The benefits of getting to grips with Vim are immense in terms of editing speed and maintaining your “flow” when you’re on a roll, whether writing code, poetry, or prose, but because the learning curve is so steep for a text editor, it’s very easy to retain habits from your time learning the editor that stick with you well into mastery. Because Vim makes you so fast and fluent, it’s especially hard to root these out because you might not even notice them, but it’s worth it. Here I’ll list some of the more common ones.

I’m taking a hiatus from speaking in 2011 to recharge and focus on other things, but thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned from speaking over the last several years, from someone who isn’t a naturally-born speaker or expert in speaking, hates flying, and generally get anxious about combining those two activities.

Some of the follow points might be obvious for some, but they’re all important bits I try and keep in mind before every talk. I’ve learned most of them from other speakers, articles and advice from colleagues and event organizers.

This document is a list of best practices and preferred ways of developing javascript code, based on opinions and experience from many developers in the javascript community. Since this is a list of recommendations rather than a list of absolute rules, experienced developers may have slightly differing opinions from those expressed below.

Instead, I want to give you a checklist, a quick heuristic diagnostic you can refer to anytime you want to make your headlines sing. Print out the list if you’d like, put it by your desk. But I recommend putting every headline you write through this gamut of questions until they become second nature.

Reader Chris sent me a great idea using Text Expander to remove formatting from text. Create a plain text snippet with nothing but the $clipboard command. When activated, it pastes sans format. Slick.

THE DETECTIVE story is a kind of intellectual game. It is more — it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws — unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them. Herewith, then, is a sort Credo, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author's inner conscience. To wit:

To wrap long URLs, strings of text, and other content, just apply this carefully crafted chunk of CSS code to any block-level element (e.g., perfect for <pre> tags)

For a private individual using Twitter, it might make sense to delete a message that you later discovered was in error. But for anyone tweeting as part of a professional media job, representing a news organization on Twitter, or using Twitter to do journalism independently, the course here ought to be plain: It’s almost always better to correct than to unpublish. Removing information you’ve already disseminated — sometimes called “scrubbing” — always leaves open the possibility that you’re trying to hide the error or pretend it never happened.

By Stephen King; content overlaps with 'On Writing'.

When people think about how to start screencasting, they often forget that screencasting is not only a very interesting way of showing something quickly, comprehensibly and easily; it’s also a way of advertising their products. It’s a shame to see how many websites out there lack a beautiful looking screencast, as this can make products look a lot more attractive to potential customers.

This Google cheat sheet [PDF] has a nice overview of all the popular search operators that are supported in Google. Other than this “official” list, Google also supports an undocumented search operator called AROUND(n) that will help you find documents where the distance between two search terms is around ‘n.’

There are two main tools I use to create icons. The first should already be known to PowerPoint users from previous versions, and that’s the ability to edit the points of a shape. The novelty in PowerPoint 2010 is that you can right-click any shape now (not only free-form) and edit its points. The second tool I use is completely new to PowerPoint 2010 – combine shapes. You can learn about it from the videos in this blog, but to learn about all the possibilities of this tool, please check our previous blog post.

Your Windows PC might be designed to make your life easier, but they often have a non-stop list of problems. Today we'll walk through some of the more common problems and how to troubleshoot them.

I'll be leaving my job soon and will have to turn in my work laptop. How can I get my laptop sparkling clean so I can preserve my privacy and avoid runing afoul of IT or any corporate policies?

On March 13, 2007, I handed over the keys to my house, put my possessions in storage and headed out to travel around the world with nothing but a backpack, my laptop and a camera. Three and a half years and 70 countries later, I’ve gotten the equivalent of a Ph.D in general knowledge about the people and places of Planet Earth. Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

Ryan's 35 lessons in 35 years is required reading if you are a man. And probably if you are a woman: http://j.mp/bzpCCY

Seafood: What is Safe to Eat and What is Not: http://j.mp/cdggpE Based on mercury levels, & whether farming/catching damages the oceans.

As I write, I keep coming across these important tips and saying to myself, "Man, this is what people REALLY need to know. I should pull them out into a special list at the back of the book called, 'The Best Photography Tricks of All Time,' so people can't miss it."

So that's exactly what I'm doing. Thought I'd send you the list as it stands today, so you'd have it when you unwrap that shiny new digital camera that you get as a gift. (Most of these apply to consumer cameras, not S.L.R.'s.)

While the general guidelines of good photography apply to every type of camera, a cameraphone does have specific features and flaws you should keep in mind when snapping. After two years of documenting scenes of my life with my phone, here are some lessons I've learned for getting better photos from your cameraphone.

At the store this weekend, I counted no fewer than a dozen different varieties of pre-packaged pancake mixes. And this was a fancy, highfalutin store that doesn’t even bother to stock the aerosol or otherwise weaponized shake-and-pour varieties. What’s the lesson here? That pancakes are hard; here, gentle consumers who are far too busy to bother making from scratch, just add water.

If there's one thing we never tire of, it's exploiting hidden features within an operating system. Today, we take a look at the Mac's Option key (also known as Alt), and all the hidden goodness that comes with it.

Janet Fitch is the author of "White Oleander" and "Paint it Black," and she teaches writing at USC. It seems like every time I run into her at a reading, she introduces one or two or more of her students who she has encouraged to come along, people whose work she praises. This enthusiastic engagement makes her, well, nicer than many writing teachers, and that niceness might be why she's posted a list of 10 writing tips that can help almost anyone on her blog. But the list shows that just because she's nice, she's no pushover in the classroom.

"eBay can be a wonderful source for men’s clothing at a significant discount. Rarely will you find clothes for thrift store prices (particularly when factoring in the cost of shipping), but you’ll also rarely pay retail. The keys to shopping on eBay are patience and strategy. Here are some tips."

Questions to ask and rules of thumb to use to solve problems and be productive.

"You've always wanted to learn how to build software yourself—or just whip up an occasional script—but never knew where to start. Luckily, the web is full of free resources that can turn you into a programmer in no time."

"I took one (bad) computer science class in college, and I'm not a web developer. So in early 2008, when I decided I was finally going to build a web site I'd been fantasizing about for years, I was starting from scratch."

"I decided to explore the idea of freelancing when several people from the office complimented my writing one after the other. My problem was that I had no idea what I wanted to do exactly. Yes, it was going to involve writing of some sorts. I discovered I had a knack for words (my boss even trusted me to write a press release about a new product we were launching — not bad for someone 6 months out of university!) but I had never been specifically hired and paid by others just to 'write stuff.'"

"Being able to express yourself, clearly and forcefully, in less than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter (and SMS) is no small thing!"

"From writing in the bathroom (Junot Díaz) to dressing in character (Nicholson Baker), 11 top authors share their methods for getting the story on the page."

Back to basics - 10 principles of productivity from Lifehacker.

More breakfast ideas for the busy (wo)man-about-town.

Some obvious and not-so-obvious tips for using Gmail.

A checklist for your GTD experience/set up.

I've had Quicksliver installed for eons but need to learn how to use the darn thing beyond opening applications.