Tausi Insider

Photo : ali.can0707 ( Shutterstock ) The other morning , it was pouring rain . I brought an umbrella with me on my morning walk, and only on the way back —several hours into the storm—did I notice my beloved training journal sitting out on a jerk block in the driveway, where I’d left it after getting distracted while cleaning up after my workout the night before. M y journal was thoroughly, utterly   soaked . As I’ve written before , the whole reason I write my workouts down in a notebook ( rather than logging them in an app) is so I can own the contents, which can never be stuck in a cloud service if I forget a password. I can flip back to look at how my training has gone in the past. The history is important to me. And suddenly, three months’ worth of my training history was a wet pile of paper, possibly beyond saving . But I had to try. Photo : Beth Skwarecki Listen to the librarians If you want to know how to handle wet books, ask a librarian . Entire volumes have be...

This is the gift of a book, technically, but it comes with a lot of extra goodies, and it’s more exciting than simply picking a title off a wishlist. You select the genre , and the Etsy shop puts together a package with a new or lightly used book plus a bookmark, pen, and edible treats. You can even send over the recipient’s Goodreads profile so the seller can select something that they (hopefully) haven’t read. https://www.tausiinsider.com/10-of-the-best-gifts-for-book-enthusiasts-that-arent-books/?feed_id=330458&_unique_id=644b79231e9e0

Photo : ASTA Concept ( Shutterstock ) While the idea of “passive income” sounds great, the term is usually misleading, as establishing passive income streams often requires a lot of work. While most passive income schemes involve starting a business or sinking some capital into investments, there are also ways to leverage your creative and artistic impulses: If you’re passionate about music, photography , or shooting videos, for example, you can turn those passions into income— even if you’re not necessarily a professional— by selling your work to stock media sites. Stock sites have vast collections of media that people pay to license for use in their podcasts, videos, websites, book covers, video games—basically any product that uses music , sound effects, images, or video very likely uses some volume of stock media (see the photo above as an example). And every time a photo or piece of music is licensed from a stock site, there’s a creator somewhere getting paid—and that ...

Photo : Proxima Studio ( Shutterstock ) We commonly think of YouTube as a platform for sharing videos with large public audiences, but it can also be a great way to back up or share videos privately, as long as you follow the platform’s copyright rules. As David Gewirtz explains over on ZDNET , YouTube’s Content ID checks still apply to videos uploaded as private (meaning only the uploader can access them), or unlisted (which are viewable to anyone with a link, or if they show up in public playlists). Scanning unlisted and private videos is actually helpful for professional content creators. They can upload a video as private to confirm it passes YouTube’s Content ID checks before the video goes public, or adjust the video if necessary and avoid demonization or serious copyright strikes. However, this is a major inconvenience for users that just want to share videos with select friends or upload a school project for easy viewing. Usually, if your content is flagged by YouTube’s Co...

Screenshot : Jake Peterson You might think your know your hometown pretty well, but I’m willing to bet there’s a lot you don’t know—something noteworthy that happened in a spot you walk or drive past every day without thinking about, like the building that’s been there forever, or the park you relax in every now and then. Well, t here’s an easy way to learn all about your neighborhood, or any neighborhood in the world, in a way that almost feels like playing Pokémon Go , but for real life . I’m talking about the app   wikishootme.toolforge.org . Despite having a strange name (to say the least), wikishootme is a great web app. It’s a world map powered by OpenStreetMap and Leaflet , with a twist: It highlights any nearby area that has its own Wikipedia page, images in Wikimedia commons, or Wikidata. In practice , you can use it to learn about just about everything notable about any particular area of the world. If you click the three-layer icon in the top right, you can control t...