Nuffing.com

It doesn’t matter if you’ve bought a newly built home, a condo in a maintained community, or a fixer-upper—owning your own place brings out the home improvement itch in us all (or at least requires us to do necessary repairs and maintenance tasks). Here are ten pieces of advice to help turn your dwelling place into a better home.

10. Choose the Improvements That Add the Most Value to Your Home

If you were offered $100,000, no strings attached, what home improvements would you do? Chances are, a long laundry list of changes come to mind, from refinishing the hardwood floors to adding a new bathroom. Some home improvements, however, are more likely to increase your home’s value than others. Although you shouldn’t think of your home as an investment, with limited home improvement funds, it’s good to consider whether a project has a decent return on investment.

9. Tackle the Quick Projects That Are Most Timely

Whether winter is coming or you’re considering projects in another season, some home improvements are more urgent than others—saving you money immediately or preventing devastating damage. Sometimes it only takes ten minutes or less to make simple changes around the house that boost your living space.

8. Decide to DIY or Not

Even if you’re a weekend warrior with a well-stocked workshop, not all home improvement projects are suitable to do yourself (or at least, without the help of a professional). Know your limits, start small if you’re a beginner, and then keep calm and DIY on (if you so wish).

7. Hone Your Home Improvement Skills

Big projects or small, probably all of us could stand to learn some decent home repair or home improvement skills. (All around the home, there are things we should never have to pay others to fix for us.) Learn Bob Villa-worthy skills and help others at the same time by volunteering or through free clinics and other resources. Turn to great reading resources and try starter projects too. If you get stuck on a project, iOS app Fountain will connect you to a home improvement expert to answer your question for $5. (Also, did you know we have a home improvement subblog here at Lifehacker called Workshop?)

6. Find Inspiration for Your Next Home Project

Pinterest is your friend, homeowners. As is Houzz, This Old House, and BHG. Zillow Diggs is pretty neat because it not only shows you project photos, but cost estimates and contractors as well. You can also binge watch HGTV on Netflix, but I’m warning you, you may never leave the house again.

5. Get the Right Tools

You can’t really improve your home much with just your bare hands (you’ll need a multi-tool at least!). Equip your toolbox with the essential tools for any minor repair or major project, such as basic plumbing tools. Don’t forget your smartphone might be the best DIY tool in your kit, though, and, when all else fails, there’s duct tape.

4. Find Money for Your Home Improvement

Unfortunately, most home improvements do not pay for themselves. If you can’t afford to finance the project in full with cash, know the different ways you can finance your home improvement without putting your home at risk. Also, if you know the difference between tax breaks you get for home repairs or home improvements, you can make the proper deductions at tax time and get some money back from your project. Similarly, if you’re paying private mortgage insurance, home improvements that increase the value of your home could help you eliminate that cost, which, although it doesn’t raise funds for your project, can reduce your housing expenses overall.

3. Choose the Right Contractor

About as important as finding a good dentist and finding a good therapist: Finding a responsible handyman or contractor. Horror stories of homeowners being scammed by contractors or having work done so shoddily that it cost thousands of dollars to redo (not to mention the money already spent) give me the shivers. Vet your contractors carefully:

1. Get recommendations from friends, neighbors, and supply houses.
2. Check for complaints against the contractor.
3. Find out what licenses and permits they need.
4. Check out the contractor’s insurance. Don’t skip this step!
5. Meet with the contractor.
6. Get quotes. Track the quote variables with a spreadsheet or other list.
7. Ask for references and check them out.

The FTC offers advice on questions you should ask a contractor, during which you might want to slyly take a look at their trucks and tools for telling signs.

2. Save Money on Your Home Improvement Projects

The more money we save on one home improvement project, the more we have left for all the other ones we want to do. In addition to knowing the remodeling projects that offer the most bang for your buck, know which elements of a project you can splurge or skimp on—spend more on items that are hard to replace, such as the bathtub, but skimp on the faucet, for example, or spend more on a professional range if you’re a gourmet cook and save on the decorative tiles and flooring that look like premium materials.

Shop at reuse centers (including architectural salvage stores) to save big bucks on materials, appliances, and furnishings. And after your project, pay it forward by donating your home improvement leftovers to Habitat for Humanity.

1. Have a Plan

Last but not least, one of the worst things you can do when it comes to home improvements is to start a project without the major details—cost, time, materials, and design—as realistic as possible from the start. Nothing costs more than having to "change horses in midstream" (e.g., you want to move the fridge somewhere else now or want to change your tile choice). Use design tools to conceptualize your project and add a healthy buffer (10-15% more) to your time and financial budget to account for the inevitable surprises.

Even if you don’t do major projects like remodeling the kitchen or building a deck, it’s wise to set aside some money each year for repair costs and use an essential maintenance calendar to keep your home sweet home in tip-top shape all year round.

Photos by Tina Mailhot-Roberge, Dave & Margie Hill / Kleerup, Morgan, mtneer_man, JSlavy (Shutterstock), Blue Diamond Photography, abimages (Shutterstock), MelvinSchulbman.

via Lifehacker
Top 10 Home Improvement Tips Every Homeowner Should Know

Guillaume Juin took 80GB of photos from the International Space Station crew members from 2011 to 2014 and made this stunning film. Without a doubt, it’s the most formidable video of the views from the ISS I’ve ever seen. Watching it makes me extra-jealous of the people up there.

Play it huge on your TV or projection screen for maximum effect.

All the footage (around 80GB of pictures) was processed throught after effects/premiere, denoised for some shots, removal of dead pixels for some shots, deflickering, and simple color grading (didnt want to change the already incredible look! just curves, saturation, and some blue crushing).

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

via Gizmodo
The clearest, most stunning video I’ve ever seen of Earth from space

Windows/OS X/Linux: Adobe just launched Brackets 1.0, a text editor for web developers. It’s free and has Inline Editing, Live Preview, and Preprocessor Support features, which all deliver unique conveniences.

We’ve covered plenty of awesome text editors, but Adobe’s Brackets has some pretty nifty features of its own. Using the Inline Editors feature, you can see two or more files side by side instead of flipping back and forth between tabs like most other text editors. Live Previews show you the changes you make, as you make them, in the browser. You don’t have to worry about periodically refreshing the page to check on your progress. Preprocessor Support makes it easy to find, add, and edit class correlations between your HTML and CSS files: hover over a class in the index.html file and hit Command+E. Each CSS file the class is affected by will pop up, then proceed to open the file(s) you want in the inline editor to make changes. If you haven’t added CSS code for the class you select, you can do so right then with just a click.

Brackets supports HTML, CSS, LESS, and SASS markup languages. LESS and SASS have the same capabilities as CSS with Preprocessor Support, so don’t worry about missing out if you prefer one of those to CSS. It’s is free and open source. Furthermore, Brackets itself is written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, so the web developers that use it have the power to contribute to the program’s continued development. Hit the link below to check it out.

Brackets | via The Next Web

via Lifehacker
Adobe’s Brackets is a Free Text Editor for Web Developers

This video is absolutely absurd. It starts innocently enough, like a cheesy 80’s sitcom and then makes a turn and another turn and another turn and keeps going until it creates a labyrinth of hilariousness and craziness. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why I kept watching. I don’t know why I’m still laughing.

The video, which apparently aired on Adult Swim, probably makes a lot more sense when you’re flying high.

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

via Gizmodo
I don’t know what this absurd video is about but it keeps getting funnier

via How to Carve Roast Unicorn
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES EPIC TRAILER

You can find a ‘Quick Usage Tour’ in our documentation. In this post, I’m going to walk you through that tour and elaborate on a few things. Enjoy! Things to consider I’m assuming you’ve already installed MySQL. Sphinx does not require that you use MySQL, but the following examples do. I’m installing Sphinx on Ubuntu […]
via Planet MySQL
Sphinx Search Quick Tour using a MySQL Datasource

There’s a girl in your political science class that you’re attracted to. You’d like to get to know her better, but the thought of even saying hello makes you sick to your stomach. You’re at the grocery store and you see a colleague from work pushing a cart with his kids. Instead of saying hi […]
via The Art of Manliness
Help for the Shy Guy — Step 1: Understand the Nature of Your Shyness

VLC is easily one of our favorite media players (and yours too). However, it’s not just a one-trick pony. Under the surface, there’s a wide range of features that you might not have known it could do.

Download YouTube Videos

We’ve discussed plenty of ways to download YouTube videos before. However, you have one option already installed on your computer. VLC lets you play and download YouTube videos right from its desktop interface. Here’s how:

1. Find a video on YouTube—like this one—and copy the URL from the address bar.
2. In VLC, head to Media > Open Network Stream.
3. Paste the YouTube link in the box and click Play.
4. Under Tools, click Codec Information.
5. In the box that says Location, right-click the block of text and click Select All. Copy this text to your clipboard.
6. Go back to your browser and paste the link in the address bar. This will open the source file directly on YouTube’s servers.
7. Right-click the video as it plays and select Save Video As.

You can also record clips from YouTube videos as they’re streaming in VLC by pressing the red Record button in the player itself. This isn’t as direct of a rip, but it’s handy if you need to grab a particular clip out of a long video.

Record Your Desktop

Desktop recording software ranges from poor quality and free to incredibly powerful and expensive. VLC manages to strike a balance between both. In our tests, it wasn’t powerful enough to, say, screen record a movie. However, for showing someone a problem you’re having on a computer or providing quick instructions on how to perform a task, it’s more than enough.

1. Under Media, click "Open Capture Device."
2. Click the "Capture Mode" dropdown and select "Desktop."
3. Modify the frame rate. 15 f/s will probably be good enough for desktop recording, though 30 may be required for more fast-paced movement.
4. Click the dropdown arrow next to "Play" and select "Convert."
5. In the "Profile" dropdown, choose MP4.
   1. At this step, you can click the tool icon to modify the settings of this profile. Here you can modify things like resolution or bitrate. We’ll use the default settings for now, but you can come back here later if you need to tweak the final product.
6. In the Destination box, choose a location to place the finished file.
7. Click Start.

Once you click Start, VLC will stream a feed of your desktop into itself behind the scenes. Let it run while you record your workspace. When you’re done, you can click the stop buton in the player controls to end recording.

Convert Video Files

VLC also has a pretty decent video converter built in. If you have a file that needs to be in a different format to upload or play somewhere, you may not need to download an entirely different application just to convert it. Here’s how to convert between one file and another:

1. Under Media, click "Convert/Save."
2. Add the file you want to convert in the File Selection section.
3. Click "Convert/Save."
4. In the Settings section, choose the type of file you want to convert the file into under Profile.
5. Give the file a name and location under Destination.
6. Click Start.

The converted video file will be deposited in the target location. VLC certainly isn’t a replacement for a more robust application like Handbrake. However, for simple jobs, it’s probably the only video converter most people have on their machines.

Record Your Webcam

Your webcam may or may not have come with software to take pictures and record videos. However, chances are VLC has some advantages over both. Not only can you choose several different types of formats to record to, you can also tweak a number of fine grain settings if needed. This is helpful for making YouTube videos or recording video messages to send to friends or relatives. Here’s how to record video from your webcam:

1. Under Media, click Open Capture Device.
2. In the "Capture mode" drop down, select DirectShow.
3. For "Video device name" choose your webcam.
4. For "Audio device name" choose your microphone.
5. Click "Advanced options."
   1. If you want to use the software that came with your device to control input settings, choose "Device properties."
   2. Otherwise, enter a value for "Video input frame rate." 30 is a good rule of thumb for smooth video, though you can use less if you’re not concerned about quality.
   3. Click Okay.

At this point, you have two options. You can click Play to play live video through VLC and record segments as needed by pressing the red Record button. Alternatively, you can choose "Convert/Save" from the dropdown and select where you would like the recorded file to go. Both methods have their advantages. The former allows you to preview your video and take clips in short bursts. However, this method requires headphones, as it can create a feedback loop. It also may cause a more sluggish recording on slower computers.

Using the Convert/Save method avoids the feedback problem but it also doesn’t provide you much information on what you’re looking at or when you’re done recording. You can stop the recording by pressing Stop in the player, but there’s no indicator that you are still recording at the time.

Subscribe to Podcasts

You might not think of VLC as a podcast manager, but if you use it regularly, it’s actually pretty handy. To add a podcast, you’ll need the RSS feed of the show. As an example, we’ll use Lifehacker alum Adam Dachis’ Supercharged podcast here. The RSS link will probably look something like this:

http://ift.tt/1sdazeO

Once you’ve found the RSS feed for the podcast you want to keep up with, follow these steps:

1. In VLC’s sidebar, scroll down until you see Podcasts.
2. Hover your mouse over Podcasts and click the plus sign on the right.
3. Paste the RSS feed URL of the show you want to add.
4. Click OK.

Now, your podcast of choice will appear in the Podcasts sidebar section. Click on the name of a show and you’ll see a list of available episodes. Double click on any one of them to start streaming.

via Lifehacker
The Best Hidden Features of VLC