Calendar Views, Frozen Macs, and Address Bar Shortcuts

Readers offer their best tips for making Google Calendar easy to read, finding out when your Mac has frozen, and getting to Firefox's address bar quickly.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons?maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in?the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, email it to tips at lifehacker.com, or share it on our tips and expert pages.

Use a Customized Background to Differentiate Weekends in Google Calendar

CSGeek shares a couple of custom backgrounds for Google Calendar:

I uploaded this background to my Google calendar to help differentiate between weekdays and weekends (weekends are blue). These are PNGs images so it's easy to alter the colors to suit your taste. Three flavors for the three different day grouping preferences:

Unfortunately, Google Calendar keeps a white background over all of your events (as you can see in the image), which is kind of annoying, but it is a handy little tweak.

Discover Freezes on Your Mac with a Flashing Clock

Judacris can tell when his Mac has frozen nearly instantaneously:

My Mac freezes sometimes and I've learned that a frozen clock on a menubar can mean a frozen Mac. Having the time separators blink will cut questioning yourself if your Mac is not responding down to a second.

(Blink the time separators by heading to Date & Time in System Preferences.)

Simplify Awesome Bar Uses the Address Bar Whenever You Start Typing in Firefox

Brett discovers a handy little extension for Firefox:

Just found a cool Firefox extension called Simplify Awesome Bar. After you install it, you can just start typing anywhere to start typing in Firefox's address bar. No need to hit Ctrl+L or click on the bar! You can also select text to copy it to the address bar, integrate it with bookmark keyboards, and do a lot more.

Turn The Placket from an Old Shirt Into a Tie Straightener

Nundango tells us another way to keep your tie straight:

Another alternative for tie keeping? Cut off the placket (the doubled-over fabric edge where the buttons fasten through the front of the shirt)-2 button holes works great-from an old shirt. Pass the placket through tie's loop label, and fasten your shirt's buttons through the holes on the placket. Voila! Instant tie holder! You can even tuck the tail in between the loop label and placket to keep it out of the way!

You could just use a tie clip of course, but if you aren't a fan of that look, this could work too I suppose. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/1L-GEYWUYvo/calendar-views-frozen-macs-and-address-bar-shortcuts

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