Jonathan Ong's Blog

My OCD kicks in when I see someone’s Gmail account with thousands of unsorted e-mails. Gmail is the most efficient mail client ever designed by man kind, yet people don’t know how to use it efficiently. It saves a lot of time if you spend a little time setting up Gmail. I literally spend less than 10 minutes a day checking and replying to my e-mail not because I don’t receive any, but because I set my Gmail so that I know which ones to automatically discard and which ones are important.

1. Archive EVERYTHING and NEVER delete. You have gigabytes of storage on your account. E-mails are ridiculously tiny. You should never delete anything unless you are close to this maximum limit which is impossible unless you’re extremely popular or you’re sharing files. Your inbox should always be empty by archiving all the e-mails you’re done reading or don’t care to read. Your inbox should only have e-mails you have not processed yourself.
2. Star your important e-mails, but still archive them. This is useful since your inbox won’t be cluttered and you can easily find these e-mails by typing “is:starred” in the search field.
3. Setup labels. This is Gmail’s version of folders except e-mails can have more than one label. There are only two folders in Gmail: inbox and archive. This is how my left menu looks like with all my labels. Notice that you can rearrange your menu on your left.
4. Setup filters. You can create specific criteria so that Gmail will label them correctly. The criteria can be: From (sender), To (recipient), Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have words, and Has attachment. Most of my filters are either from sender (for example @berkeley.edu or specific people. I only wish you can filter groups of people…) and subject (for example e-mails with a [MATH228A] tag). This is why I wish grouped e-mails have tags in the subject line (for example [HOC] in the header). After you create the filter, you can choose what you want Gmail to do with e-mails that match the filter. For e-mails you don’t care for, Skip the Inbox and archive it. Otherwise, I would apply a label. The best part is that you can retroactively apply the filter to the e-mails you already have . For example, I automatically archive all e-mails from “CALmessages@berkeley.edu” since, as an employee of UC Berkeley, I’m unable to unsubscribe from the mailing list and, to me, it’s equivalent to spam.
5. Organize your contacts. Gmail makes it ridiculously easy. Gmail remembers everyone you’ve ever contacted and clicking contacts allows you to choose who to put on your contact list. The best part is that if you take some time to make everyone’s name accurate, there’s a simple “Find & merge duplicate” function that saves so much time and effort.
6. Setup Microsoft Exchange with your smartphones, e-mail clients, address books, and calendars. I have another blog post that covers this for smart phones. This will automatically sync all your e-mails, calendar, and address books with your Gmail account and, for iPhone users, push notifications. You will never worry about losing any data ever again unless Gmail somehow fails.
7. Create unique Gmail addresses simply by adding a + after your account name. For example, I would register for Reddit under the account name jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. It will still go to my jongleberry@gmail.com e-mail address, but I would be able to filter it by to: jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. This is helpful if you’re getting a lot of spam as you would know where they are coming from.
8. Similarly, you can create unique e-mail addresses by adding periods in your e-mail address. For example, jongle.berry@gmail.com is equivalent to jongleberry@gmail.com.
9. Unsubscribe from all your mailing lists. Alternatively you can filter them, but I prefer just to be unsubscribed. You can easily do this by searching “unsubscribe” and unsubscribing from every single spam mail you get.
10. Find useful gadgets from Google Labs. These can be found and installed on the settings page in Gmail. My favorites are Hide Counts and Multiple Inboxes. Hide Counts simply streamlines your left menu so that there’s less numbers everywhere. I’ll know that there’s unread e-mail by that label being bolded. Multiple Inboxes is especially useful since I star my important e-mails. Every time I log into Gmail, I’ll see both my inbox and my starred e-mails. There are countless possible gadgets that you can install to make Gmail more efficient for you, but these two suffice for me.
11. When writing e-mails, press the “pop out” button so that you’ll compose the e-mail in a new window. This is helpful when you’re replying to a long e-mail and you want to read what the e-mail says while you write.
12. You can easily manage multiple e-mail accounts. I have all my e-mails forwarded from my Berkeley e-mail to my Gmail. The best part is that I can by default send either from my Gmail address or Berkeley address. I have the option to choose every time I send an e-mail. Google also just added functionality that allows better management of multiple Gmail accounts, but I don’t see the point since I got two different Gmail accounts so that they’ll be separate. These options can be found in Settings -> Accounts and Import.
13. Make sure you go to Settings -> Web Clips and uncheck “Show my web clips above the inbox”. These are basically advertisements from Google and to me is spam.

These are the only tips I can think of right now. Let me know if you can think of any others.

Like Chinese, some people may know how to speak, but they don’t know how to write certain words. This is true for the terms “should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve”. What makes it more confusing is that through my experience, many spell checks do not take these words as correct. Why is it “should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve”, not “should of, would of, and could of?”

Should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve are contractions for should have, would have, and could have. Look the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s “Should’ve Said No”:

You should’ve said no, you should’ve gone home
You should’ve thought twice before you let it all go

Now lets expand it to see if it makes sense:

You should of said no, you of gone home
You should of thought twice before you let it all go

Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me. None of the sentences have a verb. Of is a preposition, and these propositional phrases do not make any sense. “Of said no”, “of gone home”, “of though twice”. Syntax error, does not compute.

But then you can make things even more complex. How about “should not have?” If you look online, people write it “shouldn’t've”, but that’s a lot of apostrophes. Similarily, “she would have” can be contracted to “she’d've”.

How do you solve this problem? Simply never use contractions when writing to formal audiences.

I’ve gotten ridiculously bored with social networking as most of my friends refuse to self edit their own content and rarely post anything interesting. Instead, I’ve made it fun by trolling Facebook. Try to make the most ridiculous comments on everyone’s posts, links, pictures, anything. It might explain why the number of friends fluctuate quite a bit.

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. – Wikipedia

1. Ask obvious questions:
2. Answer rhetorical questions:
3. Take figurative language seriously:
4. Grammar Nazi:
5. Make an all-out awesome comment:
6. Ask the obvious question of, “are they hot?”:
7. Pick a victim and like everything on their page. Unfortunately this girl disabled my ability to comment or post on her wall:
8. Pick a victim and consistently insinuate sexual relations with her:
9. Reiterate the last statement except replacing the noun with the word “you” or “you’re”:

The purpose of my creeping was not to actually get girls, but to have fun. It’s fun to joke around and mess with people. It’s fun to feign affection for others when most of the time you lack any thereof. It’s fun to see a odd smile on a girl’s face, though I know my limits and try not to actually piss everyone on. This is until everything backfires.

But it’s like how the saying goes: it’s only fun until someone gets hurt. It’s fine to joke around, but if you joke around too much, you’ll be stuck in the apathetic mentality and don’t realize the issues that arise. You’ll be branded a person who is never serious and will then never be taken seriously. Apparently when I was actually trying to be a creeper, I also developed a poker face. I would try to tell people truths, but they weren’t sure if I was joking or not. Sometimes when I’m telling a joke, they’ll take it seriously because they don’t know that I’m still in my joking mode.

Then there’s a law of probability. If you apply for 1000 jobs, there’s a good chance you’ll get at least one offer. Similarly, if you hit on 1000 girls, there’s a good chance you’ll get one, regardless of how awesome of a person you are. This in itself is not a problem, but combined with a poker face, this could be a grave problem. The girl that likes you might just because she thought you were serious when you weren’t, and the girl that you actually like might not think about you that way because she thought you were joking when you weren’t.

And so I decided to change my ways: I only creep on girls who I know will deny me because that way no one will get hurt and girls who I may be interested in because then there’s no risk. And now I have to work on how to convey the messages I wish to send with minimal transmission loss, a grave problem for me since my messages are best understood through keyboards. I still will write articles on how to be a creeper if people are interested. Let me know if you are.

Amazon is my favorite online shopping store. It simply has everything you could ever want, the prices aren’t bad, the shipping is free, and there’s no sales tax for Californians. If you have Amazon Prime, you even get free two-day shipping!

A lot of times when you go to Best Buy or something you buy an item that ultimately sucks when you actually want to use it. Instead, let me show you products that you would actually want to keep for a long time and are actually worth their cost. If you want me to recommend anymore items, please let me know.

Gun Safe - Stack – On® 8 – gun Security Cabinet $110. You don’t want to spend too much on a gun safe unless you have kids or think that people are actually going to rob you. I have this at home and it is worth the price. It does what it needs to do although a safe can be much better. If you’re on a budget or don’t need to much safety for your guns, buy this gun safe.

Hammock - Strathwood Portable Folding Hammock with Carry Bag, Chocolate with Champagne Frame $80. I bought this hammock for my beach house and my God is it awesome. For $80 you have a hammock you can fold and take anywhere with you. I used to have a fixed hammock made out of wood, but that eroded thanks to the ocean water. Consider this if you like to go to the beach often.

Wireless Router - Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band) (MC340LL/A) $168. The problem with most wireless routers is that they seriously suck. You get disconnected a lot or you can’t even connect. What I love about Apple is that their products seriously just work. I have purchased 4 of these and I haven’t had a single problem. I wouldn’t suggest these in a commercial setting since you can’t set very specific options, but it does perfectly well in a residential setting. Another thing I love about Apple products is the resale value. These won’t depreciate as much as other routers.

Cable Modem - Motorola SB6120 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 eXtreme Broadband Cable Modem $120. The problem I had with my cable modem and router leased from Charter is that it would consistently disconnect and I could only plug in 5 devices. With this modem, not only am I able to use any speed Charter or Comcast can offer me, I can plug as many devices as I’d like, and I never get disconnected with a good router like the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Never lease a router or a modem, and buy this modem if you have cable.

Computer Speakers - Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Computer Speaker System $180. It’s difficult to find good computer speakers, but these are the best 2.1′s. I spent almost $500 on a Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System only to replace them with these for less than half the price. Don’t buy Bose speakers, they don’t even compare.

Large Computer Monitor - Dell UltraSharp U2711 27-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor – Max Resolution 2560 x 1440 (WQHD) $980. This is by far the best computer monitor out there. I only wish that it used LED lighting like Apple does. It has a very good pixel pitch which makes anything look beautiful on the display. It has a 16×9 aspect ratio making it perfect for playing movies. The color gamut is over 100%, making the color reproduction basically perfect out of the box. I have a Dell U2410 24″ Monitor too and this U2711 blows it out of the water.

Headphones - Sennheiser HD-555 Audiophile Headphones $130. These probably aren’t the best headphones ever, but they are the best for the price. You get almost the audio fidelity of expensive headphones at a fraction of the price. The only problem is that there’s no sound insulation; you hear people talking and people can hear your loud music. But for $130, you can’t complain.

SLR Camera - Canon EOS Rebel T2i 18 MP CMOS APS-C Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens $900. I am biased in that I am a Canon user, but right now this is the best valued camera out there. You can record in 1080p and take photos at 18 megapixels. Canons are the most popular SLR format, so you can easily buy, sell, and rent lenses. I recommend these for any non-professional photographer.

Tablet – Apple iPad MB292LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi) $600. You want an iPad, but you don’t want to pay the full price or the tax. Simple! Buy it off Amazon! You can buy it brand new for less than $600 shipped. Granted, this iPad should NOT replace your laptop, but it’s nice to have if you have some change laying around. You shouldn’t bother buying the larger capacity iPads or the ones with 3G. They just aren’t worth it. It isn’t an iPod, you shouldn’t be dragging your iTunes library everywhere you go. You only want all the good applications and you want to stream everything. Higher capacity doesn’t add much to the resale value either.