simply enter a keyword and see how many people are searching for it. If the number is too low, or if the competition is too high, think of another one or let yourself be inspired by Google’s related keywords.

Okay, so where do we put them? Here are some general guidelines!

2. If It’s In The Title, It’s Important (Must Be, Right?)

This is how a search engine spider thinks when it crawls your website. (Don’t worry, there aren’t any insects on your site. “Spider” is simply the name for a search engine program that constantly and restlessly scours the internet for new information to include in search results.)

In other words: Use your keywords in your titles. For WordPress that means, first of all the headline. But even when you use sub-headers (“Heading 1, 2,3, etc.”) within the post, spiders will pay special attention to them. So you should, too.

3. Bold, Italic, Underline: A Search Engine Spider’s Paradise

After scouring the titles for important keywords, spiders also like to look at everything that’s bold, italic or underlined. The idea here is that if an author gives special attention to these words, they are especially important! So if you want to make sure that they are being seen, give them some extra attention, too.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend to overdo it, but doing it once in a while will help both spiders and readers’ eyes to quickly spot what your content is about.

4. A Picture Says More Than A Thousands Words, But Nomen Est Omen

This is simple but underrated. When you upload an image on your post, make sure to rename it. In other words: Don’t upload an image called 347233X.jpg but instead, name the file for what can be seen on the picture, example: beatles-white-album.jpg. If you can couple this with your keywords (without forcing it), even better! Also, images can carry additional information, such as “Description” and “Title” – make sure to fill these out, too, if you can.

5. On Page SEO: Taking Out The Guesswork and Writing More

How do you remember all of this? Either keep practicing, or, one of my favorite solutions, lately: simply use a plugin to remind you to think like a search engine!

For a long time I dallied over a tool called Scribe which does exactly that. It reminds you, while you’re writing a post, to pay attention to all of the above and more. But paying $20 dollars per month just to have a piece of software remind me what I already knew seemed a bit steep. I wanted to have something simpler. So I looked for alternatives, and after a few hours came up with this free plugin called Copy Compass.

I’m immensely grateful to the guys who made this plugin possible. Not only is it a great way to remind oneself of certain SEO practices while racking one’s brain for creative juices, it’s also a great way to train oneself to think like a search engine.

Again, there are no magic bullets in the world of SEO, but a few habits here and there will improve the chance of being seen online.

Check the video below to see Copy Compass in action. And make sure to buy the programmers a coffee!

P.S: You don’t need to get a 100% on each article. These are just guidelines. Simply write your post and click “Analyze Content” to get some ideas.

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img: snoopy sherlock via flickr Scott Monty

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

About seven years ago I painted my television’s screen with thick bright colors to turn the distracting time-sucking device into a permanent artwork. My friends resorted to even more drastic measures such as cutting the power cord with scissors (turn off the device first, thank you!)

But we all had one thing in common: We were sick and tired of being programmed. We got rid of our tellies and never looked back. But we were no media ascetics. As much as we loved to watch our favourite movies, series, music clips, etc. we simply wanted to decide what to see and when to see it.

Set-Top Boxes & Sofa TV

Nowadays, many televisions come with Internet access and free apps either directly embedded into the device or fed through a set-top box. I don’t own one of these plasma-spewing monsters (not yet?) but I was curious about the “new TV” experience.

And what I quickly found out that it’s very easy to build your own customized home media center. Here’s how I did it.

Step 1: The Hardware For Your Media Consumption

What you need:

- computer

- screen

- loudspeakers

- remote control

I had an old netbook with Windows XP, a set of tiny but powerful USB speakers and a nice big screen. The only thing I added was a dead-simple little remote control for free browsing that I got from Ebay for $3.

Some people also simply buy little mini-desktop PC for about $200 bucks to do the job. But if you have an old computer lying around somewhere, chances are it’ll do just fine and you can build up a media center for free! (note: desktops can be too loud!)

The main thing is that  all the hardware you selected is compatible with the software part.

Step 2: The Media Center Software

If you’ve ever used a Windows PC, you might have seen the Windows Media Center (MCE) – a so called 10-foot user interface with easy access to photos, music, videos, etc.

But did you know there’s tons of free alternatives? Here’s a selection:

• Boxee
• Elisa
• Entertainer
• Freevo
• MediaPortal
• My Media System
• MythTV
• Neuros OSD
• Plex
• XBMC

(quoted from deviceguru)

I tested a few of them on a lazy afternoon and decided on XBMC for its sleek interface and huge repository of add-ons, apps or plugins (all of them for free!). The following might differ, depending on which Media Center you use, but here’s what I did:

Step 3: Extending Your Media Center Functionality

XMBC worked right out of the box on my hardware. So I added my music library and looked around a bit in the add-ons section. The cool thing about XMBC is that you can easily download/install add-ons or plugins from within the system.

Among other things I installed:

- Grooveshark - After entering your grooveshark login details you can browse, search and listen to playlists.

- Youtube – Simple and effective interface to access Youtube.

- Academic Earth - streams lectures and discussions

- IceCast - Huge selection of internet radio streams

- Mediathek - Various German TV streams for my expat existence

and so on and so forth…

Step 4: Troubleshooting And Hacking

It’s possible to boot XBMC directly before Windows but I decided on a more moderate approach and simply replaced the windows shell  to fire up my media center immediately. [tutorial]

The tutorial linked above also mentions EventGhost, a brilliant free software with which I was able to map, edit and customize some of the buttons on my remote, i.e. opening music library with one click, etc.

Summary

I’ve been using it now for two or three days and I think it’s great. Since I don’t own either a TV or sound system (anymore) this home-brew media center is a one-size-fits-all-solution and it lets me consume media without being consumed by it!

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img: xmbc

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

On many people’s wishlists this year was probably one (or even more) of the many different Kindle devices. Americans might have scored a Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire while the rest of the world had to make do with the entry level devices.

But politics aside…

While many people know that using an e-reader with e-ink or similar technology does improve the electronic reading experience (no glare!), not many people are aware that their Kindle can be a real power-house when learning a foreign language.

1. (Foreign) Language Dictionary

Every new Kindle comes with a built-in dictionary in English and (correct me if I’m wrong) depending on your location, another one for your native language if you live in one of the “Kindle Countries” (UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.)

It’s a well-known fact that reading in a foreign language is one of the best ways to extend your vocabulary, see grammar in action and simply have fun.

By using the built-in dictionary you can easily move the cursor to the beginning of a new word and you’ll see the definition directly on screen.

So, if you’re learning English as a foreign language, you don’t need to do anything, at all. Just start reading one of the thousands of free classics and use the built-in function to look up new words.

But what if you’re learning French, Spanish, German or another foreign language?

Also not a problem. Here’s how it goes:

• You’ll need to get a dictionary file for your language. You can buy one or check out this list of free ones. (Please note that all of these dictionaries are one-way (Eng->German, German->Eng, etc.), so make sure you get the right one!)
• Transfer the file to your Kindle into the documents folder. (If you bought one this happened automatically)
• Press Menu, go to -> Settings, press Menu again and select Change Primary Dictionary
• choose your dictionary and start learning!

2. Kindle Notes

While opening any Kindle book (dictionaries, too) you can highlight words and sections or even add notes. Your notes are saved in a file called Name-of-Book.mbp (read-only). The notes also go into another file called My-Clippings.txt.

There are many ways to use this, but one of the most obvious is to create vocabulary lists.

After reading you can go to clippingsconverter.com and convert your notes into Excel or Word format, PDF and even post them to Evernote.

This way you can easily print or edit your notes for further study or exercises. A good idea for example is to use the new words from your clippings by building sentences from them in the foreign language you are learning.

3. Foreign Language Learning Materials

Now, the Kindle shop offers a huge variety of bestselling top titles for lazy afternoons and holiday reading. But did you know that there also many different publications on Kindle specifically aimed at foreign language learners?

Yep, there’s actually a huge variety of non-fictional works that can be useful, besides the already mentioned dictionaries for Kindle. Here are some ideas:

• textbooks & workbooks: Search the Kindle Store for “Learn Hebrew” and you’ll find a little booklet published by my colleague that includes 5 Hebrew dialogues with transliteration, translation, vocabulary lists and exercises. This is just an example, of course. There are many such materials available for other languages as well.

• flashcards: Something not as obvious is to use Kindle as a Flash Card browser. Yes, really. Here’s how it works: Each word occupies one page on your Kindle; by clicking next and previous page on your device you can “flip” the words and see the translation, just as you would do with flashcards on paper. Here’s an example.

Note: Although Kindle officially only supports a handful of languages, there are many publications in the Kindle Store for other languages as well. Since Kindle doesn’t display Hebrew, Arabic or Cyrillic letters, for example, these books use images as a workaround.

You won’t be able to use the dictionary function, but until Amazon supports more languages natively this is better than nothing.

If you buy ebooks in PDF you won’t have any problems on your Kindle, either, by the way – no matter what language.

Happy Reading and Learning!

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img: tutorial screenshot via rekindle, photo by mwkelley 

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

One year ago at this time, I did something noone prepared me for: I reduced everything that I own to the size of a suitcase.

Why?

My wife and I had decided to move to a foreign country which was almost 3,000 kilometers away.

Shipping the contents of our apartment (furniture, dishes, my homestudio equipment etc.) around the world would cost a fortune, or at least a lot more than just renewing everything once we would arrive.

So a decision was made: We would get rid of everything and take with us only what we could carry.

Easier said than done.

The apartment we were living in at the time contained numerous galaxies of stuff from times and places ranging more than 20 years back. There were shoe boxes full of linguistic textbooks (who knew when I’d need them again, right?), a carefully assembled CD collection and even original drawings from my kindergarten self.

In case you’ll ever find yourself in a similar situation, I hope the following will be helpful:

Week 1: Auctioning Off The Heavy Weights

First of all we decided to sell as much of it as possible. Among these items were: A Technics Sl-1200 (bought second hand in Thailand and shipped once around the world), a four channel mixer, a studio-microphone + stand, a four-octave MIDI keyboard, a CD player, an amplifier, two heavy loudspeakers, a desktop tower, a screen and a printer/scanner/fax thing.

We put all of it on ebay and told the people: “pick it up yourself.” – This resulted in a bit of fast cash and meeting lots of interesting people right at my doorstep. Except the printer/scanner/fax thing we sold everything. And all of the people were really nice, if sometimes a bit peculiar. (I remember one of them bringing a sort of hand-made harness which he fastened to the desktop tower and lugged off with it.) Virtually all of them gave me weird looks when I told them that we were dismantling the apartment. But for politeness’ sake, I guess, they didn’t say anything but paid and carried off the goods.

Once all of that stuff was gone, unfortunately, the apartment didn’t look fuller. The opposite was the case: The more we got rid of these things, the more we became aware of how much was still left.

Week 2: Throwing Out Hard Storage Mediums

But at least it was a bit easier now. Without a CD player there was no need for CDs, and without a record player, what do you need records for? So, off they went. I started auctioning the CDs off, one by one, first, but it was a stupid idea. It took too long and gave me a headache. So I sold them as a bundle. The owner of a 2nd hand music store eventually picked them up and gave me a juicy tip, complimenting me on my taste of music.

A bit more problematic was the fact that one of my favorite media didn’t need any special playback device but was firmly lodged between my shoulders: Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about books!

I had collected many of them over many many years. Again, I started out by auctioning them off, one by one (I loved them too much to just dump them on the street) but it quickly drained my energies and focus. So, after a while I decided to pay the local 2nd hand bookshops a visit and see who was buying what.

First stop was a very German shop that insisted on scanning the books’ barcodes, one by one, compare them with their database and accept them only if they fitted a certain (to me incomprehensible) pattern. Apparently, the staff didn’t have anything else to do than to just lazily swivel on their chairs and interrogate me about the books: “Why did you buy this? Is this good? If you didn’t like it why should we buy it?” and so on and so forth –  it took an eternity and half of my goods didn’t conform to their pattern. So I had to change my strategy.

My wife found a tiny book store a few blocks away in which an old man with a grey beard sat among thousands of old books. It was hard to see anything in there, not to mention walk! But the man was very friendly, obviously a hopeless collector, and we were eager to feed his addiction. We agreed on some kind of euro per kilo offer or something and from then on it was stuffing books into backpacks, going to the store, cashing in and returning home to repeat the procedure.

This, to use the modern speech, unlocked another achievement: Empty shelves!

Week 3: Breaking Down Furniture And Trashing The Unsalvageable

Once the shelves were empty it became relatively easy to dispose of them. A few were old and useless so I just bent them until they splintered, threw them out of my ground-floor window while my wife carried them off to the trash.

Those that were still good we lugged around to the entrance gate of the house and mostly after ten minutes they had disappeared. Among these items were: two wooden bookshelves, a metal/glass desk, two office chairs and a sofa which quickly disappeared from the street only to reappear a few days later, a few meters further away where it waited in the snow for many days until it was finally carried off to the eternal sofa grounds by some unknown force (maybe someone had complained about that bulky thing blocking the sidewalk?).

Week 4: The Devil Is In The Details

Despite getting rid of all of the above, there was still too much left, not too much to feel homey at home, anymore but definitely too much to carry on our backs or just leave to the unsuspecting landlord.

The short answer is that we put everything in boxes and put it out on the street. Everything, from old clothing to dishes to unclassifiable junk was never waiting more than a few hours to be finally picked up and carried off by their new owners. Many times, I remembered, saying to my wife: “What? That? Who could possibly want that?” but then, minutes later, the boxes were wiped clean as if the streets insatiable appetite had devoured even the least desirable of our possessions. (Sometimes even the boxes themselves disappeared!)

The long answer is that it was these small things, from pencils to cables, that caused the most trouble – and actually, we were carrying them off from the first day of this project until the very last.  The lesson here, obviously, is never to accumulate to much of it in the first place, but then again, these things have a way of clinging to human life like leeches. “Oh, a free promotional pen! What space could this possibly take?” we say, but then, years later we open a drawer and are drowned in a flood of junk!

Week 5: The Departure

Nothing I remember better than the final day in this apartment, actually it was early morning.

It was cold. Very cold. Thick ice covered the streets and a terrible wind swept through the darkness.

We woke up on our mattress, the only furniture that still remained in the apartment. While I boiled some water for our last coffee and my wife went into the bathroom, I took the mattress, blankets and pillows and dumped them into the trashcan.

When my wife came out of the bathroom, we sat down at the table, drank our coffee, ate a slice of bred, and then sat the table into the snow next to the house’s entrance gate.

Our apartment was empty. The cups and dishes of our last breakfast went out in a trash can. We took our suitcases, locked the door and then – as previously agreed with the landlord – I put our keys into the caretaker’s mailbox.

I still remember the sound of metal on metal as our keys hit the bottom of his mailbox.

The door behind us was closed. And we stood in the dark, past the point of no return.

So we carried off everything we owned through the icy black morning, realizing that wheels on a suitcase were as useless in the snow as an Alaskan beer cooler.

P.S: here are some nice before/after pictures:

P.P.S: feel free to share your own dismantling stories in the comments below.

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 Some rights reserved by Joseph Robertson

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

When you’re teaching online you have the whole world wide web at your disposal: an endless array of interactive exercises, articles, videos, podcasts and so on and so forth. As a rule of thumb: There’s always more than you could possibly use. And: There’s new stuff every day.

So, when there is no excuse of inadequate or not enough, there’s nothing that could possibly go wrong, or is there?

Well…

The Overabundance of Awesome

Often I find myself browsing through the net and saying: “Hey, wow, you could use this and that in your lesson with X,Y,Z.” but ask me a day later about it and I forgot the source.

In order to avoid this moment of seeing the perfect worksheet in front of my eyes but having no clue how I got there the day before (it’s just no fun scrolling for hours through your browsing history) – I use bookmarks.

Nothing new, right? Well, yes. On the other hand it’s important to have some kind of system. If, each time I find something related and just hit bookmark, it’ll be a disorganized mess after a while. So, what I do is twofold:

1. Keep those bookmarks organized: Create folders and subfolders with meaningful (?) descriptions
2. Stick to the system: In the heat of the moment I often just “dump” my bookmarks in the general bucket. So, then I do the sorting and structuring, later.

Sounds boring? Well, maybe it is. But there’s nothing like a student saying: “I always wondered about the use of Konjunktiv II irrealis” and being able to respond with a salvo of pinpointed exercises within miliseconds.

Many times people asked me: “Where do you get all that stuff from so quickly?” and my answer is always the same: “I got them bookmarks sorted out!”

Dive-In, Build-Up, Wrap-Up!

Okay, so let’s say we got a well-organized little bookmark library that we can always restock and draw from when preparing lessons. But how do I cope with setting up and preparing the actual session in terms of sequence?

There’s a plugin.. I mean extension for that.

Really? A browser extension just for preparing lessons online?

Well, not officially. But it does the job! Here’s what I used to do before:

1. Open up browser. Load all the learning materials, whiteboard apps, mindmaps and whatnot in tabs, arranged from left to right with the stuff I want to start with at the beginning and homework/further materials at the end.
2. Leave the browser window-open and DO NOT close it. If your browser crashes or you suddenly go on an unrelated browsing-spree and close everything: START AGAIN!

Especially if you like to prepare hours or even days before a lesson, this method is obviously not the best . What to do? Simple: Browser Sessions!

You get the idea?

Instead of having to keep my window with all the tabs open all the time I simply do it once and save the session. Whenever the meeting starts I simply pull it up again.

Some browsers support this natively but there are a few benefits in using an extension:

• Manage multiple sessions/students and quickly save/retrieve them
• replace or overwrite a session as you go along. This is very helpful when things went differently than you planned and you want to bring the materials over into the next session. Simply close what you’ve already done, add a few more things and replace/overwrite the session.

If you’re using Chrome I recommend this extension here. For Firefox there’s this and for Safari you can check this out.

UPDATE: For even more control (ability to edit existing sessions) see also this Chrome extension recommended by Glenn Weidner.

Bottom Line?

It might seem like overkill to do this in the beginning but I’ve actually experiences a few benefits from this practice:

• saves time and energy (that can be invested in other things)
• reduces redundancy (nothing like having to do the same over and over again…)
• makes me go into a lesson with a sense of being fully prepared
• even in emergency situations (no time for preparation) there’s always something that you can build on

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images: success kid meme, still from 10 commandments with C. Heston, extension screenshot and a messy table via morguefile.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Personally, I need to use a certain shortcut quite a few times before it is firmly lodged in the grey matter of my brain and doesn’t slip my mind if I don’t use the function for a few days/weeks.

Therefore, I’m happy to report that makeuseof offers 24 downloadable cheatsheets for everything from iTunes to Photoshop.

Click here to check them out »

P.S: You need a password to download them. It’s “makeusof”.

UPDATE: I’ve just seen that makeuseof also offers lots of guides for everything from building your own PC to setting up Linux. The password required to view/download these free ebooks/guides seems to be the same.

printable PDF cheatsheets. geeky x-mas present or just plain useful…

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photo:  Some rights reserved by Aeioux

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.