Airbag has been around for a while, at least long before all these damn DIY-GTD blogs that carry the blatant stench of content formated in hopes of earning big click-through text-ad money. Sorry, if my attitude sounds piss poor then let me rephrase that statement in the form of a friendly riddle:
Q: What do French whores and DIY-GTD blogs have in common?
A: The both ping people for money.
Sure, some of this content is worthwhile, even sometimes useful, but I'm starting to see written instruction for tasks such as: boiling eggs, cleaning a workspace by putting everything in a box, and how-to push away from the computer so you can take a walk. Seriously.
If USENET was still around (Yeah I know it is but who the hell uses it anymore? Seriously? Ok, don't answer that.) such discussion would have been kept under the group: alt.remedial.thinking.is.rad.
Still, being the "old guy", I feel a bit left out, and wonder how much precious search engine optimized traffic I'm loosing on a daily, nay, hourly basis because I mostly use this space to take phonetic stabs at political leaders, irritate peers by pointing out flaws in their software, expound on the Superstring Theory, et cetera, et cetera.
Hereto I present my own DIY-GTD content in hope that it can prevent further dumbing-down of the web:
How to Stop Breathing Through Your Mouth
(Please consult your physician to know if nostril breathing is right for you)
To begin you will need to clear out the nasal passage by blowing your nose into facial tissue — repeat if necessary. And make sure to properly discard all facial tissue in a waste receptacle when done.
If this action does not fully clear your nose try using nasal spray or mentholatum to aid in the purging process. In extreme cases eating three-to-five tablespoons of potent hot sauce can be an effective tool in clearing your breath tubes — be prepared to cry a little.
After taking these steps you should be able to bring air in and through the nose. If you find yourself straining or feel any discomfort try looking for foreign objects that might be blocking the airway. Things like coins, crayons, candy corn, and Cheerios are the most commonly found items preventing nasal breathing in a substantial percentage of mouth breathers.
Once the passageways are free and clear it's now time to stop breathing through your mouth and instead intake air through the nose. This is easily done by moving your bottom jaw in an upward fashion until your top and lower lips form a comfortable, airtight seal. Be careful not to close your mouth to quickly as you might inadvertently bite your tongue. Denture users may want to remove their teeth first to help avoid the potential discomfort of clipping the tip of the tongue.
When your mouth has been successfully closed, try to draw air into the lungs through your nose. If everything works like it should your lungs will fill with air. This might feel funny at first as the molecules fly through your nose hairs but after a few good deep breaths this sensation will become more natural and before you know it, you won't feel a thing.
If after following this guide you are still unable to stop breathing through your mouth try placing two pieces of industrial strength duct tape over your word hole and effectively seal it shut.
Before you know it you'll notice an increase in brain activity in no time.
Good luck.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Thank you! Finally someone has said something about this GTD cult.
If only I had been more organised, I would have written something a long time ago. :P
here here!
I will trackback with a "in through the nose, out through the mouth" technique that I've found useful.
Haha! Classic. Useful tips. But what do those of us with tiny nasal passages do? Mine rarely ever clear out and I almost had to have surgery to enlarge them. Of course I'm not stupid, so I guess this isn't aimed at me :)
I guess it only applies to mouth-breathers AND bottom-feeders :)
You get a rating of 9/10 for these tips. Time to start the Airbag GTD blog :)
Why not sound off on something more meaningful than stooping to respond to this issue. What the bleep do you think you are doing with your bleeping life. I am bleeping kidding so take a bleeping chill pill man. But can we all try and reinvent some sort of web Schiavo so we can all become freeking reeech and fabulous commentators on bleeeping absolutely useless bleeping bleep? I don't even know what the bleep I am talking about, and so should you.
OK, for this piece I will forgive irritating recurrence of "Ken" post in my bloglines.
I've enjoyed your tips on how to breath through my nose but I've found a serious flaw. What happens when I have to read something? I can't move my lips and keep them sealed you know!
@Biggest Apple.
Reading? Just move your eyes over the content in a left to right operation. A group of letters forms a word, and an indeterminate group of words forms a sentance. Multiple sentances then form paragraphs.
None of this reading crap requires you to stop nasal breathing.
Or do you mean out loud? Ohhhhh.
AMEN.
Next Action - Write a response to Airbag's GTD post
Greg, great post! I must admit though, I have a few GTD blogs in my RSS reader.
Next Action - Write a response to Airbag's GTD post -- DONE
The best/worst part about DIY-GTD blogs is that they monopolize two acronyms instead of one. Fiendish!!
Is it bad that I had to look up what exactly is a GTD blog? I might be kinda new to the blog thing, but a step by step instructional on how to boil an egg (which you can find on several hundred sites) casts a poor reflection on the human race.
You inspired me. I had to write my own truly useless life hack in homage.
You are a scholar and a gentleman.
(I also have bookmarked a bunch of these sites, but I did lose it over the "How to Boil an Egg" and "How to Call in Sick" posts at eHow.com.)
Good points. But I would have never known how to fold a shirt better if it wasn't for lifehacker. These are skills that are preparing us for the future and saving us valuable time.
Glen, when our Chinese overlords take over and put us to work let me know how that new t-shirt folding technique is working out for you.
The most egregious example is the moronic Lifehut, recently roasted on Metafilter, including - yep! - how to boil an egg. Nothing quite like parenting or financial advice from a teenage halfwit.
It is the beginning of the end of the human race. We will all soon deteriorate into quivering blobs of flesh attached to a keyboard writing our every thought into the great brain of the internet as well as advice on how to stop quivering.
Some people think the internet will one day become sentient!? Hah! Right, not if people keep feeding it dumb-ass clap-trap like how to boil an egg. I mean really! (Though I believe "How to not be a mouth breather" will be good advice for our future overlords. They will make themselves seem more authoritative this way )
The most egregious example is the moronic Lifehut
At least eHow seems to have a sense of humour. At least I hope these are humourous:
How to Boil Water
How to Tie Shoes
How to Unlock a Door
Of course, they also have tips like this:
How to Greet the Pope
I agree totally. My own blog is fairly new, and I specifically don't have ads / clickthroughs on my site, to resist the temptation of writing for search engines and/or a mindless audience.
By the way, in your opening paragraph, you have "formated" - which I'm not sure is meant to mean "formatted" or "formulated" both of which would fit.
@JR - I agree, that Boiling an Egg article was pretty much pointless. I hate it when sites just re-hash common knowledge that could easily be found on Google. I thought the How to End a Fight Quickly article was good though, if only for entertainment. I tend agree though, most Getting Things Done blogs are pretty much pointless.
Sween, you think eHow is trying to be funny? Please re-read what I wrote in the first paragraph.
I said I hope they are humourous.
(We Canadian's are a hopeful race.)
Otherwise, I'm hoarding water and canned food, because civilisation be doooooooooomed!
Ah, my bad. Bare with me I'm working off little sleep — stupid 4:30 AM, I hate you so much!
Thanks. These techniques should help me with the mouth-breathing problems I experience while eating cereal.
Okay. I give up what does WWGTDD stand for, besides this little club you guys have formed.
What Would Getting Things Done Do.
I'm sure these tips will be helpful to some people, lol
I'm thinking about writing a How to Breath With Your Nostril... how knows, maybe someone needs some instruction on this=D
You really need to put out a book on other helpful stuff like this.
Other possible topics:
- How to turn to the left
- How to stand on one leg
- How to take off a belt
- How to scratch your ankle
- How to read this sentence
Hmmm... that last one could be a bit more difficult.
I know this is all because you're secretly prepping your site to host ads for nasal spray companies.
I totally agree with you! The worst are sites that only show you how do do one thing (and then have a ton of ads). I think ad publishers should boycott sites like this!
Sites that show you one small low value add and then spam you with a million ads, need to be die a slow painful death. But people who spend the time thinking about quality and that is implimented and reflected in thier sites should not be looked down upon for monetizing thier work, having said that I think 50% of the publishers on the web of understanding what does and doesnt look good on a page when it comes to ads and they end up looking terribly mismatched to the look and feel and having no real context.
As quality bloggers, you have a choice, keep bearing your own expense and be paid nothing for your work, or make money...Large companies create value add and make money - why doesnt that apply to your work?
if you look at my site you will call bullshit on me post haste because I'm the president of an Advertising Network, but I post this as someone who has followed all the key trends on the web since before thier was a web. In addition my company isnt planning on going after blogs at the moment so don't fear me bringing a wave of evil advertising to the holy ground...
Having said all that, Google is coming for you and you will be assimilated...they need impressions to fuel growth and you are a channel for those impressions - although you never know what your % split is with google, people do make money serving the ads, hence they are the phenomenah they are...
Boils down to this in my eyes, someone is laying money on the table, do you want to take it or do you want to let the garbage sites take it...You put in 10x the effort..
If you feel like placing some well done adds spoils the very essence of your site then carry on and I for one can respect and certainly appreciate that greatly. This blog sells gear, where do you draw the line in not selling out.
what does GTD stand for?
This is a hilarious post. You should make a series of these types of postings. The next one could be, Proper Toilet Paper Wiping Technique: Everything You Always Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask. 8-)
Keep up the great blog!
I do beleve it's "losing," not "loosing." Good read.
This is something that's off topic, but, it's still related to Airbag. All this time, I've been wondering, does anyone know where Greg get that picture of the blimp, which has almost become synonmous with the word Airbag. Did you take a picture of of it? Made it in a 3D program? Stock Images?
Please feed my curiousity
Let the GTD backlash begin.
I was going to make this post (though it probably would have been less entertaining) two or three months ago. Much of the advice I read about personal productivity seems pretty useful, but a lot of it is useless clutter, which I've heard can be counterproductive. ; )
I've been wondering, does anyone know where Greg get that picture of the blimp...
That's wierd, I don't think I've had anyone ask an indirect question as if I'm not here, reading my own site.
I jokingly told this guy that he should put some more ads on the right of his blog, because they seemed to be everywhere else. He took me seriously and now is looking to see how to fit them in!!!! Come on people!
His Site: http://newsgator-herald.blogspot.com/
This medium is looking more and more NASCAR every day.
I could be wrong, but my guess is the Airbag in question is the Graf Zeppelin II, LZ-130, a sister ship to the Hindenburg. Hard to say at the scale of Greg's images but it means that these are photos taken in the 1930's. At other angles, a swastika would likely be visible on the airships' tails. I used to tease Greg when he would scold others for "ripping off" sites whether he had paid to license these photographs, but I'd just get a sideways look. Viva la bag.
Heh. So in question, did Greg piad to use these photographs? Or did he grab them from Google Image Search? He probably never answers to that question. And never will. :(
Jason I would answer your question if you had asked politely and directly, without hijacking a non-related comment thread. Instead you have chosen another route which leaves me irritated.
And for the record, the airship in question is the mighty USS Macon, the last great vessel of it's kind to grace our skies under the command of the United States Navy from 1933 to 1935.
The homepage image is indeed the USS Macon, and here's the original shot, from the Dept. of the Navy's Historical Center at history.navy.mil. The interior page shot seems to not be of the Macon (note the four engines vs two). The NHC site generally calls the photos "unrestricted" — and they are likely old enough to be in the public domain, so I'd think G-money is off the hook.