Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category


You don’t need to watch Breaking Bad to know that chemistry is pretty awesome. CAUTION! WARNING! DANGER! Do not try these at home. Your local religious population my find you guilty of practicing the dark arts and slaughter you in your sleep.  Below, I am sharing my favorite chemistry GIFs and the science behind them (when I could figure it out):

Blood meets hydrogen peroxide

 

Blood And Hydrogen Dioxide

Source: Iitmne

Sodium acetate crystallization

Sodium Acetate

Source: Imgur

Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction

Chemical Reaction GIFs Belousov Zhabotinsky

Source: GIF Trunk

Water bridge formed by electric current

Chemical GIFs Water Bridge

Source: Imgur

Alpha particle trails from radioactive decay of Radon 220

Chemical GIFs Radon Alpha Particles

Source: Imgur

Snake venom meets blood

Chemical GIFs Venom Blood

Source: College Humor

A lightbulb burning out

Chemical GIFs Lightbulb

Source: Wiffle GIF

Aluminum and iodine

Chemical GIFs Aluminum Iodine

Source: Imgur

Dehydration of sugar in sulfuric acid

Chemical GIFs Sugar Sulfuric Acid

Source: College Humor

Melting Metal With Magnets

Chemistry GIFs Melting Metal With Magnets

The Science: The copper wire has a significant amount of AC electricity running through it, causing it to act like a really strong electromagnet. In the metal slug, eddy currents form due to the magnetic field the copper wire is causing while the copper wire has high frequency AC flowing through it. The metal slug’s electric resistance causes a portion of the electric energy to turn into heat, but the heat builds up until the metal slug becomes white hot and melts.

Orange LED Light In Liquid Nitrogen

Orange LED Light In Liquid Nitrogen GIF

The Science: When an LED is immersed in liquid nitrogen, the electrons lose a lot of thermal energy, even when the light isn’t turned on. When this happens, the bandgap in the semiconductors increases. Since this gap is increased, when electrons in the conduction band fall to the valence band, they emit a higher energy light, meaning the light emitted has a shorter wavelength and a higher frequency. This is why we see the orange light turn into colours that are higher on the electromagnetic spectrum when it is frozen in the liquid nitrogen.

 

Heating Mercury Thiocyanate

Heating Mercury Thiocyanate

Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed By Potassium Iodide

Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed by Potassium Iodide GIF

Liquid Nitrogen Mixed With 1500 Ping Pong Balls

Liquid Nitrogen Mixed With 1500 Ping Pong Balls

Burning Magnesium In Dry Ice

Burning Magnesium In Dry Ice Chemistry GIF

Hydrophobic Sand Placed Underwater

Awesome Chemistry GIFs Hydrophobic Sand Underwater GIF

Putting Out Candles With Carbon Dioxide

Putting Out Candles With Carbon Dioxide

Deflecting A Water Stream With A Charged Rod

Deflecting A Water Stream With A Charged Rod

Hydrogen Peroxide Mixed With Potassium Iodide

Hydrogen Peroxide Mixed With Potassium Iodide GIF

Explosive Polymerization Of p Nitro Aniline

Explosive Polymerization of p Nitro Aniline GIF

Flammable Gas Lit In A Glass Jar

Flammable Gas Lit In A Glass Jar GIF

Sodium Polyacrylate Mixed With Water

Awesome Chemistry GIFs Sodium Polyacrylate Mixed With Water

 Electrical Discharge

Awesome Chemistry GIFs Electrical Discharge

The Science: Called Electric Treeing, the GIF above shows an electrical pre-breakdown phenomenon where due to partial discharges and progresses through the stressed dielectric insulation, electricity takes a path resembling the branches of a tree.

 Lithium On Fire

Lithium Fire Chemistry GIF

Reaction Of Copper And Nitric Acid

Reaction Of Copper And Nitric Acid GIF

zscurl


It’s an interesting relationship that book lovers have with the Internet: most would rather read a physical book than something on an iPad or Kindle, and even though an Amazon purchase is just two or three clicks away, dedicated readers would rather take a trip to their local indie bookstore. Yet the literary world occupies a decent-sized space on the web. Readers, writers, publishers, editors, and everybody in between are tweeting, Tumbling, blogging, and probably even Vine-ing about their favorite books. In case the demise of Google Reader threw your literary Internet browsing into a dark void, here’s a list of 25 book sites to bookmark. 

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The Millions

Ten years is a mighty long time in terms of Internet life, but that’s how long The Millions has been kicking out a steady stream of reviews, essays, and links. That’s what has made it the Internet’s #1 literary institution.

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The Paris Review Daily

While the print version of this highly respected literary journal only comes out a few times a year, its blog has become a daily hub for readers thanks to a great mix of news roundups, essays, interviews, and more.

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Page-Turner

Obviously being The New Yorker’s book blog comes with its perks, and Page-Turner takes full advantage of its captive audience by posting everything from the fantastic monthly podcast to a daily news roundup, great essays like Casey N. Cep’s “A Murder in Deep Summer” and Jon Michaud’s piece on why Frank Herbert’s Dune endures. Much like its parent magazine, you can’t really go wrong with what Page-Turner publishes.

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The Los Angeles Review of Books 

Launched via Tumblr in 2011, the LARB has grown from a proclamation that the West Coast has a literary scene to rival New York’s into a full-fledged online literary arts journal that boasts fantastic content and an impressive list of editors and contributors that includes Jeffrey Eugenides, Janet Fitch, Michael Pollan, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Greil Marcus, among others.

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Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading

Electric Literature made a huge splash in the literary world upon its inception, fashioning itself as the literary journal for the Internet era. When the magazine ceased publication, Halimah Marcus and Benjamin Samuel stepped in with an idea so simple, you wonder why nobody thought of it sooner: a writer, an indie press, or an editor picks one story for you each week, and that’s it. One great story, like Peter Orner’s “At the Fairmont,” which was selected by Ann Beattie, or Mary Gaitskill suggesting something Saul Bellow wrote; short, easy, and totally wonderful.

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The Awl

It’s not a literary site in the traditional sense, but The Awl always, always posts something that appeals to book lovers, from great poetry to original essays like “How To Be A Monster: Life Lessons From Lord Byron.”

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Book Riot

The site’s tag — “All Books. Never Boring” — is an apt summation of this sometimes-quirky website that tries to make talking about books fun, and a little more inclusive to non-snobs than most outlets that discuss literature.

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The New Inquiry

In the grand tradition of great journals from The Partisan Review to n+1,The New Inquiry has made itself part of the bigger conversation by mixing political discussion, pop culture dissection, and a good dose of literary sensibilities. Read the articles, and consider becoming a member.

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3:AM Magazine 

Another great site that has been going strong for over a decade, 3:AM publishes everything from original flash fiction to criticism, and might be the best place on the net to read about modernist and postmodernist literature in the same place.

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The Rumpus

The best of the West, The Rumpus has a slew of great writers both editing and contributing to a site that churns out more than its fair share of great content on a daily basis. Plus, they’ll always be the site where many readers first encountered Cheryl Strayed in her advice-giving guise asDear Sugar.

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The Bat Segundo Show

Ed Champion’s terrific podcast has featured plenty of luminaries, including John Updike, Martin Amis, Claire Messud, and National Book Award winners like Jesmyn Ward, but still has time for promising up-and-comers like Matt Bell. Always interesting, and easily one of the best literary podcasts.

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Granta

You do know that one of the most important literary magazine in the entire English language also posts a whole lot of great content on its website, right? Did you read the Teju Cole piece they posted recently? Seriously, put this in whatever new reader you’re buying, and never miss a copy of this always-spectacular publication.

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The American Reader

Founded by young literary stars Uzoamaka Maduka and Jac Mullen, The American Reader is a monthly print journal with a website that publishes fiction, poetry, criticism, and more — along with fascinating daily reprints of letters between literati.

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HTML Giant

“The internet literature magazine blog of the future” is really the site where you never know what you’re going to get, from weird and random lists to intelligent critiques of big novels and small alt-lit chapbooks alike.

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Largehearted Boy 

David Gutowski’s site is a source for daily book and music news, but the real draw is the wonderful Book Notes series, where authors discuss the music that played in the background as they wrote their books.

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Full Stop

A site that puts up a handful of great reviews, as well as breaks stories like the one about the time Jonathan Franzen tried to scam some videos for a college library.

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Lapham’s Quarterly Roundtable

Like one of the Smithsonian’s great blogs, except way weirder, the online outpost of Lapham’s Quarterly publishes essays on weird historical subjects you’ve probably never heard of but will nonetheless find fascinating.

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Other People with Brad Listi 

Brad Listi has carved out a nice little space for himself on the literary Internet, interviewing everybody from Sam Lipsyte, Jami Attenberg, and George Saunders to Tayari Jones and Michelle Orange. If you have a book out, you sorta have to go on Other People.

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McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

All the quirky fun of the McSweeney’s world boiled down into one website. I still think “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfucker” should have won the Nobel, or at the very least, a Pulitzer. You also can’t go wrong with Teddy Wayne’s column of unpopular proverbs.

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HiLobrow

A hodgepodge of good reads, from pieces on zine collections toserializations of long-forgotten literature, HiLobrow is full of delightful daily surprises.

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The Bookrageous Podcast

Judging by the title, it should come as no surprise that this podcast is a celebration of books — namely, the books read by the hosts, who each talk about their chosen titles for a few minutes. Need a reading suggestion? This is the best podcast to help you with that.

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Literary Kicks

Levi Asher doesn’t update his site as regularly as we’d like, but in between the few posts a week he does put up, take some time to go through his archive of entries that date back to 1994.

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The Public Domain Review

This not-for-profit finds unusual and interesting out-of-print works that are a mix of intriguing collections, as well as essays on topics like the writings of Isaac D’Israeli: “a scholar, man of letters and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.”

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Guernica

“A Magazine of Art & Politics” that doesn’t mess around with great literature, whether it’s interviewing James Salter, posting original fiction, or adding to a great poetry section.

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The Nervous Breakdown

There’s plenty to read on this great lit website, but a highlight is the Self-Interviews series, in which authors ask themselves the tough questions other interviewers are afraid to pose.


A Twitter List is a simple but powerful tool. Not only for you who built the list, but for others who follow you and have similar interests.

Twitter Lists – Why Use Them?

Many people have more than one profile on Twitter and each of those profiles are built for a specific purpose in mind.

I think the List tool might give me the reason not to. I am already on so many social media sites, connected with 100’s of people and following blogs, authors, writers and favorites, that adding another profile to Twitter is not something I am interested in doing.

I think this “list” thing might be just the thing to separate work, from social, from personal.

Why I Built My Twitter Lists;

Everyone is on twitter it seems, so keeping track of what they are doing can be done simply by following them. But the number soon becomes ridiculously high and begins to seem daunting and unmanageable.

I remember when I first signed up for Twitter I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to use it. It took me months before I realized that I actually WAS signed in. That little box at the top wasn’t something else I had to do to go farther in the site, it actually WAS the site.

Now of course, their format is copied all over the place because it has become so well known as a very quick way to send updates.

When I signed up for Twitter, my intention was to attract mega traffic to my website, so I started to follow all kinds of people. Don’t have a clue who they were, but I followed them! And I was excited every single time someone followed me back. Yea! I was getting close to 100. Then close to 500, and so on. Now, I am more selective and the list feature helps keep those I do follow a little more organized.

I find I use the list feature more and more as I get used to it. And I also find that I go to those lists when I am looking for something specific.

I am Listed on Twitter, Is That a Good Thing?

If you are being followed on a list – that is very good. What that means is that others who might decide to follow that list will then be following you. Smile because that is easy, added exposure.

I suppose there are some blackball lists you’d like to stay off of, but for the most part, being listed is generally a good thing because it gives you extra exposure.

It’s a numbers game you play when you are working toward an online revenue stream of any kind. Numbers, links, back-links, recognition and exposure. Being “Listed” on Twitter can be a very good thing when you are out here to play that game.

Do I Follow Them Back?

When someone adds you to their list you are notified on your home page by the number under “listed”. You will see numbers for: Following, followers and listed.

Deciding to “followback is always a personal preference. You must make that decision based on your own set of criteria, and the reason you are a part of Twitter.

When people follow you, it is not a requirement that you follow them back. You determine who you want to follow and why. And if you follow a list that is following you – yes you will see tweets from everyone on that list.

The same is true for lists. In most cases, if you are “listed”, you will want to find out who else is on that list. Following that list – if it is relevant to your business or your personal choices, is likely a good idea. But again, ultimately up to you.

. . . the one thing that should be noted is that when you follow a list, you are not “following” all of those people on the list. So your following number doesn’t actually increase. You get their updates, but you are not actually following them. It’s a way to “follow, without following.”

Why Would You Want to Build Twitter Lists?

Well, I expect there are as many reasons as there are lists. But the most common reasons that I can think of is to help make twitter a little less cumbersome. Creating lists can also help you separate the personal from the professional.

Lists defaults to “public” when you first start it, but you can mark your lists as private if they are for your personal lists – like friends and family.

Or your can use the Twitter List function in a more powerful way for your business. Typically, building a list on Twitter is good for business – it truly is one of those “win-win” situations. I have yet to find a downside to it.

What it all boils down to is this – Numbers. You build lists, others find them and follow them. You create more numbers for you, more numbers for them. You get listed, other people follow you that you might never have found before. Simply put – using the Twitter List tool correctly, and with a purpose in mind, is a good way to build your number of followers.

 

 


Tweeting on Twitter can be really serious stuff! With only 140 characters at your disposal it is really important to ensure that you get the very best shorthand and abbreviations for each tweet you make! Otherwise you run the risk of becoming known as a nuisance and losing your followers. If you are tweeting on twitter for business means then you will already understand the importance of keeping your followers interested and engaged with you. If you are clever then you would have already set yourself a maximum number of tweets per day, of which 50% will probably include a link of some kind. When tweeting a link it can become difficult to get anything out there because the link takes up so many of the characters automatically! If you haven’t already set yourself a limit of tweets per day then do it know in order to benefit your online business. Here you can find lots of shorthand and abbreviations to use on twitter, and perhaps you might learn a couple that you see on a daily basis, but didn’t know what they meant! We will also look at how to reduce your link sizes including how to make them smaller for tweeting. If you are a fan of emoticons then you will also be pleased to see some emoticons that can be used to express the way you are feeling, without using the excessive amount of characters that we normally use. Is twitter changing the way we communicate between one another?! It certainly makes us stick to the point, stay interesting and think about what we are saying before we do it. Enjoy…

Short tweets

(click column header to sort results)

Abbreviations / Short Hand  
What they mean  
Abbreviations / Short Hand   
What they mean  
BTW
By the way
M8
Mate
G2G
Got to go
FR8
Freight
L8
Late
W8
Weight / Wait
B8
Bait
BRB
Be right back
2D4
To die for
BRT
Be right there
A3
Anytime, Anywhere, Any place
BBL
Be back later
BOL
Best of Luck
ASL
Age, Sex Location?
2L8
Too late
4E
Forever
D8
Date
ATW
At the weekend
2
To / Too
ATM
At the moment
F2F
Face to Face
B4
Before
GAL
Get a ife
IOU
I Owe You
LOL
Laugh out loud
W4U
Waiting for you
ROFL
Roll on the floor laughing
WTG
Way to go
CMN
Come on
CU
See you
C
See
L8R
Later
U
You
GR8
Great
BION
Believe it or not
CUS
See you soon
FOAF
Friend of a friend
2G4U
Too good for you
F4E
Friends forever
ASAP
As soon as possible
OIC
Oh I see
4WIW
For what it’s worth
GG
Good game
RUOK?
Are you ok?

Emoticons can help to express the way you are feeling without the need to use words. These are Icons that express emotion – Hence the name Emoticons. You can use these on twitter to get much more out of your 140 character tweet, and it makes you all the little bit more interesting.

Emoticon
What it means?
Emoticon
What it means?
🙂
Happy
zzz
Sleepy
:0)
Happy
@@
Eyes
🙂
Happy
:-&
Tongue tied
😉
Winking
Love heart
;0)
Winking
4@
Forever
😉
Winking
>-|
Angry
😀
Super Happy
:-()
Talking
😎
Happy
OTP
On the phone
:p
Tongue Out
((H))
Hugs
;P
Wink and tongue out
XXX
Kisses
:0|
Stern face
XXX
Sex
:-Z
Angry face
<(“(00)”)>
Piggy
:’-(
Crying
0:-)
Angel
:’O(
Crying
:-)8
Happy with Bow tie
😦
Sad
|-0
Yawning
:0(
Sad
:0))
Double happy
😦
Sad
@>–;–
Rose

URL Shortners – With just 140 characters you do not want to be wasting them all on URL’s! Use these free url link shorteners to make for smaller links and more explanation! Really good free tweeting tools..

Website
Reasons for using
Dot.tk
Allows you to shorten links
Is.gd
Shortest links around
shtn.co
Shorten links quickly
Tinyurl.cc
Small urls made easy

You’ve probably seen a few fun symbols like musical notes ♫, smiley faces ☺, or hearts ♥ posted to Facebook or Twitter. But did you know there are dozens of interesting, non-alpha-numeric characters you can use in status updates and tweets?

Here are 167 of them I found…

Weather/Astrological

  1. ☀ – sunshine – sun
  2. ☼ – sunburst
  3. ☉ – sun
  4. ☁ – cloudy – cloud – dark cloud
  5. ☂ – raining – rain – umbrella
  6. ☃ – snow – snowman
  7. ☄ – shooting star
  8. ★ – star solid
  9. ☆ – star outline
  10. ☽ – waxing crescent moon
  11. ☾ – waning crescent moon
  12. ☇ – lightning
  13. ☈ – thunderstorm
  14. ° – degree – e.g. 45°
  15. ℃ – Celsius
  16. ℉ – Fahrenheit
  17. ♈ – Aries
  18. ♉ – Taurus
  19. ♊ – Gemini
  20. ♋ – Cancer
  21. ♌ – Leo
  22. ♍ – Virgo
  23. ♎ – Libra
  24. ♏ – Scorpio
  25. ♐ – Sagitarius
  26. ♑ – Capricorn
  27. ♒ – Aquarius
  28. ♓ – Pisces

Money

  1. ¢ – cent
  2. £ – pound
  3. ¤ – currency
  4. ¥ – yen
  5. € – euro sign

Publishing & Punctuation

  1. § – section
  2. © – copyright
  3. ℗ – Sound Recording Copyright
  4. ® – registered trademark
  5. ™ – trademark
  6. ℠ – Service Mark
  7. ¹ – superscript 1
  8. ² – superscript 2
  9. ³ – superscript 3
  10. · – middle dot
  11. • – bullet = black small circle
  12. ¸ – spacing cedilla
  13. ‼ – bang bang, or two exclamation points…it’s one character
  14. ¶ – paragraph symbol)
  15. ¿ – inverted question mark
  16. ℅ – care of

Math

  1. ① – 1 in a circle
  2. ② – 2 in a circle
  3. ③ – 3 in a circle
  4. ④ – 4 in a circle
  5. ⑤ – 5 in a circle
  6. ⑥ – 6 in a circle
  7. ⑦ – 7 in a circle
  8. ⑧ – 8 in a circle
  9. ⑨ – 9 in a circle
  10. ⑩ – 10 in a circle
  11. ¼ – fraction 1/4
  12. ½ – fraction 1/2
  13. ¾ – fraction 3/4
  14. × – multiplication
  15. ✕ – multiplication sign X
  16. ✖ – heavy multiplication sign X
  17. ÷ – division
  18. № – numero symbol – number sign

Checks & Checkboxes

  1. ✓ – check mark
  2. ✔ – heavy check mark
  3. ✗ – ballot X
  4. ✘ – heavy ballot X
  5. ☐ – check box
  6. ☑ – check box check mark
  7. ☒ – ballot box with X

Arrows

  1. ► (black triangle pointing right)
  2. ◄ (black triangle pointing left)
  3. ↕ (up and down arrows)
  4. ☚ – left-pointing index finger
  5. ☛ – right-pointing index finger
  6. ☜ – left-pointing index finger
  7. ☝ – upwards pointing index finger
  8. ☞ – right pointing index finger
  9. ☟ – downwards pointing index finger

Smilies

  1. ☹ – frowning face
  2. ☺ – smiley face
  3. ☻ – black smiley face

Chess & Cards

  1. ♔ – White King
  2. ♕ – White Queen
  3. ♖ – White Rook
  4. ♗ – White Bishop
  5. ♘ – White Knight
  6. ♙ – White Pawn
  7. ♚ – Black King
  8. ♛ – Black Queen
  9. ♜ – Black Rook
  10. ♝ – Black Bishop
  11. ♞ – Black Knight
  12. ♟ – Black Pawn
  13. ♠ – black spade suit
  14. ♢ – red diamond suit
  15. ♣ – black club suit = shamrock
  16. ♤ – red spade suit
  17. ♥ – black heart suit = valentine
  18. ♦ – black diamond suit
  19. ♧ – red club suit

Music

  1. ♩ – musical quarter note
  2. ♪ – musical eighth note
  3. ♫ – musical single bar note
  4. ♬ – musical double bar note
  5. ♭ – flat note
  6. ♮ – natural note
  7. ♯ – sharp note

Scissors & pencils

  1. ✁ – cut above
  2. ✂ – cut here
  3. ✃ – cut below
  4. ✄ – scissors
  5. ✍ – signature – sign here
  6. ✎ – pencil diagonal down
  7. ✏ – pencil
  8. ✐ – pencil diagonal up

Crosses & Religious Symbols

  1. ✝ – Latin Roman Cross
  2. ✞ – Latin Cross 3D shadow
  3. ✟ – Latin Cross outline
  4. ✠ – Maltese Cross
  5. ☓ – St. Andrew’s Cross
  6. ✡ – Star of David

Pipes and Wallpaper

  1. ╣– T pipe
  2. ║– straight pipe
  3. ╗– left elbow pipe
  4. ╝–right elbow pipe
  5. ░ – light wallpaper
  6. ▒ – medium light wallpaper
  7. ▓ – medium wallpaper
  8. █ – dark wallpaper
  9. ▄ – half wallpaper

Misc

  1. ♂ – Male
  2. ♀ – Female
  3. � – black diamond with question mark)
  4. ◘ – block with white circle)
  5. ◙ – block with filled white circle)
  6. ◊ – lozenge
  7. ℞ – Prescription Take pharmaceutical symbol
  8. Ω – Ohm
  9. ℧ – Inverted Ohm
  10. ☊ – ascending node
  11. ☋ – descending node
  12. ☌ – conjunction
  13. ☍ – opposition
  14. ☎ – phone
  15. ☏ – phone symbol outline
  16. ✆ – public pay phone
  17. ✇ – film reel – tape spool
  18. ✈ – airport jet airplane
  19. ✉ – envelope mail email
  20. ✌ – victory sign
  21. ♨ – hot springs
  22. ☠ – skull & crossbones
  23. ☡ – caution sign
  24. ☢ – radioactive sign
  25. ☣ – biohazard sign
  26. ☮ – peace sign
  27. ☯ – yin & yang
  28. ஓ – I have no idea???
  29. ๑ – swirl
  30. ۩ – birdhouse?
  31. ۞ – 8 point star
  32. εїз – butterfly, not actually 1 symbol but 3 combined.

Know of any I missed? Got any favorites?

The easiest way to put one of these symbols into a post/tweet, is to highlight it with your mouse, hit control-c to copy, click into the status update/tweet you’re writing and hit control-v to paste. So, you might want to bookmark this post so you can quickly add symbols to any posts/tweets from now on.

– See more at: http://blog.ourchurch.com/2010/10/22/167-symbols-spice-up-your-twitter-facebook-updates-2/#sthash.B3ciGY7d.dpuf