4 Tips for Photographing Bugs and Insects

Sometimes the most interesting things to photograph are right under your nose, even though you might have to look a little harder to see them. Bugs, insects, and other creepy crawlies might not seem like compelling subjects, but if you take a bit of time to examine the smaller creatures who inhabit the world around […]

The post 4 Tips for Photographing Bugs and Insects by Simon Ringsmuth appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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4 Tips for Photographing Bugs and Insects

The Difference in Monthly Housing Costs Between Renters and Homeowners

The Difference in Monthly Housing Costs Between Renters and Homeowners

It’s not easy to decide if buying a home is worth it or if renting makes more financial sense. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers some food for thought.

The BLS compared average annual expenditures on housing-related items between homeowners and renters (2012 data). The findings probably won’t surprise you: renters, on average, pay more for the roof over their heads, but homeonwers pay more for everything else associated with it, such as maintenance, insurance, and water and other public services.

The Difference in Monthly Housing Costs Between Renters and Homeowners

When you buy a home, you’re likely to spend more on "lifestyle creep" items, like home furnishings, and, because you’d likely buy a bigger home than you’d rent, utilities.

Renting might be cheaper overall—depending on where you live and if you take that saved money and invest it instead—but as the Motley Fool points out to further stir this debate, buying a home is a sort of forced savings that ultimately can increase your net worth:

Warren Buffett once said, "All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks."

While Buffett believes that his home was a great investment because of its "52 years of terrific memories," Fool analyst Anand Chokkavelu believes homeownership is better than renting for most people for financial reasons. Anand argues that buying a home acts as a commitment device for people to save money. By being forced to sock away money every month for a home, people build equity in that home, rather than spending it on things they don’t need. This forced savings can be seen in the median net worth of homeowners, which is 30 times greater than that of those who don’t have a house.

It’s a very individual choice, so a calculator like this one from The New York Times could help you make this tough decision.

Renting vs. Buying a Home: Comparing the Monthly Costs | The Motley Fool

Photo by Phil Sexton.


via Lifehacker
The Difference in Monthly Housing Costs Between Renters and Homeowners

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

We’ve seen beyond the greasy curtain of fast food and discovered how KFC actually makes fried chicken from the raw animal to the final product that gets put into buckets and double downs at their stores. It’s basically like how your grandma would do it—except they use an infernal magic machine called "pressure frier."

Disclosure: KFC arranged for travel and accommodations to tour their kitchen and facilities at the KFC headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky as part of a KFC Insiders Event for the media.

After recently taking a tour of KFC’s headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky and running into creepy, beyond realistic statues of Colonel Sanders (one surprised me because it moved and talked) and trying to see if KFC employees always eat KFC for lunch at the cafeteria (they don’t but they could!), I got my apron on in the KFC company kitchen and made some fried chicken the official KFC way.

And though much of the specifics that have turned Kentucky Fried Chicken into KFC is purposely played up to create a mythical company lore (no one knows the secret 11 ingredient Original Recipe, a fact that KFC likes to remind people of, and the Colonel was the World’s Most Interesting Man, a title KFC hopes to re-take from the Dos Equis guy), it’s a little bit comforting to know that, well, comfort fast food is made in a way that we can relate to. Well, except KFC does it on a much more massive scale.

But the real surprise is in how unsurprising the process actually is (which I guess, is indicative of how low we set the bar for fast food chains). Here’s what they do:

1. Inspect chicken breasts, thighs, legs and wings

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

KFC uses real chickens but those chickens come in a bag because they’ve already been processed into the desirable cuts. The first step in making KFC fried chicken is to check the chicken. Basically, it’s a quality control thing, the people in the back of the restaurant are seeing if the chicken is bruised, if there is excess fat or leftover feathers or accidental organs left in. They’re usually fine.

2. Dunk chicken into the brine

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

It’s to get the breading to stick.

3. Dry off the chicken by tossing the chicken around 7 times

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

You’ll soon see that KFC is obsessed with doing things 7 times. The drying toss is done to ensure the chicken isn’t too wet when it hits the breading.

4. Lay out the chicken onto the secret Original Recipe breading

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

Now the fun begins.

5. Cover the chicken in the breading with a pseudo breaststroke motion

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

The breading is so fine that when you put your hands in the mixing tub, it basically feels like swimming in fairy dust.

6. For 7 times

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

Yup, 7 strokes.

7. Collect the chicken in a basket and do this (quite fun) see saw motion… 7 times

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

Again, with the 7 times. This is done to make sure the chicken isn’t over-breaded (and to re-use the breading).

8. Place the breaded chicken on the frying rack

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

There’s a whole chart that KFC uses to teach its employees how to place the breaded chicken cuts on a rack with different illustrations depending on the size of the cuts.

9. Rack ’em and pressure fry them

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

KFC pressure fries its fried chicken which sounds scary and awesome and requires special machines to do so.

10. Wait over 10 minutes for the machines to do their thing and… that’s how you make KFC fried chicken.

This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

Pro tip: KFC fried chicken tastes especially delicious when you’re the one making it.

Here’s a video clip showing the whole process:


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via Gizmodo
This is how KFC actually makes their fried chicken from beginning to end

Investing: Two Ways To Beat Average Returns

This article is by staff writer William Cowie. If you are serious about your financial future, you’ve got to be serious about investing. Enough has been said about that, so I won’t belabor the point. But here’s a financial maxim that can’t be said enough… Financial success comes from doggedly investing over a long period…




via Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance That Makes Sense.
Investing: Two Ways To Beat Average Returns

​Toggle Your iPhone’s Brightness With a Home Button Triple Tap

iOS: We all know that easily changing the brightness of your phone is a big perk for nighttime usage. In iOS 8, you can set your home button to toggle your screen brightness level on your iPhone or iPad.

This is another secret power of iOS’s accessibility options that doesn’t require jailbreak. First, you’ll set the triple tap to put a zoom view in effect. Then you’ll manually change the zoom to normal, and set the low light setting. When you use the triple-tap to make the zoom effect, the low light filter will apply as well, allowing you to toggle the brightness of the device.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. From your home screen, go to Settings > General > Accessibility and tap the toggle button to enable Zoom.
  2. A zoom window will pop up on the screen. Ignore it. Your next step is to triple-tap on the screen with three fingers and a zoom menu will appear. If it doesn’t work the first time you do it, try it a couple more times at varying speeds.
  3. Tap "Full Screen Zoom" on the menu, and then hold and drag the slider to the left to get the zoom view back to normal.
  4. Still on the same menu, tap "Choose Filter" and then "Low Light" to apply the low light filter. This will be the low light setting you’ll see when you toggle the home button in the future.
  5. Exit the pop-up menu and go back to the Accessibility menu. Scroll all the way down. Hit the Accessibility shortcut option and select "Zoom".
  6. Try it and make sure it works! Go to the home screen, then triple-tap the home button to see the screen change brightness.

Check out the video above from Snazzy Labs to see how it’s done and follow along.

iPhone Brightness Button Toggle Hack | Snazzy Labs via Phone Arena


via Lifehacker
​Toggle Your iPhone’s Brightness With a Home Button Triple Tap

Canon 7D Mark II Hands-On Review

Check out this video from B&H Photo on the new 7D Mark II. In the video, Larry Becker gives a good overview of the camera and its features. You can find more specs and details about the 7D Mark II here at B&H Photo. Copyright/DMCA Notice: The RSS entry was originally published on Photography Bay. […]

via Photography Bay
Canon 7D Mark II Hands-On Review

Ballmer Says Amazon Isn’t a “Real Business”

theodp writes According to Steve Ballmer, Amazon.com is not a real business. "They make no money," Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. "In my world, you’re not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don’t make money at some point." Ballmer’s comments come as Amazon posted a $437 million loss for the third quarter, disappointing Wall Street. "If you are worth $150 billion," Ballmer added, "eventually somebody thinks you’re going to make $15 billion pre-tax. They make about zero, and there’s a big gap between zero and 15." Fired-up as ever, LA Clippers owner Ballmer’s diss comes after fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban similarly slammed IBM, saying Big Blue is no longer a tech company (Robert X. Cringely seems to concur). "Today, they [IBM] specialize in financial engineering," Cuban told CNBC after IBM posted another disappointing quarter. "They’re no longer a tech company, they are an amalgamation of different companies that they are trying to arb[itrage] on Wall Street, and I’m not a fan of that at all."

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Ballmer Says Amazon Isn’t a “Real Business”