Brush use (finally)

ShavebrushBetter late than never, here’s the actual post on how to use your shave brush!

Even if you haven’t jumped on board with using a safety or straight razor, using a shaving brush with a good shave cream or soap can make shaving easier, faster and leave you with less irritation. Proper use of the brush gets your face lathered up correctly, and gets your stubble standing up so it’s easier to cut with the razor.

First, get wet! Shaving brushes need to be nice and wet when you use them. So run it under hot water, or dunk it a few times into hot water in your sink. Then shake the brush a few times, so that it’s still quite wet, but no longer dripping water when held bristles-down.

If you’re using shave soap, drip a little water into the shaving mug as you shake the brush dry. Swirl the mug around and then dump the water out. This gets the outer layer of the soap mixed with water, which makes churning up a lather easier. Then vigorously swish and swipe the brush in the mug until you’ve created a thick lather in the mug and on the brush itself.

For shaving creams and gels, put a small amount of the cream or gel on the brush directly. For shaving sticks, wet the stick, then rub it all over your beard.

Now, moving in an up and down motion, run the brush along your beard. Sometimes starting out with a circular motion helps to get the lather going, but you want to use mainly an up and down motion. This distributes the lather, and lifts the stubble so it sits up in the shaving cream.

As necessary, grab more lather from the mug or place some more cream/gel on your brush. You want a thin, even coat of lather all over your beard.

When you’re done lathering, rest the brush bristles-up as you shave. This way, there’s still some cream/soap/gel on the brush in case you need to quickly re-apply during your shave. If you use a shaving mug, you can rest the brush in the mug itself for the same effect.

After your shave, run warm water over the brush and get all the shaving soap/gel/cream out of it. You should rub the brush over your hand (while under the water) to fan out the bristles and really get all the shaving product out of the brush before storage. This process should only take a few seconds, but keep going until you don’t see any cream/gel/soap in the water or on the brush.

Then shake the brush back and forth vigorously, you need to get as much water as possible out of the brush before you store it away. Remember how doctors and nurses in older movies used to shake thermometers before use, that’s the wrist action you’re going for here. When you have enough water out of the brush, you’ll notice that the bristles fluff out, much like in the picture of the shaving brush at the beginning of this article. If they’re clumping together you either have some soap left in there, or the bristles are too wet for storage.

Store your brush in a brush stand if you can. This keeps the brush bristles-down for better drying and also keeps the brush up off your counter. You can find inexpensive holders for just the brush or the brush and your razor, such as this one. They don’t need to be fancy, just functional.

A good shaving brush will give you many years of use, so they’re a wise investment in your shaving arsenal. I found that using a brush and shaving soap made shaving with over-the-counter multi-blade razors a lot easier and more effective than just daubing on cream with my hands. This effect became even more evident when I switched to a safety razor not that long ago.

Next time, razor types.

Photo Credit: Scottfeldstein

Article source: http://www.brotherhoodofthebrush.com/2012/01/brush-use-finally/

01/23/2012 – 5:04 pm Categories: brotherhoodofthebrush | Comments Off

Dealing with Spam

Spam01Now that we’ve discussed how CAPTCHA breaks down, it might be a good idea to talk about how to deal with spam in general.

As long as there has been electronic communication, there has been spam. As a matter of fact, many internet pundits claim that unwanted commercial email was called spam because it was like the Hormel foods product. It exists everywhere, but no one can figure out who wants it or exactly why it exists.

When you use social media, your email and contact info will end up on spam lists. Don’t try to fight this, it is going to happen no matter how much you try to keep it from happening. All you can hope to do is mitigate the problem to keep it to a manageable level, and move on.

First, make sure to set up an email address you use exclusively for social media if you can. That allows you to segregate all the dozens of messages each day (friend requests, twitter notifications, site information, etc.) from your day-to-day business email. It also allows you (if you set up this email address on a non-company server) to segregate things that your company owns from things that you own.

On that email account, set up the best spam protection you can find and afford. This might just be changing your spam settings a bit in the properties pages of gmail, or could be client-based tools like SpamBayes or SpamSieve (Windows and Mac, respectively). This way, most of the garbage you get will be funneled into a spam folder that you can just check once a week or so.

Next, as you sign up for accounts at Facebook, Twitter, and other sites, check for traps. Most sites pre-check boxes that say thing like “share your contact info with trusted 3rd-Parties” or “Email you with offers we think you’ll enjoy” and other such verbiage. Uncheck those boxes. Then go back and re-read the choices to ensure you unchecked those boxes.

Some companies have gone so far as to create “opposite day” on their sign-up pages and change the text to say “Click here to NOT receive information from trusted 3rd-Parties.” That way, leaving the box as it’s default (and instinctual) unchecked state will generate permission to send you spam. Be very careful and re-read everything.

On your blogs or web pages you own, use a simple encoder to display your email address whenever you need to list it (such as in the contact info section). WordPress has quite a few of these, and most web developers can do this for you if you’re outsourcing your website. This creates a human-readable output of your email address, but machines and bots just see a line of code that doesn’t have your address in it – making it harder for them to scavenge your address in a web crawl.

Once you start signing up for sites, no matter how careful you are, spam will follow.

So here are a few things you can do once that tasty spam starts coming in:

DO Report it on Social Media networks only: Especially on Twitter and Facebook, spam posts and tweets can be reported very easily. Doing so will automatically block the moron who spammed you, and tell the social network something is going on. You do NOT want to report it when it comes in via regular email (see below).

DO NOT encourage the trolls: Block them, report them, but don’t engage them. All you’ll do is give them more legitimate-looking timelines.

DO use an email spam filter: Have all suspected spam funneled to a folder in your email system.

DO review your spam folder: At least once a week, have a quick scan of your spam folder to make sure nothing got tagged accidentally. If you find good stuff in there, add the senders to the spam filter’s whitelist so they don’t get caught again.

DO NOT use unsubscribe links in emails: Using links to unsubscribe or report the spammers in email is not useful. In most cases, all it does is prove that there is a human being behind the email account, and generate more spam. Spammers build email lists by trying every possible combination of letters and words, then sell lists to each other, and if they can prove you exist (and that it’s not a catch-all or dummy email account) then they’ll get more money for that email address than others.

Legitimate companies do respect opt-out wishes, but most companies that use spam techniques do not, and therefore you will not get unsubscribed, and you will get more spam to boot. It’s easier to just tag them as spam and let the filter remove them from your life.

Spam can be frustrating, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Take some care when you sign up for sites to minimize it. Filter to keep it from becoming a problem in your day-to-day life, and check in now and then to make sure the good stuff isn’t getting blocked. Otherwise, ignore it. You’ll be happier, and the evil spammers will not get another customer to dupe.

Photo Credit: dok1

Article source: http://www.sociallyworking.com/2012/01/dealing-with-spam/

01/23/2012 – 5:04 pm Categories: sociallyworking | Comments Off

Why a blog on shaving?

I very recently was introduced to the idea of “classic shaving” – shaving with shave soap, a brush, and a safety razor. It’s been quite an eye-opening experience for me, and so I wanted to start sharing my discovery with the rest of the world.

I’m still very much a newbie at this, but I hope to be able to give unbiased reviews, share tips, and offer advice as I go along to everyone who wants to get back to shaving basics.

Hopefully, we’ll all share information via the comments sections, and I’m more than happy to have guest posters if you want to try your hand at writing articles, just email me or ping me on twitter (see the sidebar).

Thanks for being a reader, and here’s to a close shave!

Article source: http://www.brotherhoodofthebrush.com/2012/01/why-a-blog-on-shaving/

01/21/2012 – 5:01 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments Off

Why a brush?

BobShaveBrushSeveral folks have asked me why I use a shaving brush, even before I switched to a safety razor. The reasons to use one are many, but here’s the major ones:

Shave soap needs a brush to work. Shave soap itself is basically just a bar or cake of some form of soap – like the kind you use every day – that’s specially formulated to create a thick, rich lather. However, getting it to lather, and then getting that lather on your face, are a bit of a problem by hand.

The brush helps to mix water with the soap, and whip it up into a lather. Then, it helps get that lather onto your beard, as opposed to all over your hands.

Shaving brushes also work to condition your beard for a good, close shave. The bristles help to get the stubble to stand up in the lather, that allows the razor to more easily cut them.

Now, you don’t have to bankrupt yourself to get a good shaving brush. I’ve used ones that cost upwards of $100, but I haven’t found them to be all that much better to a few that cost less than $40. For example, here’s one on Amazon that works great: 100% Pure Badger Shaving Brush

A lot of it has to do with what the brush is made of:

1 – Metal or wood handle? I use one that’s a combination of both for nice weight without a lot of extra cost.

2 – Bristle:

Silver-tip Badger is the top of the line. It’s the most expensive, but also the softest bristle material out there. Some folks swear by it, but it’s a big investment if you’re just experimenting.

Badger: Middle of the road, and quality varies, but most badger brushes will do a very nice job and are easy on the face.

Boar: Lower-end brushes use boar bristles, which tend to be coarse and rough on the skin. I would avoid these.

Personally, I use the brush I linked to earlier in the blog post. It’s badger, but not silver-tip. Nice and soft, hard wearing and well weighted. It’s a personal choice though, so go with one that feels right for you.

Next week, proper brush use and care!

Article source: http://www.brotherhoodofthebrush.com/2012/01/why-a-brush/

01/21/2012 – 5:01 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments Off

A Note on Shaving Cream

Shaving creamI was going to write this post on how to use your shaving brush, but I realized that I’d have to say a few words on what you put *on* your brush first!

Of course, by that I mean your shaving cream or soap. Now, first things first, you might want to give up on the canned glop you’re using now. There’s nothing specifically bad about them, they can do the job in a pinch, but a real shaving cream or shaving soap will give you a better shave and less razor burn every time.

Even before switching to a safety razor, I had abandoned the pressurized cans except in emergencies. There are lots of alternatives to choose from, they’re cheaper, and they just plain work better.

A good shaving cream (in a tub or tube) or a good shaving soap will give you a thicker lather, easier gliding of the razor, less friction and resistance (so less razor burn) and hold up your stubble better. You can find tons of options in local stores, and tons more online.

Personally, I use a glycerine-based shaving soap, this one, to be precise. For less than 30 bucks, you can get over a year’s worth of shaving soap, so the value for money is incredible. This particular brand is also available in many brick-and-mortar drugstores and other shops.

If you choose the soap, you’ll also need a bowl with a lid to keep it in. I use this one most of the time. You’ll want one that is hard wearing – because you’ll use it for years to come.

I prefer a wooden bowl that’s properly varnished/finished to be waterproofed. They’re much lighter than ceramic bowls, and retain heat as well. You can also pop a wooden bowl in the microwave for about 20 seconds when you put in a new bar of shaving soap. It’s not enough time to damage the wood, but it melts the soap into the shape of the bowl so it doesn’t slide all over when you use your brush to whip it up.

More expensive shave soaps come in their own bowl, which can be re-used with refill bars of soap. Shaving cream typically comes in a disposable tub or tube that you just toss when it runs out.

Next column, I promise, I’ll describe how you use your shaving brush with your shaving cream or soap.

Photo Credit: Big C Harvey

Article source: http://www.brotherhoodofthebrush.com/2012/01/a-note-on-shaving-cream/

01/21/2012 – 5:01 pm Categories: Uncategorized | Comments Off

Negativity Part II: When it’s real

BewareofcowSo, you’ve figured out that those negative comments were legitimate. They’re not some kind of attack from your competition, and they’re not spammers just trying to goad you into responding.

What do you do?

First, don’t panic. More damage has been done by one bad reaction to a negative post/comment than has ever been done by bad tech support. You must resist the urge to lash out, no matter how nasty, crude or crass the offending post was. Remember that there is another human being on the other end of that Internet connection, and more importantly, there are thousands more watching what you do next.

Take a moment, and consider if the post has any merit. Did your company do something wrong here? Was there a legitimate bug, or missing information somewhere? Does the complainer actually have a good reason for complaining?

If so, then reach out with a calm, courteous response. Offer to reach out via tech support or customer care if they DM you their contact info (make sure to follow them first, so they can do this). Direct them to information on the issue on your website.

If the back off, make sure you follow through. Do what you said you’d do, and try to give them the best customer support you can. Remember that often reputations are destroyed days or even weeks after the negative event, because companies didn’t do what they promised.

If the comment is really just someone spouting off, reply that you hear their complaint. I’ll never forget one of the most explicit gripes I’ve seen online – from a friend of mine to a television network. Suffice it to say, she implied that one of their shows had caused rectal bleeding. The network, without missing a beat, replied that they hoped her trip to the Emergency Room went well, and to please keep them posted.

To this day, the original poster continues to say that was about the most appropriate response they could possibly have come back with, and it totally disarmed the situation.

Had they complained back, or criticized her language or tweet style, she would have ripped them apart online, but instead they brought her back around to their side.

With a few exceptions, you should never ignore negative comments that are legitimate. If the poster obviously works for a competitor, you can post one (ONE) reply that you disagree, but don’t get into an argument with them. After that you can ignore them, provided they’re not spouting lies or abuse. Otherwise, *always* respond with a positive and customer-focused reply. Ignoring bad tweets and comments will lead to more and more people following behind the guy screaming his head off in the digital wilderness.

There is an exception to this rule, however. Don’t feed the trolls – those that have no other purpose but to get you mad at them just to get you to screw up something. I consider trolling behavior to fall into the “not legitimate” category, but you can use your own best judgement here.

So remember, always remain calm, and always respond to legitimate complaints. Respond with facts, service, and – where appropriate – a little humor. Disarm the situation and then correct it if you can. Never post back in anger or arrogance.

One well worded tweet will head off months of spin doctoring, and could create even more loyal customers in the end.

Photo Credit: ™-™

Article source: http://www.sociallyworking.com/2012/01/negativity-part-ii-when-its-real/

01/21/2012 – 4:58 pm Categories: sociallyworking | Comments Off

How Spammers get around CAPTCHA

261365335 37cd489bcc oI’ve written in the past about CAPTCHA, the technology that shows you a picture of a group of letters or words that you must type in before you can log in to some sites, or sign up for free services like Gmail. As annoying as CAPTCH is, the automated Turing Test has stood for several years as a standard way of ensuring that a real person is trying to access a service, instead of just some kind of automated system.

The problem is that spammers and scammers have found more an more ways to get around the CAPTCHA tests to ensure they have access to these systems just as easily as legitimate users do.

Initially, the bad guys just used sophisticated character recognition engines to look at the images digitally, and figure out what the letters or words were. This worked for a time, but then site owners started skewing the letters or adding in “noise” – dummy lines, dots and other static that made it more difficult for a scanning tool to figure out what was part of the CAPTCHA code and what was not.

So, spammers have taken a new route to getting around CAPTCHA. Since the codes are designed to only be human-readable, they’ve been employing humans to read them. Yup, that’s right, you can now hire someone to break CAPTCHA by solving thousands of codes a week for you to use to send spam. See this article for more information on such services.

Social Networking is no stranger to this problem, as thousands of fake blog comments, even entire blogs and RSS feeds full of fake information, are common. Spammers set up thousands of fake Twitter accounts to blast out spam, malware and fake gift certificates, only to create yet more new accounts as soon as the existing ones are flagged and banned. The same thing happens on Facebook, Windows Live and just about every other social network out there, as the spammers simply change their tactics and continue doing what they do, no matter how good the technology to stop them seems to be getting.

How do we stop this? Simple, make it economically inefficient to spam. Most of my readers already refuse to click links in email, or accept links/codes/certificates from anyone they don’t know on Twitter, G+, etc. Now we have to spread the message. Make sure everyone you work and play with knows that they shouldn’t accept offers, click links, or approve blog comments that come from anyone they don’t know. Those coming from people they know should even be suspect.

Set your blogs to require approval for all comments, and weed out the spam. Approve comments but remove URL’s if you’re not sure. If you see tons of spam comments in a blog, alert the author that they need to turn on approvals or they’ll lose a reader.

If you have the ability to flag posts as spam, do it. Same for Tweets, Posts and other social media sharing. Don’t be abusive or obnoxious about it, just flag them and move on.

Eventually, the cost of successfully spamming the world will become greater than the revenue generated by the spamming. Money talks, folks, and if it’s too expensive to make money by spam, people will stop spamming, but not until then.

In the meantime, ignoring links and flagging spam posts and comments will keep you safe from a lot of the malware running around out there.

Photo Credit: yandle

Article source: http://www.sociallyworking.com/2012/01/how-spammers-get-around-captcha/

01/09/2012 – 11:56 pm Categories: sociallyworking | Comments Off

Linux is coming to Azure VM

135249440 58a7df0d87 oWell, Microsoft has been busy while we were all enjoying the holidays!

For those who aren’t in the know about Windows Azure, that’s the name that Microsoft has given to its nascent Cloud platform. Right now, the only publicly available components are SQL Azure and Azure Storage, which host SQL databases and cloud-based data storage, respectively.

Over the last couple of weeks, however, Redmond has announced that the upcoming Azure VM Role will support many other applications that can run in a Windows 2008 R2 Virtual Machine – which was expected – and also Linux Virtual Machines. This last bit was quite unexpected to many, but a welcome holiday gift from Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley broke the news, and has a great write-up of the potential Azure VM structures, in her article from January 2nd.

Azure is going head to head with major cloud service providers like Amazon (AWS, EC2, etc.) and RackSpace; so offering Linux capabilities is a welcome move. Without Linux support, Azure was risking becoming a niche platform that would only be useful for basic Windows operations and Microsoft SQL databases.

Azure VM will be based on the Windows Hyper-V technology platform, extending that platform into the cloud. Today, Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server are slowly gaining ground in the corporate datacenter, but have not fared well against the major players like VMware. Since most cloud rollouts will be net-new implementations, Microsoft has a much better chance of becoming a large fish in a small pond by rolling out a solid Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) platform with the Azure VM initiative, joining the Application as a Service and Database as a Service platforms already in Azure.

Now, there’s no official release date for the Azure VM Role, but it is in beta as I write this, so it does look like it will be launching at some point this year. How much of an impact Microsoft makes in the Cloud world is still to be seen. But, with the addition of multiple OS support, Azure just took one giant leap toward becoming a major player in the cloud space.

Photo Credit: archieoi

Article source: http://www.newbie2virtual.com/2012/01/linux-is-coming-to-azure-vm/

01/09/2012 – 11:56 pm Categories: newbie2virtual | Comments Off

You got a new toy, now what?

You got a new toy, now what?

5450429373 a670fdd15c bWell, we’re back from the holidays here in the US, and it’s about time I got off my ass and posted something to the blog! So I’m back, and ready to help out with all your Mac newbie issues and questions. Feel free to reach out to me with questions on any of the networks I’m on, or via email, just see the sidebar, choose a contact method and ask away!

In the meantime, a lot of folks are coming to the blog because they got a new Macbook, Macbook Air, iMac, etc. this Christmas/Hanukah/etc. and want to know what to do first. So here’s some of the things you should be doing right away:

– First things first, after you get it turned on and go through the Welcome process, you need to make sure you’ve got the latest MacOS software running. Anything you got new this holiday season came with Mac OS X Lion, so you should be ready to just update and go. Click the Apple icon in the menu bar at the top-left of your screen, and choose Software Updates. That will open the Software Update Wizard which will walk you through all the updates you need for your new Mac. Keep re-running the wizard until there are no updates available.

– Get iTunes set up. Most of the media you listen to and watch will be handled by iTunes. While there are indeed other media players out there, iTunes works, and it’s already installed. Launch iTunes by clicking on the Applications folder in the Dock (the bar of icons and folders along the bottom of the screen) and walk through the setup process. If you didn’t set up an Apple ID when you first turned your Mac on, you can do it now.

– Get AppleCare+ if it didn’t come with your machine. AppleCare+ allows you to bring in or ship in your gear if something goes wrong, and have it fixed by the Apple tech squad (called “Geniuses” in Apple-Speak) for up to 3 years. It’s definitely worth the investment.

– Get an anti-malware system. I know that everyone told you that a Mac doesn’t get viruses, and that’s sort of true, but not really. There ARE viruses and other forms of malware that can attack a Mac. They’re rare, but for less than (US)$50/year, you can get software like ProtectMac and Little-Snitch to provide anti-malware and a personal firewall to protect you. Now, this doesn’t mean you can leave common sense at the door. Use caution online, don’t click links in emails, etc. But a simple anti-malware tool will keep you from getting hit by some of the more ingenious attacks out there – including those that can hit a Mac. You will not find many reliable tools in the App Store for this, you’ll need to go to 3rd-Party sites like MacUpdate.com to find these tools.

– While we’re on the subject, sign up for MacUpdate.com. It’s cheap, and will allow you to use MacUpdate Desktop. This tool allows you to see what software on your Mac that is NOT covered by Apple’s Software Update tool needs to be updated. This includes things like Flash Player, Growl and a bunch of other tools that you’ll definitely want to make sure you’ve got the latest versions of at all times. Run it about once per week to check for updates.

– Read the blog. I’m guessing you found this in a Google search or someone sent you hear, so keep coming back. I love new readers, and you’ll see content on common new-user issues for all things Apple. There are also links for the RSS feed for the blog in the sidebar, so you can view this in your favorite news reader, like Reeder or Google Reader.

Then, sit back, browse the Mac App Store, and have fun with your new toys!

Photo Credit: blakespot


January 9, 2012 –


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Article source: http://www.newbie2mac.com/2012/01/you-got-a-new-toy-now-what/

01/09/2012 – 11:56 pm Categories: newbie2mac | Comments Off

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

To all my readers, thanks for being part of the first year of Newbie2Mac. May you and yours have a wonderful holiday season, and I’m looking forward to a great 2012 with all of you.


Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us once more

Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow…

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

- From “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Frank Sinatra lyrics


December 24, 2011 –


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Article source: http://www.newbie2mac.com/2011/12/merry-christmas/

12/25/2011 – 11:03 am Categories: newbie2mac | Comments Off

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